气候变化领域集成服务门户(CCPortal): The European Union Emissions Trading System reduced CO2 emissions despite low prices

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DOI	10.1073/pnas.1918128117
	The European Union Emissions Trading System reduced CO2 emissions despite low prices
	Bayer P.; Aklin M.
发表日期	2020
ISSN	0027-8424
起始页码	8804
结束页码	8812
卷号	117 期号:16
英文摘要	International carbon markets are an appealing and increasingly popular tool to regulate carbon emissions. By putting a price on carbon, carbon markets reshape incentives faced by firms and reduce the value of emissions. How effective are carbon markets? Observers have tended to infer their effectiveness from market prices. The general belief is that a carbon market needs a high price in order to reduce emissions. As a result, many observers remain skeptical of initiatives such as the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), whose price remained low (compared to the social cost of carbon). In this paper, we assess whether the EU ETS reduced CO2 emissions despite low prices. We motivate our study by documenting that a carbon market can be effective if it is a credible institution that can plausibly become more stringent in the future. In such a case, firms might cut emissions even though market prices are low. In fact, low prices can be a signal that the demand for carbon permits weakens. Thus, low prices are compatible with successful carbon markets. To assess whether the EU ETS reduced carbon emissions even as permits were cheap, we estimate counterfactual carbon emissions using an original sectoral emissions dataset. We find that the EU ETS saved about 1.2 billion tons of CO2 between 2008 and 2016 (3.8%) relative to a world without carbon markets, or almost half of what EU governments promised to reduce under their Kyoto Protocol commitments. Emission reductions in sectors covered under the EU ETS were higher. © 2020 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
英文关键词	Carbon markets; EU ETS; Policy evaluation; Synthetic control
语种	英语
scopus关键词	accuracy; Article; carbon footprint; European Union; government; greenhouse gas; market; policy; priority journal
来源期刊	Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://gcip.llas.ac.cn/handle/2XKMVOVA/160974
作者单位	Bayer, P., School of Government and Public Policy, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, G1 1QX, United Kingdom; Aklin, M., Department of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, United States
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Bayer P.,Aklin M.. The European Union Emissions Trading System reduced CO2 emissions despite low prices[J],2020,117(16).
APA	Bayer P.,&Aklin M..(2020).The European Union Emissions Trading System reduced CO2 emissions despite low prices.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America,117(16).
MLA	Bayer P.,et al."The European Union Emissions Trading System reduced CO2 emissions despite low prices".Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 117.16(2020).