The Kyoto Protocol sets legally binding emission targets for industrialised countries without accounting for reductions carried out prior to 2008, the beginning of the first commitment period. There exists only one exception, the project-based Clean Development Mechanism where credits accrue...

This paper suggests that a mixture of measures may be needed to encourage renewable energy under the Kyoto Protocol. It explains that the goal of maximizing short term cost effectiveness tends to conflict with the goal of encouraging the long-term technological development that the world will...

This paper asks whether the European Union's (EU) Emissions Trading Scheme has encouraged investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency projects in developing countries. So far, it has produced very little investment in either in spite of the EU's decision to allow credits for projects...

This article addresses the problem of how to set caps for a cap-and-trade program, a key problem in pending legislation addressing global climate disruption. Previous scholarship on emissions trading programs focuses overwhelmingly on trading’s advantages and sometimes wrongly portrays...

Emissions trading has emerged as the major policy approach for addressing climate change, as evidenced by programs and proposals in the Australia, Europe, the United States, and elsewhere. A host of choices need to be made to design and implement a greenhouse gas emissions trading program,...

This article examines whether a greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme has the potential to bring parties into conflict with the WTO provisions in dealing with the initial allocation of permits, non-compliance with emissions targets, emissions trading system enlargement, and trade measures...

This chapter surveys the origins of emissions trading in theory and early practice, from John Dales' initial explication of the instrument through its first large scale experiment in the 1990 US Clean Air Act Amendments

In spite of the Bush Administration's rejection of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, states and private organizations have made efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions independent of the federal government. Among these initiative are cap and trade programs designed to lower the cost of reducing carbon...

This paper analyzes polluters' incentives to move from a traditional command and control (CAC) environmental regulatory regime to a tradable permits (TPP) regime. Existing work in environmental economics does not model how firms contest and bargain over actual regulatory implementation in CAC...

The concept of marketable pollution permits (MPP) has become an increasingly popular topic of discussion for environmentalists in recent years, although the idea has been around since at least 1968, when J.H. Dales published a book on the issue. This approach was given added credibility when the...