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The assessment of greenhouse gases emitted to and removed from the atmosphere is high on the international political and scientific agendas. Growing international concern and cooperation regarding the climate change problem have increased the need for policy-oriented solutions to the issue of uncertainty in, and related to, inventories of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The approaches to addressing uncertainty discussed in this Special Issue reflect attempts to improve national inventories, not only for their own sake but also from a wider, systems analytical perspective—a perspective that seeks to strengthen the usefulness of national inventories under a compliance and/or global monitoring and reporting framework. These approaches demonstrate the benefits of including inventory uncertainty in policy analyses. The authors of the contributed papers show that considering uncertainty helps avoid situations that can, for example, create a false sense of certainty or lead to invalid views of subsystems. This may eventually prevent related errors from showing up in analyses. However, considering uncertainty does not come for free. Proper treatment of uncertainty is costly and demanding because it forces us to make the step from “simple to complex” and only then to discuss potential simplifications. Finally, comprehensive treatment of uncertainty does not offer policymakers quick and easy solutions. The authors of the papers in this Special Issue do, however, agree that uncertainty analysis must be a key component of national GHG inventory analysis. Uncertainty analysis helps to provide a greater understanding and better science helps us to reduce and deal with uncertainty. By recognizing the importance of identifying and quantifying uncertainties, great strides can be made in ongoing discussions regarding GHG inventories and accounting for climate change. The 17 papers in this Special Issue deal with many aspects of analyzing and dealing with uncertainty in emissions estimates.

In response to growing consensus among scientists and governments to act fast to avoid dangerous impacts of climate change, many industries have started to prepare for a carbon-constrained world. However, this response is far from being uniform. Often action is predicated on economic, technological, organizational and institutional drivers and barriers, which vary between countries and across industrial sectors. In order to understand the effectiveness of industry response, it is therefore important to analyse corporate response across different sectors in different countries. Focusing on the nine most energy-intensive and greenhouse gas (GHG) emitting industrial sectors, this paper compares corporate responses to climate change in Pakistan and the UK. By analysing the divergence of strategies adopted by industries across different sectors in two countries, the paper examines the key factors influencing corporate adoption and implementation of GHG reduction and energy-efficiency strategies in Pakistan and the UK. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

This paper compares and clarifies differences revealed in proposals from different regions on a future multilateral climate regime, after the year 2012. More than 100 articles in English were collected, categorized according to the lead author’s region, and then reviewed to identify the general tendencies of each region. Proposals on emission allocation rules were the most popular in Europe, while rules related to international emissions trading dominated proposals from the United States. Few articles came from other Annex I countries, but these generally provided only the most basic aspects of a future regime. Meanwhile, concerns for equity and the relevance of any new regime in terms of sustainable development were clear in proposals from non-Annex I countries. Differences among regions were considered to be a reflection of current circumstances in each author’s region. The capacity and culture of authors in some regions were considered to be other possible factors in differences. The paper concludes that recognition of regional background that formulate respective preferences and concerns regarding a future climate regime will be important to help reach a multilateral agreement in future official negotiations.

The main objective of this paper is to examine the evolution of European Union (EU) climate strategy, scrutinising in particular developments in EU's views on the so-called flexibility or Kyoto mechanisms. In brief, the paper argues that there has been a gradual change in EU's views, from the role of a sceptic in the run-up to Kyoto towards becoming more of a frontrunner on emissions trading in recent years. The need to 'save Kyoto' and the protracted development of EU climate policy are highlighted as two of the most important drivers behind this process of change. This paper also discusses some of the lessons learned from international negotiations and the development of EU climate policy. Finally, and drawing upon the lessons learned, the paper explores key future challenges for the further development of EU climate strategy.

As a key element in its climate change strategy, the UK government launched a greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme in April 2002. The UK ETS is the first-ever national, industry-wide carbon trading scheme in the world and will eventually form part of the global carbon market which is expected to be established under the Kyoto Protocol. This paper assesses the effectiveness of the scheme both in facilitating emission reductions and also as driver towards moving from a fossil-fuel-based economy towards a low-carbon economy. By looking at early developments in the UK ETS and examining the emission profiles of FTSE 100 companies, the paper reveals some serious weaknesses and highlights that the environmental credibility of the market is hampered by low standards of emissions monitoring and reporting. The authors argue that a fundamental review of the UK scheme is required, to improve its environmental credibility and to bring it in line with the planned EU-wide scheme.

