We study the performance under uncertainty of three renewable energy policy instruments: Tradable Renewable Quota (TRQ), Feed-In-Tariff (FIT), and Feed-In-Premium (FIP). We develop a stylized model of the electricity market, where renewables are characterized by a positive learning externality, which the regulator aims to internalize…
This paper systematically reviews what prospect theory can offer to analyse mitigation and adaptation. It is shown that accounting for reference dependence and certainty effects contributes to a better understanding of some well-known puzzles in the climate debate, including (but not limited to) the different uptake of mitigation and adaptation amongst individuals and nations, the role of technical vs. financial adaptation, and the apparent preference for hard protection measures in coastal adaptation…
The social cost of carbon (SCC), commonly referred to as the carbon price, is the monetized damage from emitting one unit of CO2 to the atmosphere. The SCC is typically obtained from large-scale computational Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) that consolidate interdisciplinary climate research inputs to obtain a carbon price estimate relevant for policy-making…
“Economic growth over the coming centuries is one of the major determinants of today’s optimal greenhouse gas mitigation policy. At the same time, long-run economic growth is highly uncertain. This paper is the first to evaluate optimal mitigation policy under long-term growth uncertainty in a stochastic integrated assessment model of climate change…”
We review the sources of uncertainty about all aspects of climate change and resolve these into various components, commenting on their relative importance. Then we review decision-making frameworks that are appropriate in the absence of quantitative probabilistic information, including non-probabilistic approaches and those based on multiple priors, and discuss their application in climate change economics…
This CIRED article constitutes a new contribution to the analysis of overlapping instruments to cover the same emission sources. Using both an analytical and a numerical model, we show that when the risk that the CO2 price drops to zero and the political unavailability of a CO2 tax (at least in the European Union) are taken into account, it can be socially optimal to implement an additional instrument encouraging the reduction of emissions, for instance a renewable energy subsidy…
“I examines the risk/return tradeoff for environmental investments, and its implications for policy choice. Consider a policy to reduce carbon emissions. To what extent does the value of such a policy depend on the expected future damages from global warming versus uncertainty over those damages, i.e., on the expected benefits from the policy versus their riskiness?…”
This FEEM paper demonstrates that determining a workable range of the social costs of carbon is however possible in a sequential decision-making framework that permits revising initial decisions in the light of new information
In this working paper, H. Gersbach and Q. Oberpriller demonstrate the advantages of a climate treaty based solely on rules for international permit markets when there is uncertainty about abatement costs and environmental damages.
Economists were able to formulate and recommend policy approaches for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases (mitigation) by drawing on an existing body of economic theory related to externalities. However, no comparably straightforward approach has yet emerged in the adaptation literature, possibly due to the diffuse nature of climatic effects that may occur in very diverse geographical locations…
Speculators are active in large markets for emission permits such as those developing under the Kyoto Protocol…
In this essay, three separate yet interconnected components of pro-environmental decision making are considered: (a) knowledge, in the form of basic scientific understanding and procedural knowledge, (b) risk perception, as it relates to an individual’s direct experience of climate change and (c) self-interest, either monetary or status-driven
The authors give an overview of the literature on uncertainty in integrated assessment models of climate change and identify some future research needs.
The authors consider an optimal consumption and pollution problem that has two important features. Environmental damages due to economic activities may be irreversible and the level at which the degradation becomes irreversible is unknown
Can a Green Paradox Arise without Scarcity?, by S. Smulders, Y. Tsur and A. Zemel, CESifo Working Paper
New Economics Papers Energy Economics (REPEC)
