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...

This overview paper explains how greenhouse gas emissions trading works, provides the essentials of the Directive on the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) and summarizes the main implementation problems of the EU ETS. In addition, a law and economics approach is used to discuss...

Emissions trading systems (ETSs) are emerging around the globe in response to climate change concerns. A severe side effect that may flow from an ETS is carbon leakage, which is generally understood as the shift of production to less regulated jurisdictions as a result of carbon pricing policy,...

The United Kingdom's Emissions Trading Scheme has its roots in the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme and these are both hinged on the effectiveness of the “cap and trade system”.The system and the scheme have had their criticisms, especially with regard to their capacity to actually...

Examining the US Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, I find that facilities reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 7.0% after mandatory disclosure of facility-level emissions. A facility's prior GHG inefficiency predicts subsequent GHG emissions reductions, but only after public disclosure occurs,...

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 this recent case the highest EU Court examines the dynamic cap (or PSR) system for NOx emissions trading introduced by the Netherlands from a state aid perspective and notably the selectivity criterion. In this appeal from a judgment by the General Court, the ECJ finds for the Commission on...

With the liberalisation of the European electricity market, new instruments are searched for in order to co-ordinate climate change initiatives with competition. This paper analyses the potential of a system of green electricity certificates to regulate the introduction of renewable energy...