Advancing the climate regime through linking domestic emission trading systems?

More and more countries are incorporating the instrument of emissions trading into their national climate policies. This emerging mosaic of emissions trading schemes (ETS) raises the question of whether they should be linked with each other. From an economic point of view, linking of domestic schemes is supposed to increase the economic efficiency of carbon markets. In addition, linking is also expected by some to yield substantial political benefits in terms of the evolution of the UNFCCC/Kyoto regime. However, these optimistic prospects are based on a best-case scenario where all major countries establish environmentally effective emissions trading systems and then link them with each other. Real-life politics might develop rather differently. This paper therefore examines to what extent the current status of emissions trading in industrialised countries provides a basis for reinforcing and moving forward the international climate regime through linking domestic ETS. After comparing emerging emissions trading schemes from an institutional perspective, it emerges that not only emissions trading is at a very early stage in most countries, in addition the emerging systems are probably going to be designed very differently from the EU ETS. While for some design features such as the coverage design differences do not matter, there are some areas where the plans in many non-EU countries look crucially different from the EU system. The outlook for a linked international ETS is therefore currently still very uncertain. Given this state of affairs, the EU should pro-actively engage with the non-EU countries to try to harmonise their developing national emissions trading schemes with the EU ETS, widely disseminate the lessons it has learned from the EU ETS, strongly make the case for environmental integrity and at the same time make clear that systems that want to link to the EU ETS will need to meet certain quality criteria.

内蒙古草原生态环境治理的国际合作思路

内蒙古草原面积巨大,占全国草原总面积的1/3,其草原生态环境不仅与国家生态安全紧密相连,而且对周边国家的气候、环境也会产生重大影响。本文从国际法视角出发,根据国际合作原则,依据《京都议定书》清洁能源机制,提出了内蒙古草原生态治理的国际合作思路。一要依托联合国及联合国环境规划署,开展更为广泛的环保合作项目;二要依托国际社会各种环境保护组织和环境合作机构,在《联合国气候框架公约》和《京都议定书》等国际法框架内,全面开展环境外交,寻求国际社会的多方合作;三要依托内蒙古绿色食品贸易,与环境大国展开国际合作;四要依托内蒙古绿色能源基地的建设,寻求国际合作,希望本文能对政府部门制定草原生态治理规划时有所启迪和帮助。     

后京都时代AFOLU机制政策选择问题初探

AFoLu机制将农业、林业和其他土地利用整合在一起,将被纳入后京都时代国际气候变化制度中并扮演关键角色。我国需选择基于AFOLU活动的正确的政策工具,充分认识自身的政策基础,在政策选择研究基础上做出最优政策选择,从而在后京都时代既适应和减缓全球气候变化,又有利于我国绿色经济发展。     

Sustainable development in the Clean Development Mechanism: the role of Designated National Authority in China and India

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) emerged under the Kyoto Protocol to facilitate collaboration between developed and developing countries in order to mitigate greenhouse gases. The CDM allows developed countries to receive credits towards meeting their obligatory targets by investing in emission reduction projects in developing countries. The countries are required to set up a Designated National Authority (DNA) to approve the CDM projects. This paper examines the role of the DNA in ensuring sustainable development, using the empirical case of China and India. Three aspects of the DNA's role are examined: the institutional structure, the policy context and the CDM project market. All three aspects highlight the important role of the DNA in meeting the countries' sustainable development priorities.     

Governance, institutions and the environment-income relationship: a cross-country study

This paper examines the environment-income relationship in the context of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), and explores the possible role that factors like governance, political institutions, socioeconomic conditions, and education play in influencing this relationship. The results suggest that the EKC exists for carbon dioxide emissions for cross-country data over the period 1984–2002. However, there is nothing automatic about this relationship; policies designed to protect the environment may be responsible for this phenomenon. Two other significant findings are: one, countries with better quality of governance, stronger political institutions, better socioeconomic conditions and greater investment in education have lower emissions; and two, only around 15% of the countries in the dataset have reached income levels high enough to be associated with an unambiguous decline in emissions. The implications of these results are discussed within the context of the international environmental policy arena and the Kyoto Protocol. One of the main objectives of this paper is to bridge the gap between studies conducted on the EKC and developments in the international environmental policy arena. As a final note this paper emphasizes that one needs to connect the body of knowledge on the EKC hypothesis to the international environmental policy arena, despite the apparent difficulty of doing so. One hopes that future studies will further build on this line of thought.

