Barbara K. Buchner

The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme: Origins, Allocation, and Early Results

The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) is the worlds first large experiment with an emissions trading system for carbon dioxide (CO2) and it is likely to be copied by others if there is to be a global regime for limiting greenhouse gas emissions. After providing a brief discussion of the origins of the EU ETS, its relation to the Kyoto Protocol, and its precedents in Europe and the U.S., this paper focuses on allowance allocation—the process of deciding who will receive the newly limited rights to emit CO2. We describe how allowances were allocated in the EU ETS, with particular emphasis on the issues and problems encountered, including the lack of readily available installation-level data, the participants in the process, the use of projections, the choices of Member States with respect to auctioning, benchmarking, and new entrant provisions, and the difficult issue of deciding to whom the expected shortage was to be allocated. Finally, we discuss the recently available data on 2005 emissions and what they indicate concerning over-allocation, trading patterns, and abatement. We conclude with some observations about the broader implications of the EU ETS, what seems to be unique about CO2, and the fact that non-economic considerations inform the allocation of allowances.

Allocation in the European Emissions Trading Scheme : rights, rents and fairness

List of figures List of boxes List of tables Contributors Foreword Acknowledgements Glossary and abbreviations Part I. The EU ETS Allocation Process: 1. The EU ETS allocation process: an overview A. Denny Ellerman, Barbara K. Buchner, and Carlo Carraro 2. A brief but lively chapter in EU climate policy: the commissions perspective Peter Zapfel Part II. Experiences from Member States in Allocating Allowances: 3. United Kingdom David Harrison and Daniel Radov 4. Germany Felix Christian Matthes and Franzjosef Schafhausen 5. Denmark Sigurd Lauge Pedersen 6. Sweden Lars Zetterberg 7. Ireland Conor Barry 8. Spain Pablo Del Rio 9. Italy Daniele Agostini 10. Hungary Istvan Bart 11. Czech Republic Tomas Chmelik 12. Poland Boleslaw Jankowski Part III. Concluding Remarks and Background Material: 13. Unifying themes A. Denny Ellerman, Barbara K. Buchner, and Carlo Carraro Appendix I. Participant list Appendix II. The individual country outline Appendix III. The country tables Appendix IV. Background material from the European Commission Index.

Back to Kyoto? US Participation and the Linkage Between R&D and Climate Cooperation

The US decision not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and the subsequent outcomes of the Bonn and Marrakech Conferences of the Parties drastically reduce the effectiveness of the Kyoto Protocol in controlling GHG emissions. The reason is not only the reduced emission abatement in the US. Lower spillover effects on technology and an increase in Russia’s bargaining power were also induced by the US decision. It is therefore crucial to analyse whether an incentive strategy exists that could induce the US to revise its decision and comply with the Kyoto commitments. One solution, occasionally proposed in literature and in actual policymaking, is to link negotiations on climate change control with decisions concerning international R&D cooperation and technology transfers. This paper explores this idea by analysing on the one hand the incentives for the EU, Japan and Russia to adopt an “issue linkage” strategy, and on the other hand the incentives for the US to join a coalition cooperating both on climate change control and on technological innovation. The extended regime in which cooperation takes place on both dimensions (GHG emissions and R&D) will be examined from the view point of countries’ profitability and free-riding incentives. The effectiveness and credibility of the “issue linkage” strategy will thus be assessed.

Equity, Development, and Climate Change Control

The paper analyzes the effects of different equity principles on the decision of developing countries to join a world coalition whose aim is to control greenhouse gas emissions. A game-theoretic framework is proposed to assess the incentives for different countries to sign an international treaty on climate change control. Then, the effects of different equity rules on these incentives are evaluated by using a dynamic integrated growth and climate model. Policy proposals based on transfers from developed to developing countries are also analyzed. (JEL: C7, H0, H3, Q38) Copyright (c) 2003 The European Economic Association.

Economic consequences of the US withdrawal from the Kyoto/Bonn Protocol

The US decision not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and the recent outcomes of the Bonn and Marrakech Conferences of the Parties have important implications for both the effectiveness and the efficiency of future climate policies. Among these implications, those related with technical change and with the functioning of the international market for carbon emissions are particularly relevant, because these variables have the largest impact on the overall abatement cost to be borne by Annex B countries in the short and in the long run. This paper analyses the consequences of the US decision to withdraw from the Kyoto/Bonn Protocol both on technological innovation and on the price of emission permits (and, as a consequence, on abatement costs). In particular, the analysis highlights mechanisms and feedbacks related to technological innovation, technological spillovers and R&D which could be relevant and which modify some policy relevant conclusions. First, we identify two feedback effects which explain why our results lead to a less significant fall in the price of permits than in most empirical analyses recently circulated. We show that the US defection from the Kyoto Protocol, by inducing a decline in the demand and price of emission permits, lowers the incentives to undertake energy-saving R&D. As a consequence, emissions increase and feed back on the demand and supply of permits, thus implying a lower decline in the price of permits than previously estimated. At the same time, as a result of the reduced R&D investments and the augmented emissions, climate change damages intensify and require an increase in investments that are again coupled with a growth of emissions. By thus again increasing the demand for permits and reducing their supply, this effect enhances the previous mechanism. Notwithstanding the lower decline in the price of permits, the paper still identifies a smaller price than would occur with a US participation. Therefore, we emphasise in a second step the crucial role of Russia in climate negotiations due to a large increase in Russias bargaining power.

