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...

The direct sale of emissions allowances by auction is an emerging characteristic of cap-and-trade programs. This study is motivated by the observation that all of the major implementations of cap-and-trade regulations for the control of air pollution have started with a generous allocation of...

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...

The initial distribution of emissions allowances is usually thought to be independent of the emissions outcome, but free allocation can affect the efficiency and fairness of allowance trading. Inefficiency may result from thin allowance markets, poor price discovery, and regulatory or...

Auctions are increasingly being used to allocate emissions allowances (“permits”) for cap and trade and common-pool resource management programs. These auctions create thick markets that can provide important information about changes in current market conditions. This paper reports a...

The purpose of this study was to design an auction mechanism for use by the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) for selling emission allowances. We conducted a series of experiments to investigate the performance of a number of auction types considered to be likely candidates for use in a...

The introduction of a price on CO<Subscript>2</Subscript> is expected to be more efficient than prescriptive regulation. It also instantiates substantial economic value. Initially, programs allocated this value to incumbent firms (grandfathering), but the growing movement toward auctioning or emissions fees makes...</subscript>