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With the rise in the carbon price since the beginning of the year, the carbon dividend is once again a hot topic. Hopes are high that an imminent carbon dividend will ensure social equity and create more public support for climate policy. But are these expectations realistic or is this instrument and its effects exaggerated? This article calls for some expectation management when it comes to the carbon dividend, because as important as it is, socially just climate protection is much more than just mitigating rising carbon prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facilitating agro-food green planting and consumption is an effective way to reduce carbon emissions and achieve sustainability in global agriculture. Although many researchers have explored and analyzed this issue, there remains a gap between stakeholders of green agricultural development combined with low-carbon policies and green preferences that have been overlooked. To bridge this gap, a three-party evolutionary game model consisting of farmers, governments, and consumers is developed based on the government's low-carbon policies and stakeholders' green preferences. The six key parameters based on low-carbon policies and green preferences influencing strategic behavior are thoroughly discussed using numerical simulations. The findings reveal the following: (1) Appropriate subsidies policy and relatively high carbon prices are conducive to promoting agro-food green planting. (2) The three parties' green preferences improve people's low-carbon awareness in the market. (3) When the governments' green preference coefficient is less than 1, they will choose positive regulation and enhance farmers' and consumers' green preferences through publicity and education. As farmers' and consumers' green preferences increase to a certain high level, governments choosing negative regulation can also reach an advanced evolutionary stable strategy. The results provide theoretical and practical guidance for the green development of agriculture, help governments formulate scientific low-carbon policies, and provide referential significance for improving the green preference of farmers and consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are enforced by a set of instruments, among which environmental regulations, green innovation, and carbon taxes play a central part. This article aims to investigate the mitigation capacity of the above-mentioned elements using a sample of 15 European countries. This study takes CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) into account to ensure the consistency and accuracy of the findings. Augmented Dickey–Fuller and CIPS unit root tests, Pesaran CD, Bias-corrected scaled LM are employed to check the cross-sectional dependence. The panel effect is tested using error correction-based modeling along with dynamic approaches, while the Granger causality technique employs country-related outcomes. The results show that innovation and environmental policies help in reducing emissions both in the long and the short run. In addition to this, carbon pricing mitigates emissions in the regions although its effect is more country-specific. We find evidence of both unidirectional and bidirectional causality among the variables. However, in a few cases, they are too a country-specific artifact. As a general conclusion, carbon pricing is an efficient short-run tool to achieve SDGs. At the same time, long-run sustainability relies on green innovation and environmental policy stringency in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canadian environmental governance formally began in the 1970s with an ambitious vision critical of the status quo. Until the Justin Trudeau government from 2015, this vision had been largely eroded when compared to the transformative environmental ideas, ambition, and efforts initially put forth. Drawing on elite interviews in Canadian environmental politics and an articulation of the dominant system, we develop and demonstrate a novel explanation for Canada's systematic failure to act more ambitiously on the environment. We argue that this failure is the result of progressive selection of Canadian environmental governance in relation to the dominant system at key selection moments. It is at those moments when the environment is least prioritized and the economy most urgently needs attention that environmental governance suffers the most. The paper concludes by emphasizing how features of the dominant political-economic system not typically thought of as environmental can have systematic environmental impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forecasting carbon prices has important implications for the formulation of environmental and energy policies as well as for the investment and management of workers in related industries. This paper proposes a novel multi-index nonlinear ensemble framework based on carbon price trading data and technical index data, which combines extreme gradient boost (XGBoost), K-means clustering algorithm based on elbow method (KCE), bidirectional long and short-term memory (BiLSTM) and bidirectional gated recurrent units (BiGRU). First, the XGBoost method is used to filter the raw data set to determine the input variables, and they were then divided into groups using the KCE method. Then, the BiLSTM method is used as the predictor for forecasting the sub model. Finally, BiGRU is applied to nonlinear integration. The developed prediction framework is used to predict China's regional carbon price to evaluate its performance. Experimental results show that the prediction performance