On the Consequences of the US Withdrawal from the Kyoto/Bonn Protocol

The US decision not to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and the recent outcomes of the Bonn and Marrakech Conferences of the Parties has important implications for both the effectiveness and the efficiency of future climate policies. Among these implications, those related with technical change and with the functioning of the international market for carbon emissions are particularly relevant, because these variables have the largest impact on the overall abatement cost to be born by Annex B countries in the short and in the long run. This Paper analyses the consequences of the US decision to withdraw from the Kyoto/Bonn Protocol both on technological innovation and on the price of emission permits (and, as a consequence, on abatement costs). A first goal is to assess the impact of the US defection on the price of permits and compliance costs when technological innovation and diffusion is taken into account (the model embodies international technological spillovers). A second goal is to understand for what reasons in the presence of endogenous and induced technical change the reduction of the price of permits is lower than in most empirical analyses recently circulated. A third goal is to assess the role of Russia in climate negotiations, its increased bargaining power and its eventual incentives to follow the US defections.

The allocation of European Union allowances : lessons, unifying themes and general principles

This paper is the concluding chapter of Rights, Rents and Fairness: Allocation in the European Emissions Trading Scheme, edited by the co-authors and forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. The main objective of this paper is to distill the lessons and general principles to be learnt from the allocation of allowances in the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS), i.e. in the worlds first experience with allocating carbon allowances to sub-national entities. We discuss the lessons that emerge from this experience and make some comments on what seem to be more general principles informing the allocation process and on what are the global implications of the EU ETS. As has become obvious during the first allocation phase, the diversity of experience among the Member States is considerable, so that it must be understood that these lessons and unifying themes are drawn from the experience of most of the Member States, not necessarily from all. Lessons and unifying observations are grouped in three categories: those concerning the conditions encountered, the processes employed, and the actual choices.

Economic and environmental effectiveness of a technology-based climate protocol

The present stalemate in climate negotiations between the USA and the other Annex I countries has led policy analysts and economists to explore the possible emergence of alternative climate regimes that may be applied after 2012. This article explores the idea of replacing international cooperation on greenhouse gas emission control with international cooperation on climate-related technological innovation and diffusion. This idea-recently proposed among others by Barrett (2001) and Benedick (2001)-is based on the insight that incentives to free-ride are much smaller in the case of technological cooperation than in the case of cooperation on emission control. This article provides a first applied game theory analysis of a technology-based climate protocol by assessing: (i) the self-enforcingness (namely, the absence of incentives to free-ride) of the coalition that would form when countries negotiate on climate-related technological cooperation; (ii) the environmental effectiveness of a technology-based climate protocol. The analysis is carried out by using a model in which endogenous and induced technical change are explicitly modelled. The results of our analysis partly support Barretts and Benedicks conjectures. On the one hand, a self-enforcing agreement is more likely to emerge when countries cooperate on environmental technological innovation and diffusion than when they cooperate on emission abatement. However, technological cooperation-without any commitment to emission control-may not lead to a sufficient abatement of greenhouse gas concentrations.

US, China and the Economics of Climate Negotiations

Despite the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol, the US decision not to comply with its Kyoto commitments seems to drastically undermine the effectiveness of the Protocol in controlling GHG emissions. Therefore, it is important to explore whether there are economic incentives that might help the US to modify its current decision and move to a more environmentally effective climate policy. For example, can an increased participation of developing countries induce the US to effectively participate in the effort to reduce GHG emissions? Is a single emission trading market the appropriate policy framework to increase the signatories of the Kyoto Protocol? This paper addresses the above questions by analysing whether the participation of China in the cooperative effort to control GHG emissions can provide adequate incentives for the US to re-join the Kyoto process and eventually ratify the Kyoto Protocol. This paper analyses three different climate regimes in which China could be involved and assesses the economic incentives for the major world countries and regions to participate in these three regimes. The main conclusion is that the participation of the US in a climate regime is not likely, at least in the short run. The US is more likely to adopt unilateral policies than to join the present Kyoto coalition (even when it includes China). However, a two bloc regime would become the most preferred option if both China and the US, for some political or environmental reasons, decide to cooperate on GHG emission control. If the US decides to cooperate, the climate regime that provides the highest economic incentives to the cooperating countries is the one in which China and the US cooperate bilaterally, with the Annex B-US countries remaining within the Kyoto framework.

Can Equity Enhance Efficiency? Lessons from the Kyoto Protocol

This paper analyses the relationship between different equity rules and the incentives to sign and ratify a climate agreement. A widespread conjecture suggests that a more equitable ex-ante distribution of the burden of reducing emissions would provide the right incentives for more countries - particularly big emitters - to accept an emission reduction scheme defined within an international climate agreement. This paper shows that this conjecture is only partly supported by the empirical evidence that can be derived from the Kyoto Protocol. Even though more equitable burden sharing rules provide better incentives to sign and ratify a climate agreement than the burden-sharing rule implicit in the Kyoto Protocol, a stable global agreement cannot be achieved. A possible strategy to achieve a global agreement without free-riding incentives is a policy mix in which global emission trading is coupled with a transfer mechanism designed to offset ex-post incentives to free ride.