This is a speech given to the National Press Club, September 26, 2008 outlining the need for comprehensive reform of the electric power sector in the U.S. It outlines the centrality of the electricity sector to the economy and to any national energy and climate policies. The U.S. electric power...

The United States may soon have a market for carbon. If so, that market will grow out of a cap-and-trade system like the EU's Emissions Trading System for CO₂ or the U.S. Acid Rain Program for SO₂. Copyright Copyright (c) 2009 Morgan Stanley.

This paper provides an initial analysis of the EU ETS based on the installation-level data for verified emissions and allowance allocations in the first trading year. Those data, released on May 15, 2006, and subsequent updates revealed that CO2 emissions were about 4% lower than the allocated...

This paper provides an empirical assessment of CO2 emissions abatement in the UK power sector during the trial period of the EU ETS. Using an econometrically estimated model of fuel switching, it separates the impacts of changes in relative fuel prices and changes in the EUA price on the...

This paper provides an empirical evaluation of the efficiency of allowance banking (i.e., abating more in early periods in order to abate less in later periods) in the nationwide market for sulfur dioxide (SO2) emission allowances that was created by the U.S. Acid Rain Program. We develop a...

Market-based instruments (MBI’s) are advocated because of their presumed lower economic cost in comparison with conventional regulatory instruments. The environmental effectiveness of the MBI is typically assumed to be the same as that of the conventional alternative (Crocker, 1966; Dales, 1968;...

The acid rain provisions of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, included in Title IV, required fossil-fuel-fired electricity generating units to reduce sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions by 50% in two phases. In the first, known as Phase I and extending from 1995 through 1999, generating units of 100...

On January 1st, 2005, the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) scheme was officially launched, only two years after the European Council adopted the EU Emissions Trading Directive (European Community 2003). As a consequence of this formal start, the world’s largest ever market in emissions has...

The European Union's Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) is the world's first multinational cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases. As an agreement between sovereign nations with diverse historical, institutional, and economic circumstances, it can be seen as a prototype for an eventual global...