A levy on the Clean Development Mechanism and other carbon trading schemes is a potential source of finance for climate change adaptation. An adaptation levy of 2 percent is currently imposed on all CDM transactions which could raise around $500 million between now and 2012. This paper analyses...

Policy interest in the cost of adaptation is growing, but compared to the mitigation literature adaptation cost research is still in its infancy. Global adaptation cost estimates from more recent studies range from around $25 billion a year to well over $100 billion by 2015-2030. The wide range...

There is an increasing demand for putting a shadow price on the environment to guide public policy and incentivise private behaviour. In practice, setting that price can be extremely difficult as uncertainties abound. There is often uncertainty not just about individual parameters but about the...

Carbon markets are central to the global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This paper introduces a new carbon market model that aims to simulate the development of the global carbon market over the next 10-20 years. The model is based on detailed regional and sectoral marginal abatement...

The introduction of mandatory controls and a trading scheme covering approximately half of all carbon dioxide emissions across Europe has triggered a debate about the impact of emissions trading on the competitiveness of European industry. Economic theory suggests that, in many sectors,...

In times of ever increasing financial constraints on public weather services it is of growing importance to communicate the value of their forecasts and products. While many diagnostic tools exist to evaluate forecast systems, intuitive diagnostics for communicating the skill of probabilistic...

This paper reviewed current discounting practice in the OECD. It found a wide variance in guidance across countries (which may or may not be justifiable by different economic conditions), and significant differences in guidance within countries. Furthermore, even when discounting guidance is...

Ensemble prediction systems aim to account for uncertainties of initial conditions and model error. Ensemble forecasting is sometimes viewed as a method of obtaining (objective) probabilistic forecasts. How is one to judge the quality of an ensemble at forecasting a system? The probability that...

Opportunistic behaviour due to incomplete contract enforcement is a risk in many economic transactions such as forest carbon sequestration contracts. In this paper, an enforcement-proof incentive contract is developed in which a buyer demands a guaranteed delivery of a good or service given a...

Putting a price on carbon is critical for climate change policy. Increasingly, policymakers combine multiple policy tools to achieve this, for example by complementing cap-and-trade schemes with a carbon tax, or with a feed-in tariff. Often, the motivation for doing so is to limit undesirable...