Policy Research Working Paper ; 4033 Présenté au 3. World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economists ; 2006/07/03-07 ; Kyoto (JPN); Among policy instruments to control future greenhouse gases emissions, well-calibrated general intensity targets are known to lead to lower uncertainty on the amount of abatement than emissions quotas (Jotzo and Pezzey, 2004). This paper tests whether this result holds in a broader framework, and whether it applies to other policy-relevant variables as well. To do so, we provide a general representation of the uncertainty on future GDP, future business-as-usual emissions and future abatement costs, and derive the variances of four variables, namely (effective) emissions, abatement effort, marginal abatement costs and total abatement costs over GDP under a quota, a linear (LIT) and a general intensity target (GIT)—where for the latter the emissions ceiling is a power-law function of GDP. We confirm that GITs can always yield a lower variance than a quota for marginal costs, but find that this is not true for total costs over GDP. Using economic and emissions scenarios and forecast errors of past projections, we estimate ranges of values for our model parameters. We find that quotas dominate LITs over most of this range, that calibrating GITs over this wide range is difficult, and that GITs would yield only modest reductions in uncertainty relative to quotas.

The New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (NZ ETS) broke new ground in ETS design. Drawing from analysis of core policy documentation, this paper examines the rationale, outcomes, and outlook for th...

The Kyoto Protocol is the first international environmental agreement that sets legally binding greenhouse gas emissions targets and timetables for Annex I countries. It incorporates emissions trading and two project-based flexibility mechanisms, namely joint implementation and the clean development mechanism to help Annex I countries to meet their Kyoto targets at a lower overall cost. This paper aims to estimate the size of the potential market for all three flexibility mechanisms under the Kyoto Protocol over the first commitment period 2008-2012, both on the demand side and on the supply side. Taking the year 2010 as representative of the first commitment period and based on the national communications from 35 Annex I countries, the paper first estimates the potential demand in the greenhouse gas offset market. We show that for most of the OECD countries excluding the EU, their Kyoto targets are stringent than they appear at first glance. Then, the paper addresses supplementarity constraints and provides a quantitative assessment of the implications of the EU proposal for concrete ceilings on the use of flexibility mechanisms for the division of abatement actions at home and abroad. Our results suggest that although the aggregate allowed acquisitions for the Annex I countries as a whole in 2010 from all three flexibility mechanisms under the two alternatives are well below 50% of the difference between the projected baseline emissions and the target in 2010, the proposed restrictions to each Annex I country vary, in some case even substantially. Finally, using the 12-region’s marginal abatement cost-based model, the paper estimates the contributions of three flexibility mechanisms to meet the total emissions reductions required of Annex I countries under the four trading scenarios, respectively. Our results clearly demonstrate that the fewer the restrictions on trading the gains from trading are greater. The gains are unevenly distributed, however, with Annex I countries that have the highest autarkic marginal abatement costs tending to benefit the most. With respect to non-Annex I countries, their net gains are highest when trading in hot air is not allowed. Because of a great deal of low-cost abatement opportunities available in the energy sectors of China and India and their sheer sizes of population, we found that the two countries account for about three-quarters of the total non-Annex I countries’ exported permits to the Annex I regions.

Climate variability has been observed over a long period of time and is considered a natural process occurring on Earth. Climate change, however, is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere in addition to natural phenomena. Global climate governance requires a broad area of measures and policies to be implemented worldwide to tackle this problem. The following paper gives a brief overview of the existing climate mitigation instruments and policies. It delivers an analysis of the three main groups of policy instruments – mandatory regulation, economic instruments and voluntary approach. The study argues that no instrument can be chosen as a single mechanism to solve environmental problems. It also points out several conditions and circumstances that need to be taken into consideration to obtain a successful implementation of those policy instruments. The paper critically investigates traditional instruments. It discusses issues such as design, political and social acceptability, provision of incentives for improvements in environmental performance and (cost) effectiveness. Finally, the study concludes that the process of policy implementation should take into account the problems and obstacles that may stand in the way of the planned solutions and without a deep analysis of which the (cost) effectiveness of a policy will never be achieved.

In an attempt to protect the earth in the era of climate change, effort has been put forth to restrict carbon emission globally. Although Korea is not one of the countries being obliged to reduce carbon emission specified in Kyoto Protocol, it has voluntarily implemented the emission trading scheme. In the midst of current situation ‘low carbon’, ‘green growth’ and paradigm are receiving global attention from the recent issue of climate change. This will provide a direction on understanding the emission trading of Korea in comparison with other developed countries, while determining the future direction of Korea’s emission trading. However, studies and data on domestic and international emission trading are currently lacking. Therefore for the purpose of understanding the nature of emission trading of Korea and corresponding guidelines, this paper analyzed the characteristics of domestic and international emission trading through principal component analysis and cluster analysis. The findings will be useful in identifying emission trading of other countries similar to the position of Korea. The significance of this study was to use the findings to provide reliable reference information for improving emission trading.

