The first detailed description and analysis of the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme.

A leading economist develops a supply-side approach to fighting climate change that encourages resource owners to leave more of their fossil carbon underground. The Earth is getting warmer. Yet, as Hans-Werner Sinn points out in this provocative book, the dominant policy approach—which aims to curb consumption of fossil energy—has been ineffective. Despite policy makers' efforts to promote alternative energy, impose emission controls on cars, and enforce tough energy-efficiency standards for buildings, the relentlessly rising curve of CO2 output does not show the slightest downward turn. Some proposed solutions are downright harmful: cultivating crops to make biofuels not only contributes to global warming but also uses resources that should be devoted to feeding the world's hungry. In The Green Paradox, Sinn proposes a new, more pragmatic approach based not on regulating the demand for fossil fuels but on controlling the supply. The owners of carbon resources, Sinn explains, are pre-empting future regulation by accelerating the production of fossil energy while they can. This is the “Green Paradox”: expected future reduction in carbon consumption has the effect of accelerating climate change. Sinn suggests a supply-side solution: inducing the owners of carbon resources to leave more of their wealth underground. He proposes the swift introduction of a “Super-Kyoto” system—gathering all consumer countries into a cartel by means of a worldwide, coordinated cap-and-trade system supported by the levying of source taxes on capital income—to spoil the resource owners' appetite for financial assets. Only if we can shift our focus from local demand to worldwide supply policies for reducing carbon emissions, Sinn argues, will we have a chance of staving off climate disaster.

Emissions trading schemes figure prominently among policy instruments used to tackle the problem of climate change, and the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS), begun in 2005, is the largest cap-and-trade market so far established. In the EU ETS, firms regulated by the scheme are provided with emissions allowances (each a one-time right to emit one ton of greenhouse gases) and can sell their unused allowances to firms that have higher rates of emissions. In this volume, leading economists offer empirical and theoretical perspectives on the early phases of the EU ETS implementation. The contributors discuss the features of the EU ETS market; and regulatory uncertainty stemming from rule changes; the political economy context of the trading scheme, including allowance allocation and the influence of lobbying on abatement decisions; the coexistence of such overlapping instruments for climate policy as pricing and taxation; the relationship between spot and futures markets for allowances, and firms' responses to various features of the EU ETS, including fluctuating allowance prices, free allocation, and links to the Kyoto process. They show that, although the basic theory behind emissions permit markets is straightforward, design features, market structure, and interactions with other policy instruments can influence the efficiency of the scheme.--

Every decision about energy involves its price and cost. The price of gasoline and the cost of buying from foreign producers; the price of nuclear and hydroelectricity and the costs to our ecosystems; the price of electricity from coal-fired plants and the cost to the atmosphere. Giving life to inventions, lifestyle changes, geopolitical shifts, and things in-between, energy economics is of high interest to Academia, Corporations and Governments. For economists, energy economics is one of three subdisciplines which, taken together, compose an economic approach to the exploitation and preservation of natural resources: energy economics, which focuses on energy-related subjects such as renewable energy, hydropower, nuclear power, and the political economy of energy resource economics, which covers subjects in land and water use, such as mining, fisheries, agriculture, and forests environmental economics, which takes a broader view of natural resources through economic concepts such as risk, valuation, regulation, and distribution Although the three are closely related, they are not often presented as an integrated whole. This Encyclopedia has done just that by unifying these fields into a high-quality and unique overview. The only reference work that codifies the relationships among the three subdisciplines: energy economics, resource economics and environmental economics. Understanding these relationships just became simpler! Nobel Prize Winning Editor-in-Chief (joint recipient 2007 Peace Prize), Jason Shogren, has demonstrated excellent team work again, by coordinating and steering his Editorial Board to produce a cohesive work that guides the user seamlessly through the diverse topics This work contains in equal parts information from and about business, academic, and government perspectives and is intended to serve as a tool for unifying and systematizing research and analysis in business, universities, and government

Written by leading scholars of EU climate law from the University of Groningen, chapters address the relevant directives and regulations, examining their implementation and impact on current policy and academic debate. The textbook introduces the main climate mitigation targets and instruments of the EU, analysing all available legal instruments to mitigate climate change, ranging from greenhouse gas emissions trading to the use of renewable energy sources and energy efficiency mechanisms. In addition, the book provides an analysis of some overarching issues, such as the impact of climate law on energy network regulation, multi-level governance and protection of human rights.

Implementing the Circular Economy for Sustainable Development presents the concept of the circular economy with the goal of understanding its present status and how to better implement it, particularly through environmental policies. It first tackles the definition of a circular economy in the context of sustainability and the differences in defining the concept across disciplines, including its fallibilities and practical examples. It then goes on to discuss the implementation of a circular economy, including the increasing variety of technological, mechanical, and chemical procedures to contend with and the need for stakeholder support in addition to improved business models. The second half of the book, therefore, presents tools, approaches, and practical examples of how to shape environmental policy to successfully implement a circular economy. It analyzes deficiencies of current regulations and lays the groundwork for the design of integrated environmental policies for a circular economy. Authored by an expert in environmental economics with decades of experience, Implementing the Circular Economy for Sustainable Development is a timely, practical guide for sustainability researchers and policymakers alike to move more efficiently toward a circular economy and sustainable development. - Presents a clear view of the critical components, features, and issues of a circular economy - Discusses a variety of practical examples from current policies in the context of a circular economy to better understand the challenges associated with its implementation - Analyzes strengths and weaknesses of current environmental policies and their interactions with innovations in engineering and science

The promise of harnessing market forces to combat climate change has been unsettled by low carbon prices, financial losses, and ongoing controversies in global carbon markets. And yet governments around the world remain committed to market-based solutions to bring down greenhouse gas emissions. This book discusses what went wrong with the marketisation of climate change and what this means for the future of action on climate change. The book explores the co-production of capitalism and climate change by developing new understandings of relationships between the appropriation, commodification and capitalisation of nature. The book reveals contradictions in carbon markets for addressing climate change as a socio-ecological, economic and political crisis, and points towards more targeted and democratic policies to combat climate change. This book will appeal to students, researchers, policy makers and campaigners who are interested in climate change and climate policy, and the political economy of capitalism and the environment.