Environmental policies are often accompanied by exemptions for energy-intensive and trade-exposed industrial firms to avoid leakage from regulated to unregulated jurisdictions. This paper investigates the impact of a large electricity tax exemption on production levels, employment, and input...

Environmental taxation very often comprises special provisions for parts of the business sector in order to attenuate effects on competitiveness of emissionintensive activities. This paper discusses motives, alternative designs and criteria for the evaluation of such safeguards and analyzes if...

Proposals to increase environmentally related taxes are often challenged on competitiveness grounds. The concern is that value creation in certain sectors might decline domestically if a country introduces environmentally related taxes unilaterally. Furthermore, environmental goals might not be...

Environmental protection is one of Europe's key values. The EU has set clear policy objectives to achieve its environmental goals. The EU has favoured market-based instruments, among which fiscal instruments to tackle the climate change problem. This paper takes a policy-making perspective and...

Since 1997 the Netherlands has a tax allowance scheme introduced to promote investments in energy saving technologies and sustainable energy production. This Energy Investment Tax Allowance (EIA in Dutch) reduces up-front investment costs for firms investing in the newest energy saving and...

Between 2002 and 2007, Germany introduced its National Strategy for Sustainable Development and its Integrated Climate Protection Program, which both defined clear energy and climate-related objectives, setting an emissions reduction trajectory of 40% below the 1990 level by 2020. This spurred...