With a population of 4.5 million, New Zealand's contribution to total global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is relatively low. On a per capita basis, however, New Zealand's GHG emissions are the fifth highest among Annex 1 countries, due in part to the relative size of the pastoral agricultural sector. Biophysical impacts of climate change will largely extend current climate trends, with high regional variability. A review of climate change literature identifies three key risks for New Zealand relating to economic connectedness, perceptions of ‘clean, green’ New Zealand, and social equity. Since 2008, New Zealand's main mitigation response has been the emissions trading scheme (NZ ETS), yet the ETS is currently providing little by way of meaningful incentives for behavior change and low-carbon investment. Moreover, since declining to enter the second commitment period of the Kyoto protocol, engagement with global climate governance has been modest, and recently released emissions reduction targets have raised questions over New Zealand's responsibilities as a global citizen. In this paper, adaptive responses are considered in connection to key industries (agriculture, tourism) and communities (coastal, Māori), and examine the devolved structure of adaptation. Mainstream media reporting of climate change in New Zealand appears to be aligned with the scientific consensus position, yet it continues to frame climate change as a political issue, prioritizing political over scientific voices. Public perceptions of climate change provide evidence of continued uncertainty relating to human attribution, and depict climate change as a spatially distanced risk which could affect support for government action on climate change. WIREs Clim Change 2015, 6:559–583. doi: 10.1002/wcc.355 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

In wake of the repeated failures of the multilateral process to deal with climate change in terms of restricting global average temperature to 2 degrees Celsius as compared to the pre-industrial levels, emission trading is emerging as one of the preferred policy tools. Its implementation in the context of a developing country like India, which considers climate change as the creation of the industrialised countries, is fraught with a number of serious constraints. But the emergence of huge carbon markets in the past five years in India is an encouraging sign on the way to emissions trading. This paper tries to identify the legal constraints and opportunities that are likely to engage seriously the designers of emissions trading in India.

The United States is currently on pace to fall well short of its promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26–28%, relative to 2005, by 2025, under the UN Framework and Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Paris Agreement, even if President Trump did not eliminate most Obama-era climate regulations. However, there still exists interest in reducing emissions, especially from some members of Congress, and there are a number of federal policy options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions if Congress (or a new administration in 2021) so chooses. In this paper, we show that a federal economy-wide carbon tax on US carbon dioxide emissions could significantly contribute to the reductions necessary to fulfill the US international climate commitments. Using a detailed multi-sector computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, we predict the carbon price paths that would be necessary to meet the 28% emissions target and show the economic costs of such carbon-pricing policies. We then demonstrate how both the price paths and associated costs change if action is delayed.

The uncontrolled climate change is one of the most significant threats to the sustainable development of the human societies. Since the establishment of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, several models have been proposed to limit the emission of Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) by trying to enforce abiding regulations to the participating countries. One of the successful implementations of such models is the Emission Trading System in the European Union, which economically incentivizes the carbon-heavy industries to cut their emissions on a gradual basis. In this paper, we have modeled the involving factors in such a carbon market through the system dynamics methodology, proposing a system of differential equations between the main factors such as the Emission Allowances supply, demand and their price. The coefficients are derived based on a Least Absolute Deviation (LAD) analysis on the historic available data. We analyze the effect of an implementable policy and show that by consistently increasing the coverage of the emissions from industries, the EU commission can reach to its predefined set values of the allowable volumes of emissions by 2050.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) sets an overall framework for intergovernmental efforts to tackle the challenge posed by climate change. Besides the “flexibility mechanisms” defined by the Kyoto Protocol to lower the overall costs of achieving their emissions targets, The Voluntary Green House Gases (GHG) reduction projects can have a lead role in GHG reduction in “non Emissions Trading System ETS sectors”. Nowadays, the voluntary market is characterised by critical aspects, such as fragmentation, lack of accounting, monitoring and validation rules that have led to the low spread of voluntary emission reduction projects developed by local authorities in the European Union despite their high potentiality. The aim of this paper is to test the applicability of voluntary emission reduction projects in the public sector following a homogeneous and consistent pattern. A research has been performed at local level on 143 voluntary emission reduction projects implemented by Public Administrations in Northern and Central Italy in renewable energy, energy efficiency and transport sectors. The applicable standards and methodologies have been checked and the case studies have been analysed though a three-step process: Preliminary additionality assessment; Projects selection; Validation of the selected project. The assessment shows that energy efficiency projects, once overcoming additionality issues, are the most promising for public entities while renewable energy and transport projects resulted to be mainly affected by double counting problems and lack of reliable methodologies.

