We estimate the relationship between electricity, fuel and carbon prices in Germany, France, the Netherlands, the Nord Pool market and Spain, using one-year futures for base and peak load prices for the years 2009-2012, corresponding to physical settlement during the second market phase of the...

While bringing positive impacts and benefits, cross-border infrastructure projects face additional challenges relative to national projects. Moreover, such projects involve a variety of technical, regulatory, institutional, and legal factors, and their obstacles constrain the development of...

Trotz der klimapolitischen Zurückhaltung der USA auf der internationalen Ebene existieren innerhalb der USA Initiativen für klimapolitische Emissionshandelssysteme. Umgesetzt ist dabei bisher allein ein System im Nordosten, jedoch steht ein weiteres System im Westen kurz vor der Einführung...

Im Mittelpunkt der Sozialen Marktwirtschaft steht die individuelle Freiheit der Gesellschaftsmitglieder. Die Verwirklichung individueller Ziele kann über die in der Sozialen Marktwirtschaft bestehende Wettbewerbsordnung erreicht werden, weil auf dem Markt freiwilligen Tauschhandlungen vollzogen...

In addition to the already present Climate and Energy package, the European Union (EU) plans to include a binding target to reduce energy consumption. We analyze the rationales the EU invokes to justify such an overlapping and develop a minimal common framework to study interactions arising from...

The outcome of the December 2011 United Nations climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa, provides an important new opportunity to move toward an international climate policy architecture that is capable of delivering broad international participation and significant global CO2 emissions...

Carbon-based border tax adjustments (BTAs) have recently been proposed by some OECD countries to level the carbon playing field and target major emerging economies. This paper applies a multi-sector dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to estimate the impacts of the BTAs...

France has a very ambitious environmental-policy agenda, aimed chiefly at cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions but also at dealing with local air and water pollution, waste management and the conservation of biodiversity. The laws that followed the Grenelle de l'environnement encompass policy...

A sufficiently rapidly rising carbon tax may increase near-term emissions compared with the case of no carbon tax. Even so, such a carbon tax path may reduce total costs related to climate change, since the tax may reduce total carbon extraction. A government cannot commit to a specific carbon...

Despite political activities to foster a low-carbon energy transition, Germany currently sees a considerable number of new coal power plants being added to its power mix. There are several possible drivers for this dash for coal, but it is widely accepted that windfall profits gained through...