of the framework in all target carbon markets is better than the benchmark model, and it is an effective tool for carbon market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of environmental taxes and environmental stringent policies in reducing CO2 emissions in a panel of 20 European countries for the period 1995–2012. As mounting global environmental and climate challenges are becoming great cause for concern, environmental stringency policies and environmental taxes are becoming the cornerstones for a sustainable environment. Applying panel cointegration tests, we found a negative and a statistically significant relationship between environment taxes (disaggregated into total, energy and transport taxes) and CO2 emissions on the one hand and also a negative and a statistically significant relationship between environmental policy stringent and CO2 emissions on the other. The robustness of the evidence is also supported by a quantile regression model. The higher the environmental stringency policy, the lower the CO2 emission. Similarly, the higher the revenue from total environmental tax, energy and transport tax, the higher the reductions in CO2 emissions. Both these two policy instruments were effective in reducing CO2 emissions. The positive impact of environmental tax on improving environmental quality should encourage policy makers to increase environmental tax as the current level of environmental tax is believed to be low relative to levels required to achieve climate change objectives and is also low relative to the social cost of carbon and relative to the prices of taxed fuels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines price bubbles in the relatively new carbon emission trading scheme of Beijing carbon market by employing a recently proposed econometric test which can stamp the occurrence and burst of financial bubbles. We find multiple bubbles in Beijing carbon market over the sample period between January 2014 to April 2018, and that the occurrences of carbon price bubbles are closely related to the announcements of environmental policies by the Chinese government. Comparing our results to the EU ETS, we find that the volatility of carbon price in Beijing market is higher than EU, and interestingly, the bubbles in Beijing market occur when the price volatility is relatively low, while in EU market the bubbles correspond to the peaks of volatility. Our empirical results provide insightful policy implications in the context of the actual China's carbon market reform. To achieve effective stabilization of carbon price, policymakers should publicize alert notifications of the price fluctuations, and strengthen the carbon markets supervision and promote its improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of its Green Deal, the European Union has advanced a 'Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism' (CBAM). Reflective of a trend towards greater use of coercive trade measures to advance environmental and other policy objectives, the CBAM would extend carbon pricing to imported goods with the aim of limiting carbon leakage. Theoretical enquiry into this type of policy approach—known as border carbon adjustments (BCAs)—suggests economic and environmental benefits, but typically discounts the role of legal and practical constraints on BCA design and implementation. In this paper, we show why the BCA design commonly featured in past research—basing the adjustment level on default carbon intensities—runs counter to the economic logic of carbon pricing by distorting the incentives for emissions abatement. Requiring producers to demonstrate their actual carbon intensity captures additional economic benefits of carbon pricing and improves the overall legal prospects of a BCA, but adds to its administrative complexity and creates risk of avoidance practices such as 'resource shuffling'. What emerges is a more nuanced understanding of BCAs that highlights the challenges when transitioning from theory to practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments and corporations around the world are increasingly pressured to manage climate‐related business risks and reduce their carbon footprint. Consequently, a growing number of corporations have started implementing internal carbon pricing (ICP) programs, assigning a monetary value to their carbon emissions as a mitigation and adaptation mechanism. This paper explores the motives underlying voluntary ICP adoption and examines whether a firm's exposure to climate‐related risks is a relevant driver of ICP adoption. Using a worldwide sample of firms reporting to the Carbon Disclosure Project between 2016 and 2018, we find that firm‐level climate change exposure is significantly and positively related to the likelihood of ICP adoption. More specifically, the probability of adoption is largely linked to regulatory shocks and opportunity exposure. Moreover, we find that board independence acts as a moderator in the climate change exposure–ICP adoption relation. The findings of this study shed light on the factors contributing to the acceleration in ICP implementation in the context of a coordinated effort between public and private sectors to reduce global emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon taxes or similar pricing instruments could play a crucial role in helping countries decarbonise their economies. No country has a single carbon price that applies to all greenhouse gas emissions. The UK is typical in having adopted a complex patchwork of policies that raise the cost of different polluting activities to different degrees, resulting in implied carbon taxes that vary greatly