The European Union has long been at the forefront of fighting the climate change, avowed player in the arena and the pioneer in adopting the Emission Trading Scheme (Kyoto Protocol 2007), setting the example to be followed by the rest of the world (Liljeheden 2015). Recently, the Union played a significant role in hosting and eventually leading the 2015 Paris Climate Conference. The event and the EU Member States' active participation provided for reaching of a historical Paris Agreement on Climate Change aiming at the reduction of global warming - which seems to have moved the world towards the brighter and greener future. Nevertheless, taking into account the EU's troubled record due to surplus allowances and recently due to the evident mismatch between the Agreement and the TTIP negotiations underway, its current status in the climate change game has been unclear and deserves to be reviewed. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to examine whether the EU successfully matches words and deeds in the fight against the climate change and promoting innovation.

The global energy landscape is rapidly changing as a result of economic shifts and technological breakthroughs. There has been an increased focus on climate change through the phenomenon of global warming, which is caused by accumulation of green house gases (GHG) in the atmosphere. Efforts have been underway at the international as well as national level for abatement of GHG emissions through cost-effective and sustainable solutions. The UNFCCC with its mandate of a safer future launched the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, to firm-up ongoing efforts for stabilizing the ecosystems. The Protocol commits its Parties through internationally binding emission reduction commitments. The idea was to create an international unified carbon market, which would render a check on the worldwide emission levels. However, actual experience with the markets has revealed that the dream of a global top-down market is far from being realised. Against this backdrop, this paper attempts to review the evolution of carbon markets, through the mechanism of International Emissions Trading. It also highlights some trends and developments that have characterised these markets over the past few years. Overall, the literature seems to signify the emergence of a decentralised bottom-up design of the market. There is a multitude of regional, national and subnational markets in operation, with EU ETS as the frontrunner. Moreover, these systems are starting to link with one another to facilitate the evolution of an international carbon market, in the wake of an unpromising future outlook for Kyoto credits.

Energy-intensive industrialization and various anthropogenic actions by humans over centuries have resulted in a huge build up of Greenhouse gases triggering consequential ‘Greenhouse effects’ and ‘Global warming’. This, in turn, has caused global climate change with adverse impact on ecology, environment, economy and human health. Among other things, the economic impact of global warming and climate change/aberration has been widely acknowledged to be phenomenal. In past few years, climate change economics has focused on diagnosing the economic underpinnings of climate change and offering positive and normative analyses of policies to confront the problem. While overlapping with other areas of environmental economics, climate change economics has a unique focus because of distinctive features of the climate problem, including the long time scale, the extent and nature of uncertainties, the international scope of the issue, and the uneven distribution of policy benefits and costs across space and time. The ‘Kyoto Protocol’ (1997), ‘Bali Action Plan’ (2007), and of late Copenhagen Accord (2009), have effectively provided, among other things, the institutional mechanisms and broad operational framework for funding such of those initiatives at local, regional and global levels that can limit and progressively reduce greenhouse gas emissions through carefully designed mitigation and adaptation actions. In this paper, an attempt has been made to discuss the various economic and financial implications in climate change impact assessment and thereby help formulation of appropriate strategies, including the mode of transfer of resources and technologies from the developed to the developing economy to respond to the various adverse impacts of climate change, primarily through mitigation and adaptation actions. The emerging business opportunities, borne out of economic responses to climate change management and Emissions trading in the post-Copenhagen scenario, is also briefly discussed.

Many European politicians argue that the EU should set tougher emission targets than what is required by the Kyoto protocol, and moreover, that emission trading with other countries outside EU should be limited so as to keep emission quota prices high. One of the arguments, frequently cited for such a policy, is the need for technological development. However, the literature on climate change and technological innovation does not unambiguously support the need for setting high emission taxes today. In this paper we investigate the relationship between emission taxes and technological change further by modeling innovation activity explicitly. In our model both the amount of R&D and the amount of carbon abatement are decided in a decentralized way by the market as a response to an emission tax. Moreover, we introduce several distinct failures in the market for new innovations, among others, insufficient patent protection and intertemporal knowledge spill-overs. Our findings suggest that governments should under some circumstances set a higher carbon tax today if we have technological change driven by R&D than if we have pure exogenous technological change. Based on numerical simulations these circumstances are (a) positive intertemporal knowledge spillovers and/or (b) weak patent protection.

