The globalization of the carbon market: Welfare and competitiveness effects of linking emissions trading schemes

In the light of the prevailing goal to keep global temperature increase below 2° and recent challenges to reach a global climate agreement in the near term, linking emissions trading schemes has emerged as a prominent complementing policy option. To this end, we explicitly assess (1) the macroeconomic welfare impacts and (2) the trade-based competitiveness effects of linking the European Union (EU) Emissions Trading Scheme in the year 2020. A stylized partial market analysis suggests that, independently of regional cost characteristics, the integration of emissions trading schemes (ETS) yields economic welfare gains for all participating regions. A computable general equilibrium analysis confirms these findings at the macroeconomic level: The economic efficiency losses from emissions regulation are diminished for both EU Member States and non-EU regions by linking ETS. However, the quantitative analysis suggests opposite trade-based incentives for linking up: while EU Member States improve their terms of trade by integrating with emerging ETS, non-EU linking candidates face competitiveness losses by linking. We conclude that, for non-EU regions, the attractiveness of linking ETS is a matter of priorities for economic welfare or international competitiveness. If these priorities are hierarchized in favor of welfare, the globalization of the carbon market could become a promising policy option complementing the efforts to reach a global climate agreement in 2015.