Suchergebnisse

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- List of figures -- List of tables -- Acknowledgements -- About the author -- Preface -- Executive summary -- Roadmap of the book -- Acronyms -- Chapter 1: Introduction -- 1.1: The scene of climate and energy policy, carbon pricing and emissions trading -- 1.2: EU-ETS history in a nutshell -- 1.3: Some economic concepts behind carbon pricing -- 1.4: Equal impact of emitted CO2-eq. molecules is no argument for uniform pricing -- 1.5: Recommendation -- Chapter 2: Diversity disqualifies Global Uniform Carbon Pricing for effective climate policy -- 2.1: Introduction -- 2.2: The concept of diversity and its implications for policy -- 2.3: Amalgamation versus specificity -- 2.4: Global uniform carbon pricing: discourse and performance -- 2.5: Conclusion -- Chapter 3: Anatomy of emissions trading systems: What is the EU ETS? -- 3.1: Introduction -- 3.2: Goals of EU policy (component i) -- 3.3: Allocation of tradable emissions permits (component iv) -- 3.4: Carbon emissions prices (component iii) -- 3.5: Costs of abatement (component ii) -- 3.6: Linking the four components of ETS -- 3.7: Wrap-up -- Chapter 4: What could the EU ETS founders learn from US SO2 emissions permit trade? -- 4.1: Introduction -- 4.2: Differences between US SO2 and EU CO2 emissions permit markets -- 4.3: Salient characteristics of the US acid rain programs -- 4.4: Choices made by the architects of the EU ETS -- 4.5: Concluding reflections -- Chapter 5: Early European experience with Tradable Green Certificates neglected by EU ETS architects -- 5.1: Introduction -- 5.2: Directive 2001/77/EC on the promotion of electricity produced from RE sources -- 5.3: Flanders market construct for Tradable Green Certificates -- 5.4: Flanders TGC experiment holds important lessons.

Pricing Carbon Emissions provides an economic critique on the utopian idea of a uniform carbon price for addressing rising carbon emissions, exposing the flaws in the economic propositions with a key focus on the EU's Emissions Trading System (ETS).After an Executive Summary of the contents, the chapters build up understanding of orthodox economics' role in protecting the neoliberal paradigm. A salient case, the ETS is successful in shielding the Business-as-Usual activities of the EU's industry, however this book argues that the system fails in creating innovation for decarbonizing production technologies. A subsequent political economy analysis by the author points to the discursive power of giant fossil fuel and electricity companies keeping up a façade of Cap-and-Trade utopia and hiding the reality of free permit donations and administrative price control, concealing financial bills mostly paid by household electricity customers. The twilights between reality and utopia in the EU's ETS are exposed, concluding an immediate end of the system is necessary for effective and just climate policy. The work argues that the proposition of shifting to a global uniform carbon tax is equally utopian. In practice, a uniform price applied on heterogeneous cases is not a source of benefits but one of ad-hoc adjustments, exceptions, and exemptions. Carbon pricing does not induce innovation, however assumed by the economic models used by IPCC for advising global climate policy. Thus, it is persuasively demonstrated by the author that these schemes are doomed to failure and room and resources need to be created for more effective and just climate politics. The book's conclusion is based on economic arguments, complementing the critique of political scientists.This book is written for a broad audience interested in climate policy eager to understand why decarbonizing progress is slow as it is. It marks a significant addition to the literature on climate politics, carbon pricing and the political economy of the environment more broadly.

The design of climate policy architectures depends on how its multiple designers identify the climate problem, on the principles they adhere to, and on the criteria they apply for assessing the performance of the constructed agreements. This article presents five core features of the climate policy problem, five principles demanding respect when designing policy, and a particular specification of the four general criteria: efficacy, efficiency, equity, and institutional feasibility. The central policy problem of climate change is the phasing out of non-sustainable energy use by orchestrating trillions of decisions by billions of people. Principles like universality, realism, and transparency are important, but when balancing a global agreement, taking into account diversity and sovereignty are outstanding. For addressing the climate change challenges, the equity criterion should be taken more seriously by the negotiating countries than at present. In a diverse world, equity conflicts are likely to be further exacerbated by attempts to impose uniform approaches like global carbon trading or a harmonized global carbon tax rate. The uniform approaches, lauded by economists and policy makers as superior, are also criticized here as not being so effective and efficient as pretended. Adapted from the source document.

