The topic of energy security has become an issue of high salience over the last few years. As fears about the stability of the world’s energy resources grow, policymakers tend to merge the security concerns into the climate change policies that they are considering. There are currently three...

Gasoline taxes are the most important tax on car use. The question naturally arises as to what tax would be adopted by a government that responds to the preferences of the public. To address that issue, we begin with the standard Downsian model, where policy is determined by the median voter....

The EU Directive 2004/8/EC, concerning the promotion of cogeneration, established principles on how EU member states can support combined heat and power generation (CHP). Up to now, the implementation of these principles into national law has not been uniform, and has led to the adoption of...

The distributive incidence of environmental policies has not been widely investigated whereas more attention has been focused on the efficiency of environmental reforms. According to the Kyoto Protocol, domestic policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions can include carbon/energy taxes,...

The Doha Round Agenda (paragraph 31(3)) mandates to liberalize environmental goods and services. This mandate offers a good opportunity to put climate-friendly goods and services on a fast track to liberalization. Agreement on this paragraph should represent one immediate contribution that the...

We describe three essential elements of an effective post-2012 international global climate policy architecture: a means to ensure that key industrialized and developing nations are involved in differentiated but meaningful ways; an emphasis on an extended time path of targets; and inclusion of...

Federal action addressing climate change is likely to emerge either through new legislation or via the U.S. EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act. The prospect of federal action raises important questions regarding the interconnections between federal efforts and state-level climate policy...

The paper studies how risks specific to a nuclear power investment in liberalised markets – regulatory, construction, operation and market risks – can be mitigated or transferred away from the plant investor through different contractual and organisational arrangements. It argues that...

Modern infrastructure, particularly electricity, is critical to economic development. South Asia, with inefficient and bankrupt state-owned vertically integrated electricity supply industries, encouraged private generation investment to address shortages selling power to largely unreformed state...