More and more countries are incorporating the instrument of emissions trading into their national climate policies. This emerging mosaic of emissions trading schemes (ETS) raises the question of whether they should be linked with each other. From an economic point of view, linking of domestic schemes is supposed to increase the economic efficiency of carbon markets. In addition, linking is also expected by some to yield substantial political benefits in terms of the evolution of the UNFCCC/Kyoto regime. However, these optimistic prospects are based on a best-case scenario where all major countries establish environmentally effective emissions trading systems and then link them with each other. Real-life politics might develop rather differently. This paper therefore examines to what extent the current status of emissions trading in industrialised countries provides a basis for reinforcing and moving forward the international climate regime through linking domestic ETS. After comparing emerging emissions trading schemes from an institutional perspective, it emerges that not only emissions trading is at a very early stage in most countries, in addition the emerging systems are probably going to be designed very differently from the EU ETS. While for some design features such as the coverage design differences do not matter, there are some areas where the plans in many non-EU countries look crucially different from the EU system. The outlook for a linked international ETS is therefore currently still very uncertain. Given this state of affairs, the EU should pro-actively engage with the non-EU countries to try to harmonise their developing national emissions trading schemes with the EU ETS, widely disseminate the lessons it has learned from the EU ETS, strongly make the case for environmental integrity and at the same time make clear that systems that want to link to the EU ETS will need to meet certain quality criteria.

This paper considers the effect of international air-pollution agreements ratified since 1970 on carbon dioxide emissions (CO2), the main cause of anthropogenic climate change. The analysis is based on a panel dataset of 150 countries over the period 1970-2008. While the literature generally focuses on one particular agreement, we analyze the effect of the accumulation of agreements using a two-way (country, year) fixed effects regression model. We find that the relationship between the number of ratifications and CO2 emissions is statistically significant and linearly decreasing.

As part of its response to climate change the 1997 Kyoto Protocol envisages a global scheme with national emissions trading schemes (“ETS”) linked to form an international market for carbon. In 2010 the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (“TMG”) established an ETS. This regime has some unique features that differentiate it so raising the question as to whether it could be effectively linked to other regimes. This is a particularly important issue given that the TMG regime is being promoted to other municipal governments as a blueprint for an ETS.The principles called into play in considering whether regimes can be linked are well developed. This paper explores these principles in the context of the TMG regime to identify if any barriers to linkage may exist and, if so, what “fixes” might be available to facilitate linkage.

Rapid reduction of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions is required to mitigate disastrous impacts of climate change. The Kyoto Protocol introduced international emissions trading (IET) to accelerate the reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The IET controls CO2 emissions through the allocation of marketable emission permits to sovereign countries. The costs for acquiring additional permits provide buyers with an incentive to reduce their CO2 emissions. However, permit price has declined to a low level during the first commitment period (CP1). The downward trend in permit price is attributed to deficiencies of the Kyoto Protocol: weak compliance enforcement, the generous allocation of permits to transition economies (hot air), and the withdrawal of the US. These deficiencies created a buyer’s market dominated by price-making buyers. In this paper, I develop a coalitional game of the IET, and demonstrate that permit buyers have dominant bargaining power. In my model, called cooperative emissions trading (CET) game, a buyer purchases permits from sellers only if the buyer forms a coalition with the sellers. Permit price is determined by bargaining among the coalition members. I evaluated the demand-side and supply-side bargaining power (DBP and SBP) using Shapley value, and obtained the following results: (1) Permit price is given by the product of the buyer’s willingness-to-pay and the SBP (= 1 − DBP). (2) The DBP is greater than or equal to the SBP. These results indicate that buyers can suppress permit price to low levels through bargaining. The deficiencies of the Kyoto Protocol enhance the DBP, and contribute to the demand-side dominance in the international permit market.