across sources of emissions. We document and quantify these inconsistencies in the case of the UK, and assess the case for greater uniformity after accounting for considerations of efficiency, distribution, carbon leakage and the use of alternative policy instruments. We argue for greater rationalisation of environmental taxes in the UK and other developed economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economists tend to view a uniform emissions price as the most cost-effective approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This paper scrutinizes the assumptions in general equilibrium which underlie the established view that uniform emissions pricing is optimal, focusing on economies where society values the well-being of future generations more than private actors. When social and private discount rates differ, we show that a uniform carbon price is optimal only under restrictive assumptions about technology homogeneity and intertemporal decision-making. Non-uniform pricing spurs capital accumulation and benefits future generations. Depending on sectoral heterogeneity in the substitutability between capital and energy inputs, we find that optimal carbon prices differ widely across sectors and yield substantial welfare gains relative to uniform pricing. Realizing these welfare gains, however, requires that the regulator has information on the technology heterogeneity across sectors. Differentiated carbon pricing based on imperfect estimates of technology heterogeneity can yield significant welfare losses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate policy needs to set incentives for investors who face imperfect, distorted markets and large uncertainties about the costs and benefits of abatement. These investors decide on uncertain investments according to their expected return and risk (carbon beta). We study carbon pricing and financial incentives in a consumption-based asset pricing model distorted by technology spillovers and time-inconsistency. We find that both distortions reduce the equilibrium asset return and delay investment in abatement. However, their effect on the carbon beta and the risk premium for abatement can be decreasing (when innovation spillovers are not anticipated) or increasing (when climate policy is not credible). We show that the distortions can be overcome by modified carbon pricing by a regulator, or by financial incentives, implemented in our model by a long-term investment fund. The fund pays a subsidy to reduce technology costs or offers financial contracts to boost investment returns to complement the carbon price. The investment fund can thus pave the way for carbon pricing in later periods by preventing a capital misallocation that would be too expensive to correct, thus improving the feasibility of ambitious carbon pricing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the impact of fiscal policy on environmental pollution, employing the vector autoregressive (VAR) model on annual data from 1976 to 2018 in Pakistan. We estimate the effect of total expenditure, total revenue, education expenditures, health expenditures, and other dynamic determinants such as gross domestic product (GDP), private investment, market rate, and crude oil price on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in particular. Further, this study creates impulse response functions to check the fiscal shocks, coordinating with five scenarios of public expenditures, segregated into government revenue, and education and health expenditures. The outcomes indicate that government spending in the public sectors (education and health) had a diminishing effect on CO2 emissions, whereas government revenue that was collected from taxes improved economic growth but at a cost of environmental pollution. In Pakistan, a fiscal policy scenario has been implemented that increases government expenditures to alleviate the effects of CO2 emissions. Therefore, policymakers should provide the right direction for the feasible distribution of resources in every public sector through a powerful structure, which will ultimately reduce the overall level of environmental deficit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Choosing pollution control instrument is an important environmental policy decision. Carbon taxes and subsidies for emissions reductions are two commonly used environmental policies. In practice, the government may be restricted to use only one policy instrument. In this paper, we compare the social welfare effect between policies of a carbon tax and a subsidy. We show that as the marginal environmental damage of the high carbon product increases, the control instrument should change from a subsidy policy to a carbon tax policy. It also turns out that Bertrand competition does not always incur a higher social welfare than Cournot competition when the government intervenes with a pollution control policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The green innovations, environmental policies, and carbon taxes are the tools to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs) in the mitigation process. This study is intended to examine the impact of innovation, carbon pricing (CTAX), environmental policies (EP), and energy consumption (ECON) on PM2.5 and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission for Central-Eastern European countries. The panel effect during 2000–2018 is tested using a dynamic panel data model while the Granger causality approach obtains country-related outcomes. The outcomes reveal that eco-friendly innovations have a more profound effect on carbon mitigation. Environmental policies reduce emissions by 