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The Great Tōhoku-Earthquake and the following nuclear meltdown in Fukushima called the world's attention to Japans' energy and climate policy. Japan is one of the biggest emitters of greenhouses gases in the world and is still facing problems of reaching its Kyoto target by domestic reductions. Emissions trading has been used in Japanese climate policy since 2005. However, major emission reductions have not been achieved and a functioning market does not exist. Hence, using an advanced Public Choice approach, we ask for the political reasons for the failure of ambitious carbon markets in Japan and how the earthquake has influenced the political chances of emissions trading. Also, we evaluate Public Choice's arguments and environmental policy making. We show that in Japan, even after some positive promising developments, chances for an ambitious carbon market are still very low. We also show that a Public Choice that takes exogenous conditions into account delivers important insights into climate policy decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many countries have begun to look increasingly toward the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) as one of the key tools to increase the cost effectiveness of fulfilling their compliance requirements with the Kyoto Protocol. It is believed, from a theoretical point of view, that linking emissions trading schemes to the Kyoto Protocol's flexible mechanisms can lead to a decrease in carbon prices and so a reduction of the overall compliance costs. This study provides an analysis of the relationship between the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) and the CDM. The study considers the dynamic interactions between European allowance (EUA) prices and certified emission reduction (CER) prices, and uses time-series econometric techniques to test for the existence of long-term links and causal relations between the prices. Furthermore, the generalized impulse response analysis has been used to investigate temporal interactions among the variables. The results show that CER prices do not have a statistically significant effect on EUA prices; rather, it is the EUA prices that have driven CER prices during the period investigated. The constraint on the availability of CERs emanating from supplementarity and additionality criteria, as stipulated by the Kyoto Protocol, is one of the major factors that can be hypothesized to account for this finding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uncertainty analysis facilitates identification of the most important categories affecting greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory uncertainty and helps in prioritisation of the efforts needed for development of the inventory. This paper presents an uncertainty analysis of GHG emissions of all Kyoto sectors and gases for Finland consolidated with estimates of emissions/removals from LULUCF categories. In Finland, net GHG emissions in 2003 were around 69 Tg (±15 Tg) CO2 equivalents. The uncertainties in forest carbon sink estimates in 2003 were larger than in most other emission categories, but of the same order of magnitude as in carbon stock change estimates in other land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) categories, and in N2O emissions from agricultural soils. Uncertainties in sink estimates of 1990 were lower, due to better availability of data. Results of this study indicate that inclusion of the forest carbon sink to GHG inventories reported to the UNFCCC increases uncertainties in net emissions notably. However, the decrease in precision is accompanied by an increase in the accuracy of the overall net GHG emissions due to improved completeness of the inventory. The results of this study can be utilised when planning future GHG mitigation protocols and emission trading schemes and when analysing environmental benefits of climate conventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]