This paper first reviews the conceptual case for, and appropriate design of, fiscal policies to address major externalities associated with energy use—global warming, local air pollution, and various side effects (e.g., congestion) from motor vehicles. Techniques for (roughly) estimating the...

The European energy policy is substantially driven by the target to reduce the CO2-emissions significantly and to mitigate climate change. Nevertheless European power generation is still widely based on fossil fuels. The carbon capture and storage technology (CCS) could be part of an approach to...

We estimate the sensitivity of scrap decisions to changes in used car values and show how this "scrap elasticity" produces emissions leakage under fuel efficiency standards, a process known as the Gruenspecht effect. We first estimate the effect of gasoline prices on used vehicle values and...

China is considering a national emissions trading scheme, to follow several pilot schemes, as part of the suite of policies to reduce the growth of greenhouse gas emissions. A carbon tax or tax-like scheme could be an alternative. However there are special challenges in a fast-growing economy...

There is a growing body of literature mentioning the slow pace of energy technological progress as compared to other technologies like information technology (IT), but the reasons why energy sector is perplexed by slow innovation remain unexplained. Based on a variety-expanding endogenous...

The optimal timing, sectoral distribution, and cost of greenhouse gas emission reductions is different when abatement is obtained though abatement expenditures chosen along an abatement cost curve, or through investment in low-carbon capital. In the latter framework, optimal investment costs...

This article constitutes a new contribution to the analysis of overlapping instruments to cover the same emission sources. Using both an analytical and a numerical model, we find that when the risk that the CO2 price drops to zero and the political unavailability of a CO2 tax (at least in the...

This study uses the EU public power generating sector as a case study to investigate the environmental efficiency and productivity enhancing performance of the European Union's CO2 Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) in its first phase. Using Data Envelopment Analysis methods, we measure the...

Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) electric vehicles can return power stored in their batteries back to the power grid and be programmed to do so at times when the grid needs reserve power. Since providing this service can lead to payments to owners, it effectively reduces the life-cycle cost of owning an...

This paper evaluates the environmental and macroeconomic implications for France, Germany, Italy and Spain of taxing motor vehicle fuels for private transportation, a sector not subject to the Emissions Trading System, so as to reduce taxes on electricity consumption and increase subsidies to...