Tradable Green-power Certificates (TGC) systems resemble greenhouse Emission-permits Trading Systems (ETS). In Europe they both emerged in the period 1999-2001, based on similar beliefs in 'constructed markets solve public policy problems'. In 2001 TGC were launched under impulse of the European Commission (EC). The systems' design, attributes and performance were known in 2005 (start ETS phase 1) and more documented in 2008 (start ETS phase 2). Detailed year-by-year follow-up of the Flanders (Belgium) TGC system, revealed major flaws of the experiment, such as: neglect of proper market segmentation, excessive financial transfers from small electricity consumers to renewable electricity generators, lacking innovation incentives, target fetishism. Instead of evolving to a workable market, the TGC system metamorphosed in assignment of certificates case-by-case, mainly to large-scale RE generation projects set up by influential project promoters. The EU ETS exposes similar flaws. There is no evidence the EC has taken advantage of prolific comparative analysis and advanced comprehension of the TGC market construction trials and failures. The EC – deliberately or unconcernedly – skipped the opportunity of learning.

The EU energy & climate policy requests from all Member States to submit a National Energy & Climate Plan (NECP) over the year 2019, to reach the aggregate goals of energy efficiency, renewable energy supplies and greenhouse gas emissions reductions by 2030. The complicated Belgian context is briefly described. Then the many comments on Belgium's draft NECP are summarized and annotated. Commentators are the European Commission, various statutory advisory councils on energy and climate policies, NGOs, consultants, etc. The draft plan requires significant improvement for meeting the formal standards imposed by the EU framework. More problematic however are the doubts about the actual capability of Belgium to realize the paper & ink commitments. Delving into the draft NECP and the abundant comments created a growing insight that the bureaucratic NECP approach of the European Commission is obsolete and dysfunctional. For addressing the energy & climate challenges, urgent & drastic, i.e. disruptive transformation is requested. Hence, disruptive thinking, novel frameworks and approaches should prevail.

An anatomy identifies four main components of actual or proposed Emissions Trading Systems (ETS): (1)Pursued policy goals with the ETS instrument; (2)Public authority allocations of permits to the regulated participants; (3)Carbon emissions price levels; and (4)Participants' abatement expenses dependent on the ready availability of affordable abatement techniques or of low-carbon innovation opportunities. These components cover a range of options. A different assemblage of options delivers different ETS exemplars. Two main exemplars are identified. The actual EU ETS is highly successful in meeting the goal of low financial burdens on EU industry, thereby precluding carbon leakage. The other exemplar opts for high carbon emissions prices in the EU to induce industrial innovations towards a low-carbon economy. Incumbent industrial interests oppose this exemplar. Contrary to current policy discourse and to wishful proposals, both ETS exemplars cannot co-exist. ETS anatomy offers insight and structure for thorough analysis and evaluation of existing ETS, resulting in context–specific and appropriate designs of the carbon trading systems.

An anatomy identifies four main components of actual or proposed Emissions Trading Systems (ETS): (1) Pursued policy goals with the ETS instrument; (2) Public authority allocations of permits to the regulated participants; (3) Carbon emissions price levels; and (4) Participants' abatement expenses dependent on the ready availability of affordable abatement techniques or of low-carbon innovation opportunities. These components cover a range of options. A different assemblage of options delivers different ETS exemplars. Two main exemplars are identified. The actual EU ETS is highly successful in meeting the goal of low financial burdens on EU industry, thereby precluding carbon leakage. The other exemplar opts for high carbon emissions prices in the EU to induce industrial innovations towards a low-carbon economy. Incumbent industrial interests oppose this exemplar. Contrary to current policy discourse and to wishful proposals, both ETS exemplars cannot co-exist. ETS anatomy offers insight and structure for thorough analysis and evaluation of existing ETS, resulting in context–specific and appropriate designs of the carbon trading systems.