2.7% in the short run and 17.4% in the long run. Similarly, CTAX mitigates GHG emissions by 8.6% in the short-run and PM2.5 by 0.9% and 5.7% in the short and long run. However, urbanization, energy consumption and trade openness are the leading polluters in the region. The main findings remain dominant in the country-specific results and find unidirectional and bidirectional causality evidence among variables. The research concludes that green innovations and strict environmental policy can lead towards achieving sustainable development goals using carbon taxes as a tool on the way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on analyzing the evolution of carbon pricing and energy taxation policies between 2018 and 2021. Topics emphasizing the importance of these policies in accelerating the transition to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions; covers key findings like the increasing coverage of carbon pricing across countries and sectors, the rise in carbon prices and the potential revenue generation from increasing effective carbon prices; and ambitious climate policies.

In Canada, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions continue to remain high despite the federal government's commitment to reduce GHG emissions. Environmental policy across Canadian provinces has largely lacked consistency with some provinces implementing targeted policy such as carbon taxes while others have strongly resisted the federal government's attempts to encourage such policy. This study examines the impact of environmental policy on GHG gas emissions across Canadian provinces with policy uniquely measured by public and business sector spending on environmental protection as well as notable province-specific policies. An extended STIRPAT model is specified with the inclusion of proxies for environmental policy using panel data from Canada's ten provinces from 1995 to 2019. The cointegration and the error correction modelling approaches are employed to estimate the non-stationary panel data. A pooled mean group estimation is applied to provide short run and long run coefficients. The findings indicate that although per capita GDP is the main driver of GHG emissions in Canada, environmental policy has a significant mitigating effect, as shown by the negative association between emissions and private and public sector spending on environmental protection in the long run. Furthermore, provinces with targeted policies, such as Ontario's coal phase-out and British Columbia's carbon tax, experienced significant emissions reductions. The theoretical implication is the successful addition of policy variables to the STIRPAT model, providing the model a new application for future research. [Display omitted] • Assess the impact of environmental protection policies on per capita greenhouse gas emissions in Canada. • Utilize public and private expenditures on environmental protection, along with provincial policies. • Extend the STIRPAT model to incorporate environmental protection policies in an empirical model. • Demonstrate a significant negative relationship between environmental protection policies and GHG emissions. • Offer insights with implications for global environmental sustainability efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The time lag of green technology spillovers affects emissions reduction decisions and environmental policies. In this study, we model two competitive manufacturers sharing a common supplier. We investigate their optimal decisions in cooperative and non-cooperative R&D circumstances, considering the presence or absence of a cap-and-trade policy. Findings indicate that the time lag effect of green technology spillovers slows the carbon reductions without a cap-and-trade policy. However, the time lag effect is only emphasized under low carbon trading prices with a cap-and-trade policy. Excessive time lag decreases emission reductions for non-cooperative spillover free-riders. Intra-cooperative spillovers appear more advantageous for both parties involved in the spillover than non-cooperative spillovers. Manufacturers achieve carbon neutrality only at a limited market scale, and collaborative R&D can expand this market scale threshold. Furthermore, we identify the minimum time lag thresholds for manufacturers and supplier to meet the carbon allowance. Collaboration is more conducive to fulfilling carbon allowance in a low-priced carbon trading market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considerations to decarbonize maritime shipping by implementing the Emissions Trading System (ETS) are underway at the International Maritime Organization (IMO). This study seeks to investigate the impact of ETS on short-term fleet deployment decisions of liner shipping companies. Considering pragmatic scenarios of demand uncertainty and transshipment, we extend state-of-the-art maritime operational planning under climate policies and propose a fleet planning model accounting for carbon emissions to evaluate the decision-making nuances of a liner company. Numerical experiments are conducted to analyze ETS implementations with varying policy design parameters for their efficacy in mitigating emissions and potential impact on stakeholders. The findings indicate that, for liner shipping which is cross-regional by nature, regional ETS implementations are inadequate due to carbon leakage; the efficacy of open ETS policies is limited, particularly when carbon prices are low; strict carbon purchase caps integrated with robust carbon price-setting mechanisms are critical to designing an effective ETS. • Regional Emissions Trading Systems are limited in their