This paper aims to show how an emissions trading system could work if some participating entities are allocated an “emissions budget” or non-binding target. This will allow them to sell allowances if their actual emissions are less than their budget, but will not obligate them to buy allowances if their emissions exceed their budget. Different rules aiming at ensuring the environmental integrity of such a system are considered. Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change may wish to consider building a regime where developing countries are allocated emissions budgets on some provisions of the Kyoto Protocol and in full respect with the principles of the Convention. In any case such system would be complementary to the Clean Development Mechanism. The potential benefits would be • to provide non-Annex-I (developing) countries with substantial capital inflows, and stimulate their economic growth; • to allow Annex-I (Industrialised) Countries achieving their Kyoto commitments at the lowest possible cost; • and to achieve global participation towards the objective of the Convention while reducing the risk of creating “tropical hot air” by giving some developing countries more allowances than they need under a “business-as-usual” scenario.

Since the adoption of the Climate Convention in 1992 at the latest, formerly communist countries have been following the climate debate despite serious domestic economic and social problems. Since 1990 the region has contributed the most to curbing the problem of climate change, albeit accidentally, through the sharp decline in their emissions in parallel with the decline in their economies. In this paper we review the role played by the economies in transition in the climate negotiations until early 2000, especially in light of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to the Climate Convention. We consider emissions trends and the scope for further emissions reductions. Subsequently, the potential benefits of the “Kyoto Mechanisms”, which include emissions trading, joint implementation, and the Clean Development Mechanism, are discussed. We find that the climate policies in Central and Eastern Europe and in the former Soviet Union are drifting further apart. Activities in Central and Eastern Europe are dominated by the EU accession process, while the countries further east continue to grapple with economic crises.

This paper analyzes the economic impacts on different regions of the world of a global agreement to limit carbon emissions. A multi-sector, multi-region trade model (MS-MRT) is developed that focuses on the international trade aspects of climate change policy. These include the distribution of impacts on economic welfare, international trade and investment across regions, the spillover effects of carbon emission limits in Annex 1 countries on non-Annex 1 countries, carbon leakage, changes in terms of trade and industry output, and the effects of international emissions trading. Our central estimates are presented with a set of sensitivity tests to assess the extent to which our conclusions depend on elasticity and baseline assumptions. A technical appendix presents algebraic details of the model structure and calibration.

The quality of greenhouse gas inventories has been a long-standing issue among the scientific community and its importance has more recently risen on the policy agenda. This is because national inventories are now the basis of legally-binding commitments under the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change. The quality of inventories will also affect the effective implementation of the Kyoto Protocol through its flexible mechanisms, such as emissions trading. In 1997, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) brought together a group of experts to consider approaches for assessing the quality of inventory data. This meeting considered three key issues. First, how do we define inventory quality? Second, what approaches can we use to assure the quality of inventories? Third, given the policy needs of Climate Convention, what are the next steps for quality assurance? There are several approaches for assessing inventory quality. This paper summarises them for carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). Many of these approaches are routinely performed by inventory experts, others are novel.

Küresel ısınma ve küresel ısınmaya neden olan sera etkisi önemli bir çevre problemi haline gelmiştir. Sera gazlarının küresel ısınmaya nasıl etki ettiği, küresel ısınmanın dünyayı nasıl etkileyeceği soruları cevabı aranan bir soru durumundadır. Konu ile ilgili alınan önlemler ve sera gazı emisyonunun azaltılmasında teknolojinin rolü üzerinde çalışmalar yapılmaktadır. Çalışmamızda iklim değişikliğine neden olan faktörler ve insan yaşamındaki görülebilecek değişiklikler incelenmiş, iklim değişikliklerinin dünya üzerindeki etkileri ve bu konu üzerine yapılan çalışmalar araştırılmıştır. İklim değişikliği konusunda dünya ülkeleri uluslararası platformda sera etkisinin azaltılması hususunda çalışmalar yapmışlardır. Bunlardan ilki Birleşmiş Milletler İklim Değişikliği Çerçeve Sözleşmesi diğeri Kyoto Protokolüdür. Bu anlaşmaların yanı sıra iklim değişikliğini önlemede kullanılan mali enstrümanlar ve bir mali enstrüman olarak emisyon ticareti ile emisyon ticareti sisteminin uygulandığı ülkeler incelenmiştir. Türkiye?de Emisyon Ticareti Sistemi?nin uygulanabilirliği üzerinde değerlendirme yapılmıştır.Anahtar Kelimeler: Emisyon Ticareti, İklim Değişikliği, Sera Gazı, Kyoto Protokolü Global warming and the greenhouse effect cause global warming and have become an important environmental problem. In this study has been looked for the greenhouse gases how to impact global warming. Also, the role of technology in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and measures are conducted.The factors that contribute to climate change and changes seen in human life are examined. The effects of climate change on the world investigated in this study.The climate change and the greenhouse effect in reducing studies have been participated in the international arena. The first of these studies is United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the other is Kyoto Protocol. These agreements are examined separately in this paper. Also, the financial instruments are examined what used to prevent climate change. Besides that, emission trading and countries where emissions trading system is applied are examined. Assessment was made on the applicability of the Emissions Trading System in Turkey.Keywords: Emissions Trading, Climate Change, Greenhouse Gas, and Kyoto Protocol 73