布什政府温室气体减排政策评析

美国作为世界政治经济大国和世界第一大温室气体排放国家，其温室气体减排政策备受关注。布什政府上台后不久宣布拒绝接受《京都议定书》，并于2002年2月提出“全球气候变化计划”。布什政府实际上在以各种借口推托美国应该承担的温室气体减排国际责任，这将对以UNFCCC为基础的全球气候合作产生消极影响，并对全球气候政策提出挑战。     

Transaction costs and the clean development mechanism

The emissions trading provisions of the Kyoto Protocol and its clean development mechanism (CDM) are designed to permit greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions at the lowest cost globally. However, to ensure climate integrity, these reductions must pass through vigilant approval, monitoring and evaluation procedures that create additional transaction costs unrelated to the physical process of eliminating GHGs. Moreover, the CDM's additionality criterion creates constraints that magnify the influence of these transaction costs on project viability. If these costs are extreme, they could undermine the success of the CDM, and possibly of the Kyoto Protocol itself. This article describes the trading provisions of the treaty, creates a working definition of transaction costs, and discusses their effects. It then analyzes the process of creating a CDM project to identify the sources of transaction costs, illustrated by an example of a fuel substitution project in Ghana. The conditions for project profitability are analyzed and compared with recent GHG emission credit prices in Europe. The specific Ghanaian results are not generalizable to all CDM projects, but the model does suggest a template that can be used to analyze the effects of project and transaction costs in other contexts.     

The Kyoto protocol: Empirical evidence of a hidden success

How effective was the Kyoto protocol? International Environmental Agreements (IEA) have been on the rise over the past four decades; however, thus far their effectiveness is controversial. In view of the conflicting results found in the related literature, this paper addresses its effectiveness by utilizing for the first time the generalized synthetic control method (GSCM) to compare the emissions of the industrialized countries with a “No- Kyoto” counterfactual scenario that represents the expected emissions in the absence of the protocol. This method facilitates a robust comparison between treated and control countries as done by Almer and Winkler (2017) and account for the multiple treated units as done by Grunewald and Martinez-Zarzoso (2016), so as to capture the collective nature of the protocol. Results show that the protocol was successful in reducing the emissions of the ratifying countries approximately by 7% below the emissions expected under a “No-Kyoto” scenario, confirming the importance of accounting for the collective nature of the agreement.     

Contribution of different sectors to developed countries’ fulfillment of GHG emission reduction targets under the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol

Greenhouse gas (GHG) data submitted in April 2014 on land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF), energy, industrial processes, solvents and other product use, agriculture, and waste for 37 developed countries was analyzed to estimate the relative contributions of different sectors to GHG emission reductions. This GHG data from the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol included 35 parties to Annex B of the Kyoto Protocol, the United States and Canada. Results show that the contribution of each sector was, in order: energy (36.9%), industrial processes (12.4%), agriculture (9.9%), LULUCF (7.7%), waste (3.4%), and solvents and other product use (0.1%). The average proportion of base year emissions reduced in each sector by countries in Annex B was, in order: energy (7.4%), agriculture (2.7%), LULUCF (1.9%), industrial processes (1.2%), waste (0.5%), and solvents and other product use (0.1%). Overall, the energy sector contributed the highest GHG emission reductions, while the agriculture and LULUCF sectors also made contributions. Most countries achieved limited absolute GHG reductions from their chosen LULUCF activities, but the relative contribution of GHG emission reductions from LULUCF was significant but small. This suggests that, unless there are substantial changes to accounting rules, future emission reductions will mainly result from mitigation actions targeting fossil fuel consumption, while the agriculture and LULUCF sectors will continue to play auxiliary roles.     

Analyzing the effectiveness of international environmental policies: The case of the Kyoto Protocol

We study the effectiveness of emission targets under the Kyoto Protocol with respect to reducing CO₂ emissions. Using country-level and US state-level panel data and employing the synthetic control method, we find very little evidence for an emission reduction effect for the major emitters among the Annex B countries with binding emission targets. More generally, we also show that evaluating the effectiveness of international environmental policies at the country level comes with a number of empirical challenges that may invalidate findings based on more traditional panel data approaches.