Suchergebnisse

The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS) is referred to as the cornerstone of the EU's fight against climate change. However, carbon prices delivered have been judged too low and volatile to durably place the economy on a low-carbon trajectory. Price outcomes were largely attributed to a supply imbalance of permits due to external shocks: supply-side reforms, reviewed in a first chapter, were in turn conducted to shield the EU-ETS from them, with limited success.Yet, most prospective analyses of the EU-ETS rest on archetypal models of emission trading, which disregard the inner market structure and fundamentals. Therefore, this dissertation contributes to better understand price formation in the European carbon market by investigating structural drivers of permit prices, appraising their impact on market outcomes and policy design. Motivated by transaction and compliance data, the second and third chapters provide ex-post analyses of the second (2008-2012) and third (2013-2020) trading periods. We find that the market structure is unstable, with consequences on prices and supply-side policies. Our results question the benefits of a carbon price floor to remedy these instabilities, by helping market actors anchor expectations about future carbon prices. A fourth chapter thus conducts a comparative ex-ante analysis of the EU-ETS power sector under three plausible price floor policies. Our results suggest that no such complementary policies are necessary, because of the MSR's ability to quickly cutback on the number of allowances in circulation. ; Le marché du carbone européen (SEQE) est la pierre angulaire de la politique climatique européenne. Les prix du carbone produits ont cependant longtemps été jugé trop bas et volatils pour déclencher les investissements nécessaires à une décarbonation durable de l'économie. Les faibles niveaux de prix ont largement été attribués à un déséquilibre de l'offre de permis, dû à des chocs externes au marché. Plusieurs mesures de restriction de l'offre, critiquées ...

The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS) is referred to as the cornerstone of the EU's fight against climate change. However, carbon prices delivered have been judged too low and volatile to durably place the economy on a low-carbon trajectory. Price outcomes were largely attributed to a supply imbalance of permits due to external shocks: supply-side reforms, reviewed in a first chapter, were in turn conducted to shield the EU-ETS from them, with limited success.Yet, most prospective analyses of the EU-ETS rest on archetypal models of emission trading, which disregard the inner market structure and fundamentals. Therefore, this dissertation contributes to better understand price formation in the European carbon market by investigating structural drivers of permit prices, appraising their impact on market outcomes and policy design. Motivated by transaction and compliance data, the second and third chapters provide ex-post analyses of the second (2008-2012) and third (2013-2020) trading periods. We find that the market structure is unstable, with consequences on prices and supply-side policies. Our results question the benefits of a carbon price floor to remedy these instabilities, by helping market actors anchor expectations about future carbon prices. A fourth chapter thus conducts a comparative ex-ante analysis of the EU-ETS power sector under three plausible price floor policies. Our results suggest that no such complementary policies are necessary, because of the MSR's ability to quickly cutback on the number of allowances in circulation. ; Le marché du carbone européen (SEQE) est la pierre angulaire de la politique climatique européenne. Les prix du carbone produits ont cependant longtemps été jugé trop bas et volatils pour déclencher les investissements nécessaires à une décarbonation durable de l'économie. Les faibles niveaux de prix ont largement été attribués à un déséquilibre de l'offre de permis, dû à des chocs externes au marché. Plusieurs mesures de restriction de l'offre, critiquées ...

The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU-ETS) is referred to as the cornerstone of the EU's fight against climate change. However, carbon prices delivered have been judged too low and volatile to durably place the economy on a low-carbon trajectory. Price outcomes were largely attributed to a supply imbalance of permits due to external shocks: supply-side reforms, reviewed in a first chapter, were in turn conducted to shield the EU-ETS from them, with limited success.Yet, most prospective analyses of the EU-ETS rest on archetypal models of emission trading, which disregard the inner market structure and fundamentals. Therefore, this dissertation contributes to better understand price formation in the European carbon market by investigating structural drivers of permit prices, appraising their impact on market outcomes and policy design. Motivated by transaction and compliance data, the second and third chapters provide ex-post analyses of the second (2008-2012) and third (2013-2020) trading periods. We find that the market structure is unstable, with consequences on prices and supply-side policies. Our results question the benefits of a carbon price floor to remedy these instabilities, by helping market actors anchor expectations about future carbon prices. A fourth chapter thus conducts a comparative ex-ante analysis of the EU-ETS power sector under three plausible price floor policies. Our results suggest that no such complementary policies are necessary, because of the MSR's ability to quickly cutback on the number of allowances in circulation. ; Le marché du carbone européen (SEQE) est la pierre angulaire de la politique climatique européenne. Les prix du carbone produits ont cependant longtemps été jugé trop bas et volatils pour déclencher les investissements nécessaires à une décarbonation durable de l'économie. Les faibles niveaux de prix ont largement été attribués à un déséquilibre de l'offre de permis, dû à des chocs externes au marché. Plusieurs mesures de restriction de l'offre, critiquées dans un premier chapitre, furent ainsi entreprises afin d'en préserver le SEQE. Toutefois, la plupart des analyses prospectives du SEQE reposent sur un modèle archétypal d'échange de permis à polluer, qui ne tient compte ni de la structure interne du marché ni de ses fondamentaux. Cette thèse a ainsi pour but d'identifier les déterminants structurels du prix du carbone sur le SEQE, ainsi que d'en évaluer l'impact sur l'équilibre de marché et la conception de politiques de l'offre. Motivés par l'examen de données microéconomiques de transaction et d'émission, les second et troisième chapitres conduisent l'analyse ex-post des Phases 2 (2008-2012) et 3 (2013-2020) du mécanisme. Ils mettent ainsi en lumière la nature instable de la structure interne du marché. Notamment, les coûts de transaction altèrent la flexibilité spatiale du SEQE, tandis que le progrès technologique déstabilise le plafond d'émission. Ces constats nous amènent ainsi à questionner l'intérêt d'un prix plancher du carbone pour remédier à ces instabilités. Un quatrième chapitre mène donc l'analyse ex-ante du secteur électrique du SEQE en présence de trois mécanismes de support du prix. Nos résultats suggèrent que la capacité de la MSR à rapidement réduire le nombre de permis en circulation ne justifie pas un tel mécanisme à court terme.

We develop an equilibrium model of emissions permit trading in the presence of fixed and proportional trading costs in which the permit price and firms' participation in and extent of trading are endogenously determined. We analyze the sensitivity of the equilibrium to changes in the trading costs and firms' allocations, and characterize situations where the trading costs depress or raise permit prices relative to frictionless market conditions. We calibrate our model to annual transaction data in Phase II of the EU ETS (2008–2012) and find that trading costs in the order of 10 k€ per annum plus 1 € per permit traded substantially reduce discrepancies between observations and theoretical predictions for firms' behavior (e.g. autarkic compliance for small and/or long firms). Our simulations suggest that ignoring trading costs leads to an underestimation of the price impacts of supply-curbing policies, this difference varying with the incidence on firms.