Although the prime focus of climate policy had been to reduce fossil fuel consumption and subsequent emission, substantial cuts in carbon dioxide (CO2) emission alone was not enough to abate climate change. It had been initiated during Kyoto Convention in the 1990s and carried forward at Copenhagen Accord, Lima, Conference of Parties (COPs) and the most recent COP 21 at Paris. One of the most important outcomes of Kyoto Protocol had been consensus of signatory nations barring couple of major economies on agreement to initiate Clean Development Mechanisms and Emission Trading. The reason for such protocol was because of high degree of environmental degradation all over reflecting negatively on environmental and human health. The issue of global warming owing to alarming levels of green house gases was again on anvil in the other meetings. The levels of CO2, NOx, methane and others reflected grave ecological and health consequences. To top it all, climate change became one of the major issues of the twenty-first century. Earth's mean global temperature rose by 0.6 ± 0.2°C during the second half of the twentieth century, at a rate of 0.17°C/decade. If the present trend continues, a drastic increase in global temperature is projected by the end of the twenty-first century with rise in sea level and accelerated meltdown of polar ice sheets. The paper attempts to sum up policy framework under United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and other international agreements emphasising the deliberations of COP 21 on climate change.

This paper provides a review of pertinent trading, regulatory and policy issues in the EU-ETS since 2005. We review the first two phases of the scheme and speculate on auctioning related issues in the third phase. Our report documents a number of variables contributing to inefficiencies in Phase I and significant general market improvements in Phase II. This review suggests that the prospects for continued global action on climate change after Durban COP 2011 rests on the continued success of the EU-ETS.

Developing countries reject meaningful emission targets (recent intensity caps are no exception). This prevents the Kyoto Protocol from establishing a global price for greenhouse gas emissions and leaves almost all new emissions unpriced.This paper proposes a new pair of commitments – a commitment to a binding carbon-price target and to a Green Fund financed by a form of carbon pricing. The result is a price mechanism that neither requires developing countries to accept emission caps nor requires industrial countries to accept carbon taxes.We demonstrate that the cost of complying with these commitments can be guaranteed to be inexpensive. The combined cost of a $30/ton price target and the Green Fund is only 23 cents per person per day for the United States and is negative for India. These advantages should greatly increase the chance that developing countries will commit to a substantial carbon price, and this should increase the chance of cap and trade passing the U.S. Senate.

Japan, a relatively energy-efficient country, has been active in combating climate change. Under the Kyoto Protocol, Japan is committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 6% relative to 1990 over the period 2008-12. As of 2007, however, its emissions were up by 9%. Japan has relied primarily on voluntary measures, which are monitored by the government, without binding commitments or price signals on carbon. It is essential to improve the policy framework to achieve its ambitious longer-term target of a 60% to 80% emission reduction by 2050 in a cost-effective manner. Japan should shift from voluntary measures to market-based instruments, notably a mandatory and comprehensive emission trading scheme, supplemented if necessary, by carbon taxes in areas not covered by trading, which minimise abatement costs and promote innovation to reduce emissions. Trading schemes should be linked to those in other countries, while expanding Japan’s use of a well-functioning Clean Development Mechanism. Continued public support for R&D in emission reduction technology, particularly in basic research, is important.

