Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (carbon + pollution_reduction_scheme)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting100%

Selected Abstracts

THE WESTERN AUSTRALIAN POWER DILEMMA,

AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC PAPERS, Issue 4 2009
PAUL SIMSHAUSER
From 1984 gas-fired power generation had been gradually increasing its share of the electricity market in Western Australia (WA) starting at 1 per cent and rising to about 50 per cent by 2008. Had it continued on this trajectory, the WA power system would have made great advances in terms of cost and environmental efficiencies given the looming commencement of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme in Australia from 2011. However, more recently the cost of natural gas has increased from $3/GJ to $7/GJ following the sudden collapse of the East Spar gas field in the North West Shelf. In this article, we analyse the impact of the gas price increase and demonstrate that despite being the most environmentally efficient conventional technology, natural gas combined cycle plant has been squeezed out of the market which in turn will increase forward electricity price risks to WA consumers through greater exposure to CO2 pricing in the long run. [source]

New policies create a new politics: issues of institutional design in climate change policy

AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL & RESOURCE ECONOMICS, Issue 2 2010
Henry Ergas
Institutional design focuses on the task of providing accountability and effective monitoring of decision-making by bodies vested with the coercive powers of the state in a context where information is inherently limited, costly to acquire and asymmetrically distributed. This paper focuses on issues of institutional design in the context of climate change policy. It examines proposals advanced in the June 2008 Draft and Final Reports of the Garnaut Climate Change Review (,Garnaut Reports'), and in the Government's July 2008 Green Paper and December 2008 White Paper on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (,Green and White Papers') with respect to how revenues raised by the sale of emissions permits would be used; and second, the proposed governance arrangements for the emissions trading scheme. [source]

The logic of collective action and Australia's climate policy,

AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL & RESOURCE ECONOMICS, Issue 2 2010
John C.V. Pezzey
We analyse the long-term efficiency of the emissions target and of the provisions to reduce carbon leakage in the Australian Government's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, as proposed in March 2009, and the nature and likely cause of changes to these features in the previous year. The target range of 5,15 per cent cuts in national emission entitlements during 2000,2020 was weak, in that on balance it is too low to minimise Australia's long-term mitigation costs. The free allocation of output-linked, tradable emissions permits to emissions-intensive, trade-exposed (EITE) sectors was much higher than proposed earlier, or shown to be needed to deal with carbon leakage. It plausibly means that EITE emissions can rise by 13 per cent during 2010,2020, while non-EITE sectors must cut emissions by 34,51 per cent (or make equivalent permit imports) to meet the national targets proposed, far from a cost-effective outcome. The weak targets and excessive EITE assistance illustrate the efficiency-damaging power of collective action by the ,carbon lobby'. Resisting this requires new national or international institutions to assess lobby claims impartially, and more government publicity about the true economic importance of carbon-intensive sectors. [source]

Understanding the effect of an emissions trading scheme on electricity generator investment and retirement behaviour: the proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme

AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL & RESOURCE ECONOMICS, Issue 2 2010
Neil Ross Lambie
The objective of a greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions trading scheme (ETS) is to reduce emissions by transitioning the economy away from the production and consumption of goods and services that are GHG intensive. A GHG ETS has been a public policy issue in Australia for over a decade. The latest policy initiative on an ETS is the proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS). A substantial share of Australia's total GHG reduction under the CPRS is expected to come from the electricity generation sector. This paper surveys the literature on investment behaviour under an ETS. It specifically focuses on the relationship between the design of an ETS and a generator's decisions to invest in low emissions plant and retire high emissions plant. The proposed CPRS provides the context for presenting key findings along with the implications for the electricity generation sector's transition to lower emissions plant. The literature shows that design features such as the method of allocating permits, the stringency of the emissions cap along with permit price uncertainty, provisions for banking, borrowing and internationally trading permits, and the credibility of emissions caps and policy uncertainty may all significantly impact on the investment and retirement behaviour of generators. [source]

Auctioning greenhouse gas emissions permits in Australia,

AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL & RESOURCE ECONOMICS, Issue 2 2010
Regina Betz
The allocation of permits is an important design aspect of an emissions trading scheme. Traditionally, governments have favoured the free allocation of greenhouse gas permits based on individual historical emissions (,grandfathering') or industry benchmark data. Particularly in the European Union (EU), the free allocation of permits has proven complex and inefficient and the distributional implications are politically difficult to justify; auctioning emissions permits has therefore become more popular. The EU is now moving to auction more than 50 per cent of all permits in 2013, and in the US the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) has begun auctioning more than 90 per cent of total allowances. Another case in point is the Australian proposal for a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS), which provides for auctioning a significant share of total permits. This paper discusses the proposed Australian CPRS's auction design. A major difference to other emissions trading schemes is that the CPRS plans to auction multiple vintages of emissions permits simultaneously. [source]