The UK has pledged to cut greenhouse gases 68 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, to be emissions neutral by 2050, and to phase out internal combustion engine vehicles by 2030. Much progress has been made, but fully achieving these ambitious objectives with the current policy framework will be...

Denmark has a highly ambitious goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 70 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. While there is general agreement that carbon pricing should be the centerpiece of Denmark’s mitigation strategy, pricing needs to be effective, address equity and leakage concerns,...

When it was launched in 2005, the European Union emissions trading system (EU ETS) was projected to have prices of around €30/ton CO2 and to be a cornerstone of the EU's climate policy. The reality was a cascade of falling prices, a ballooning privately held emissions bank, and a decade of low...

Several EU member states are exploring options for setting minimum domestic carbon prices within the EU Emission Trading System (ETS). First, a “TAX” policy would introduce a carbon tax equal to the difference between the prevailing ETS price and the targeted minimum price. Second, a...

Myriad policy measures aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector, promote generation from renewable sources, and encourage energy conservation. To what extent do innovation and energy efficiency (EE) market failures justify additional interventions when a carbon price is...

Asymmetric regulation of a global pollutant between countries can alter the competitiveness of industries and lead to emissions leakage, which hampers countries’ welfare. In order to limit leakage, governments consider supporting domestic trade exposed firms by subsidizing their investments in...

This paper calculates, for the top twenty emitting countries, how much pricing of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is in their own national interests due to domestic co-benefits. On average, nationally efficient prices are substantial, $57.5 per ton of CO2 (for year 2010), reflecting primarily...

This paper first reviews the conceptual case for, and appropriate design of, fiscal policies to address major externalities associated with energy use - global warming, local air pollution, and various side effects (e.g., congestion) from motor vehicles. Techniques for (roughly) estimating the...

This paper discusses techniques for measuring the incidence of carbon taxes across different household income groups and provides some cross-country estimates of these effects for selected advanced countries. The general message of this paper is that distributional concerns should not...

In many regions, renewable energy targets are a primary decarbonization policy. Most of the same jurisdictions also subsidize the manufacturing and/or deployment of renewable energy technologies, some being sufficiently aggressive as to engender WTO disputes. We consider a downstream...