Harrison G. Fell

Soft and Hard Price Collars in a Cap-and-Trade System: A Comparative Analysis

We use a stochastic dynamic framework to compare price collars (price ceilings and floors) in a cap-and-trade system with uncertainty in the level of baseline emissions and costs. We consider soft collars, which provide limited volume of additional emission allowances (a reserve) at the price ceiling, and hard collars, which provide an unlimited supply of additional allowances, thereby preventing allowance prices from exceeding the price ceiling. Conversely, allowances are removed from the market if prices fall to the floor. We find that increasing the size of the reserve strictly lowers expected net present values of compliance costs; however, there is a diminishing effect as the allowance reserve is expanded. Most of the expected cost savings are achieved with a modest reserve. Consequently, a rather limited soft price collar could provide considerable assurance about cost while preventing the possibility that emissions could spiral out of control.

EU-ETS and Nordic Electricity: A CVAR Approach

A cointegrated vector autoregressive (CVAR) model is estimated to determine the dynamic relationship between Nordic wholesale electricity prices and EU emissions trading scheme (EU-ETS) CO2 allowance prices. An impulse response analysis reveals that electricity prices have large short-term responses to CO2 price shocks, but that this response dampens over time. Using hourly Nordic electricity spot market prices, I find that the value of short-term response of electricity prices to a shock in CO2 prices in off-peak hours is consistent with expected values for near complete pass-through of CO2 emission costs when coal-generated power is at the margin. Likewise, the estimates reveal that peak hour electricity price responses to CO2 price shocks are as expected for a market that has near complete passthrough of CO2 emission costs when natural gas-generated power is at the margin. These results further suggest the Nordic electricity market is pricing as a competitive market.

Ex-Vessel Pricing and IFQs: A Strategic Approach

In this paper, intraseasonal fishing is modeled as a differential game between fishermen in a total allowable catch–regulated fishery with and without individual fishing quotas (IFQs). Heterogeneous harvest values are included by incorporating time-specific harvest costs and a stock effect into fishermen’s profit functions. I also allow for strategic interaction among fishermen via ex-vessel price dynamics. The equilibrium harvest strategies of the differential games are solved numerically through the use of a genetic algorithm. I demonstrate how different harvesting sector environments lead to varying degrees of ex-vessel price increases when IFQs are implemented. The primary result shows that possible margins for competition among fishermen, beyond competition for a greater share of the total allowable catch, can still exist under IFQ management and may be substantial enough to be able to prevent sizeable rent transfers from the processing sector to the harvesting sector.

Designing Renewable Electricity Policies to Reduce Emissions

A variety of renewable electricity policies to promote investment in wind, solar, and other types of renewable generators exist across the United States. The federal renewable energy investment tax credit, the federal renewable energy production tax credit, and state renewable portfolio standards are among the most notable. Whether the benefits of promoting new technology and reducing pollution emissions from the power sector justify these policies’ costs has been the subject of considerable debate. We argue in this paper that the debate is misguided because it does not consider two important interactions between renewable electricity generators and the rest of the power system. First, the value of electricity from a renewable generators depends on the generation and investment it displaces. Second, a large increase in renewable generation can reduce electricity prices, increasing consumption and emissions from fossil generators, and offsetting some of the environmental benefits of the policies. Two policy conclusions follow. First, existing renewable electricity policies can be redesigned to promote investment in the highest-value generators, which can greatly reduce the cost of achieving a given emissions reduction. Second, subsidies financed out of general tax revenue reduce emissions less than subsidies financed by charges to electricity consumers.

Cost Containment under Cap and Trade: A Review of the Literature

Cap and trade programs have been a commonly proposed method to regulate emissions of various pollutants. As many countries move forward with plans to regulate CO 2 emissions, concerns over containing the costs of such policies often arise given the relatively large scope of the programs. We review three cost containment mechanisms most commonly employed in existing cap and trade policies and/or discussed in the literature: banking and borrowing, hybrid policies, and emission offsets. For each of these mechanisms we discuss the theoretical basis for the policy, potential unintended consequences and, where applicable, the effectiveness of the policy as it has been used in practice.