Germany has committed itself to reducing its carbon emissions by 25 percent in 2005 as compared to 1990 emission levels. To achieve this goal, the government has recently launched an environmental tax reform which entails a continuous increase in energy taxes in conjunction with a...

We investigate the importance of ?what?-flexibility on top of ?where?- and ?when?-flexibility for alternative emission control schemes that prescribe long-term temperature targets and eventually impose additional constraints on the rate of temperature change. We find that ?what?-flexibility...

The Eastern European Associates (EEA) have committed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions according to their targets set in the Kyoto Protocol. Furthermore since 1993 trade liberalization has taken place between all associated countries and the EU. There is meanwhile a large quantitative...

The ongoing economic criticism of the German Renewable Energy Act (EEG) recently started focusing on distributional effects, too. A team of authors at the Cologne Institute for Economic Research is worried about high costs for electricity consumers. They argue since electric power consumption is...

The transition of the German energy system towards renewable energy carriers triggers considerable costs for private households. Costs are passed through to households by a surcharge per kilowatt hour. This effectively leads to high cost burdens for poorer households relative to wealthier ones....

This paper reviews the literature on distributional effects of energy and carbon taxation with focus on microsimulation models. Most studies find that direct energy and carbon taxation tends to be regressive. Regressive effects occur mostly with respect to taxation of electricity or space...

Das Problem der Unterbrechungen der Stromversorgung nach §19 StromGVV hat in den vergangenen Jahren erhebliche öffentliche Aufmerksamkeit erfahren und Rufe nach Maßnahmen zur Minderung von Stromsperren wurden laut. Bisher liegen keine systematischen Untersuchungen zum Problem der Stromsperren...

Aktuell wird darüber diskutiert, ob das Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz (EEG) obere Einkommenschichten begünstige. Dem wird entgegengehalten, dass die Energiepolitik nicht auf die Einkommensverteilung gerichtet sei, dafür seien andere Politikbereiche verantwortlich. Wenn überhaupt, sollten die...

Die Energiewende umfasst neben dem Ausstieg aus der Atomenergie unter anderem auch den Ausbau erneuerbarer Energien, die Steigerung der Energieeffizienz und die Senkung des Treibhausgasausstoßes. Dabei wird viel Geld bewegt und es stellt sich immer dringender die Frage nach der sozialen...

This paper reviews the literature on distributional effects of energy and carbon taxation with focus on microsimulation models. Most studies find that direct energy and carbon taxation tends to be regressive. Regressive effects occur mostly with respect to taxation of electricity or space...