decarbonizing efficacy. • Low carbon prices complemented with strict carbon caps induce reduction in CO 2. • Preference for strict carbon caps or high carbon prices depend on policy timeline. • Transition to LNG is not ideal at current free carbon allowance allocation levels. • Incentive schemes must be devised to encourage transition to intermediate fuels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) moves atmospheric carbon to geological or land-based sinks. In a first-best setting, the optimal use of CDR is achieved by a removal subsidy that equals the optimal carbon tax and marginal damages. We derive second-best policy rules for CDR subsidies and carbon taxes when no global carbon price exists but a national government implements a unilateral climate policy. We find that the optimal carbon tax differs from an optimal CDR subsidy because of carbon leakage and a balance of resource trade effect. First, the optimal removal subsidy tends to be larger than the carbon tax because of lower supply-side leakage on fossil resource markets. Second, net carbon exporters exacerbate this wedge to increase producer surplus of their carbon resource producers, implying even larger removal subsidies. Third, net carbon importers may set their removal subsidy even below their carbon tax when marginal environmental damages are small, to appropriate producer surplus from carbon exporters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Earth Day 2022 marks high government and in-house investment in tax policymaking globally to meet climate change targets. In addition, wider environmental tax policy through alternative carbon pricing is boosting climate protections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After its establishment in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has rapidly developed, and it has brought together countries from all over the world. The BRI countries of Eurasia cover nearly 40% of the land surface and, in particular, the energy dimension of BRI is a dynamic and impacting reality: countries connected by the BRI account for 54% of world primary energy supply. In this global framework, it is of uttermost importance to evaluate the behaviour of BRI countries towards energy sustainability issues, by providing an overview of the current situation and assessing its evolution over time. In our analysis, we develop a quantitative framework for sustainability analysis, based on four dimensions: society, economy, energy and environment. The different dimensions are integrated in an overall sustainability index, evaluated through Multi Criteria Decision Analysis and in particular PROMETHEE II. We consider the most impacting (in terms of energy) BRI countries and we implement a comparative analysis of their sustainability providing a ranking and tracking their time evolution. Furthermore, we analyse the current practises of carbon pricing (carbon tax or Emission Trading System) along BRI, when implemented, as these mechanisms can contribute in reducing emissions and improving sustainability, also resulting in a benefit for the economy and society. For this aim, we use the proposed quantitative framework for assessing their effects on BRI sustainability. • BRI countries cover more than 50% of World GDP, energy consumption and CO 2 emissions. • The sustainability of countries is assessed with a multi-dimensional approach (MCDA). • Carbon pricing can enhance economic, social, energy and environmental sustainability. • Europe has the highest sustainability level for its environmental and social policies. • Kazakhstan, China and Europe improve in sustainability also thanks to carbon pricing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current EU energy and climate policy targets a significant reduction of carbon dioxide emissions in the forthcoming years. Carbon pricing, embedded in the EU emissions trading system, aims at achieving emission reductions in a more evenly spread way and at the lowest overall cost for society, compared with other environmental policy tools, such as coal or electricity taxes, or incentives such as subsidies on renewables. Still, the implementation of the decarbonization policy depends on several technical parameters such as the type, size and connectivity of the energy system as well as economic restrictions that occur. Within this paper, an optimization tool will be presented, focusing on cleaner energy production and on the control and reduction of environmental impact regarding energy storage solutions. Various types of batteries are examined and evaluated towards this direction. Emphasis is given to setting new criteria for the decision-making process, considering the size of battery storage and the selection of the battery type based on the environmental impact assessment parameter. The objective function of the system is formulated so as to evaluate, monitor and finally minimize environmental emissions, focusing mainly on carbon emissions. Optimization is carried out based on mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP). Two of the main battery types compared are lead–acid and lithium-ion; both of them result in results worth mentioning regarding the replacement impact (seven times during system lifetime for lead–acid) and the total environmental impact comparison (lithium-ion may reach a 60% reduction compared to lead–acid). Case studies are presented based on representative scenarios solved, which underline the importance of choosing the appropriate scope for each case and demonstrate the potential of the tool developed, as well as the possibilities for its further improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]