Despite an enormous amount of work done to persuade the world of the dangers of climate change and the need for quick corrective action, there is little progress toward a global compact for managing climate change. In fact, there are some basic differences of perspectives on climate change policies between developed and developing countries which may bedevil future global agreements on climate change for quite some time. Among the reasons for these differences are the issues of historical responsibility for carbon emission by the developed countries, the need for lifestyle changes in both the developed and developing countries, suspicion in the developing countries about the motives of developed countries and too much focus of current discussions on the very long-term and global effects of climate change. This paper presents an approach where the perspectives of the developing and developed countries are sought to be reconciled. A credible global compact for climate change must satisfy five criteria: it must be comprehensive, equitable, realistic, efficient and effective. Based on these criteria, it seems that the target of at least 50% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 is unrealistic. A more realistic target is stabilization of CO2 emissions at present levels until 2050 and a 50% reduction by 2100. With the target of per capita equality in CO2 emissions by 2050 and allowing for developmental needs of the developing countries, this approach leads to a target of 5% annual reduction in carbon intensity of GDP for both the developed and developing countries. In terms of overall CO2 emissions, this leads to a 3% annual decline in developed countries and a 1% annual increase in developing countries. The targets for the developed countries are mandatory in so far as they can be achieved by national action. For developing countries, the targets are conditional on receipt of funding and technology from international sources. The funding issue is crucial for a global agreement and there is no solution in sight on that count. The developed countries seem unwilling to make commitments on massive transfer of resources to developing countries for managing climate change and the latter are unwilling to make any commitments on emissions without such resource transfers. Clearly some innovative ideas are needed, one of which could be the use of seigniorage in global finance for funding the truly global public good of managing climate change.

The litigation faced by the EU ETS is of significance not only for that mechanism - the world's largest carbon market - but also for emerging carbon markets around the world and thus the enterprise of tackling global climate change by way of market mechanisms. This working paper analyses the entire EU ETS docket of the Community Courts (the ECJ and CFI) to date and seeks to categorise those cases. Themes familiar to EC lawyers prevail - especially in relation to questions of standing and admissibility - that in the light of the recently agreed Phase III EU ETS look less like narrow technical rulings than the Courts' constraining commercial and political actors from sundering legal responses to climate change.

There is a consensus among the majority of the world’s scientists that our planet is experiencing man-made climate change, which will bring great social, economic and environmental threats to human being (Europa, 2008). The increase amount of atmospheric CO2 concentration impacts climate changes has become a major concern to the public. Transportation is accounted for 26% of global CO2 emissions and is one of the few industrial sectors where emissions are still growing (Chapman, 2007). In the European Union (EU), the road transport sector is one of the main sources of CO2 emissions. Therefore, reducing CO2 emissions and fuel consumption from road transportation is an important strategy for EU to implement the Kyoto Protocol and to develop a sustainable transport system (Fontaras and Samaras, 2007). This paper explores and discusses the initiation and development of the EU’s policies and strategies against climate change and the share experiences in the EU transport sector to reduce CO2 emission. Basing on the research, it can be concluded that the EU has acted as a front-runner in the battle of combat against climate change.

This paper quantitatively assesses the economic implications of crediting carbon abatement from reduced deforestation for the emissions market in 2020 by linking a numerical equilibrium model of the global carbon market with a dynamic partial equilibrium model of the forestry sector. We find that integrating avoided deforestation in international emissions trading considerably decreases the costs of post-Kyoto climate policy – even when accounting for conventional abatement options of developing countries under the CDM. At the same time, tropical rainforest regions receive substantial net revenues from exporting carbon-offset credits to the industrialized world. Moreover, reduced deforestation can increase environmental effectiveness by enabling industrialized countries to tighten their carbon constraints without increasing mitigation costs. Regarding uncertainties of this future carbon abatement option, we find both forestry transaction costs and deforestation baselines to play an important role for the post-Kyoto carbon market.

This paper quantitatively assesses the economic implications of crediting carbon abatement from reduced deforestation for the emissions market in 2020 by linking a numerical equilibrium model of the global carbon market with a dynamic partial equilibrium model of the forestry sector. We find that integrating avoided deforestation in international emissions trading considerably decreases the costs of post-Kyoto climate policy – even when accounting for conventional abatement options of developing countries under the CDM. At the same time, tropical rainforest regions receive substantial net revenues from exporting carbon-offset credits to the industrialized world. Moreover, reduced deforestation can increase environmental effectiveness by enabling industrialized countries to tighten their carbon constraints without increasing mitigation costs. Regarding uncertainties of this future carbon abatement option, we find both forestry transaction costs and deforestation baselines to play an important role for the post-Kyoto carbon market.

Marginal abatement cost curves (MACCs) are one of the favorite instruments to analyze the impacts of the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol and emissions trading. As shown in this paper one important factor that influences MACCs are energy prices. This leads to the question of how to define MACCs in a general equilibrium context where the overall abatement level world wide influences energy prices and thus national MACCs. We first discuss the mechanisms theoretically and then use the CGE model DART to quantify the effects. The result is, that changes in energy prices resulting from different world wide abatement levels do indeed affect the national MACCs. Also, we compare different possibilities of defining MACCs - of which some turn out to be robust against changes in energy prices while others vary considerably.