scholarly journals Unintended possible consequences of fuel input taxes for individual investments in greenhouse gas mitigation technologies and the resulting emissions

Author(s):  
Heinz E. Klingelhöfer

Background: South Africa is planning to introduce a carbon tax as a Pigouvian measure for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, one of the tax bases designed as a fuel input tax. In this form, it is supposed to incentivise users to reduce and/or substitute fossil fuels, leading to a reduction of CO2 emissions.Aim: This article examines how such a carbon tax regime may affect the individual willingness to invest in greenhouse gas mitigation technologies.Setting: Mathematical derivation, using methods of linear programming, duality theory and sensitivity analysis.Methods: By employing a two-step evaluation approach, it allows to identify the factors determining the maximum price an individual investor would pay for such an investment, given the conditions of imperfect markets.Results: This price ceiling depends on the (corrected) net present values of the payments and on the interdependencies arising from changes in the optimal investment and production programmes. Although the well-established results of environmental economics usually can be confirmed for a single investment, increasing carbon taxes may entail sometimes contradictory and unexpected consequences for individual investments in greenhouse gas mitigation technologies and the resulting emissions. Under certain circumstances, they may discourage such investments and, when still undertaken, even lead to higher emissions. However, these results can be interpreted in an economically comprehensible manner.Conclusion: Under the usually given conditions of imperfect markets, the impact of a carbon tax regime on individual investment decisions to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions is not as straight forward as under the usually assumed, but unrealistically simplifying perfect market conditions. To avoid undesired and discouraging effects, policy makers cannot make solitary decisions, but have to take interdependencies on the addressee´s side into account. The individual investor´s price ceiling for such an investment in imperfect markets can be interpreted as a sum of (partially corrected) net present values, which themselves are a generalisation of the net present values known from perfect markets

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (16) ◽  
pp. 4395
Author(s):  
Andualem Telaye Mengistu ◽  
Pablo Benitez ◽  
Seneshaw Tamru ◽  
Haileselassie Medhin ◽  
Michael Toman

This study uses a Computable General Equilibrium model to analyze policy scenarios for a carbon tax on greenhouse gas emissions from petroleum fuels and kerosene in Ethiopia. The carbon tax starts at $5 per ton of carbon dioxide in 2018 and rises to $30 per ton in 2030; these rates are translated into taxes on the different energy types covered, depending on their carbon contents. Different scenarios examine the impacts with revenue recycling through a uniform sales tax reduction, reduction of labor income tax, reduction of business income tax, direct transfer back to households, and use by the government to reduce debt. Because petroleum fuels and kerosene are a relatively small part of the Ethiopian economy, the carbon tax has small impacts on overall economic activity and greenhouse gas emissions. In proportional terms, however, the impact on greenhouse gas emissions from these energy sources is notable, depending on the recycling scenario. The assumed carbon tax trajectory also can raise significant revenue—up to $800 million per year by 2030. The impacts on the poor through increased cost of living are not that large, since the share of the poor in total use of the taxed energy types is small. In terms of induced income effects through employment changes, urban households tend to experience more impacts than rural households, but the results also depend on the household skill level and the revenue recycling scenario.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (18) ◽  
pp. 7593
Author(s):  
Anthony Biglan ◽  
Andrew C. Bonner ◽  
Magnus Johansson ◽  
Jessica L. Ghai ◽  
Mark J. Van Ryzin ◽  
...  

This paper reviews research on community efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We conducted a systematic search of the relevant literature, and supplemented our findings with an analysis of review papers previously published on the topic. The results indicate that there have been no peer-reviewed experimental evaluations of community-wide interventions to reduce greenhouse gases involving electricity, refrigeration, or food. The lack of findings limits the conclusions which can be made about the efficacy of these efforts. As a result, we are not accumulating effective interventions, and some communities may be implementing strategies that are not effective. We advocate for the funding of experimental evaluations of multi-sector community interventions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Such interventions would attempt to engage every sector of the community in identifying and implementing policies and practices to reduce emissions. Comprehensive multi-sector interventions are likely to have synergistic effects, such that the total impact is greater than the sum of the impact of the individual components. We describe the value of interrupted time-series designs as an alternative to randomized trials, because these designs confer particular advantages for the evaluation of strategies in entire communities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 354-365
Author(s):  
M. M. Balashov

The European Commission is currently preparing to implement a new form of carbon regulation a cross-border carbon tax. As conceived by the authors, such a decision will force exporters of goods with a significant amount of greenhouse gas emissions during production to improve the environmental friendliness of production and, as a result, to reduce their carbon footprint. In addition, the carbon tax will create a competitive advantage for foreign companies with low greenhouse gas emissions. Such a policy of the European Union can seriously affect the economy of the Russian Federation and Russian companies that are export-oriented. Today, all over the world, more and more importance is attached to environmentally neutral technologies and industries. To keep up with the global trend, as well as to maintain the level of competitiveness, the Russian economy needs to adapt. The speed and efficiency of adaptation directly depend on system solutions both at the state level (development of the necessary regulatory legal acts and standards for reporting and disclosure of information) and at the level of enterprises most sensitive to carbon regulation (audit of the carbon footprint, modernization of production facilities, responsible approach to neutralization carbon footprint). The purpose of this work is to study the impact of carbon regulation mechanisms on the development of industry in the Russian Federation, in accordance with it, the following tasks are formed: to describe the mechanisms of carbon regulation, to assess the economic impact on the domestic industry, to consider world practices of confirming the carbon footprint, to identify threats to implementation of the national program “International cooperation and export” from the introduction of carbon regulation.


Robotics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 33
Author(s):  
Florian Stuhlenmiller ◽  
Steffi Weyand ◽  
Jens Jungblut ◽  
Liselotte Schebek ◽  
Debora Clever ◽  
...  

Modern industry benefits from the automation capabilities and flexibility of robots. Consequently, the performance depends on the individual task, robot and trajectory, while application periods of several years lead to a significant impact of the use phase on the resource efficiency. In this work, simulation models predicting a robot’s energy consumption are extended by an estimation of the reliability, enabling the consideration of maintenance to enhance the assessment of the application’s life cycle costs. Furthermore, a life cycle assessment yields the greenhouse gas emissions for the individual application. Potential benefits of the combination of motion simulation and cost analysis are highlighted by the application to an exemplary system. For the selected application, the consumed energy has a distinct impact on greenhouse gas emissions, while acquisition costs govern life cycle costs. Low cycle times result in reduced costs per workpiece, however, for short cycle times and higher payloads, the probability of required spare parts distinctly increases for two critical robotic joints. Hence, the analysis of energy consumption and reliability, in combination with maintenance, life cycle costing and life cycle assessment, can provide additional information to improve the resource efficiency.


2008 ◽  
Vol 2008 (6) ◽  
pp. 783-792 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Scanlan ◽  
Holly Elmendorf ◽  
Hari Santha ◽  
James Rowan

2006 ◽  
Vol 19 (13) ◽  
pp. 3055-3069 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter A. Stott ◽  
John F. B. Mitchell ◽  
Myles R. Allen ◽  
Thomas L. Delworth ◽  
Jonathan M. Gregory ◽  
...  

Abstract This paper investigates the impact of aerosol forcing uncertainty on the robustness of estimates of the twentieth-century warming attributable to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Attribution analyses on three coupled climate models with very different sensitivities and aerosol forcing are carried out. The Third Hadley Centre Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere GCM (HadCM3), Parallel Climate Model (PCM), and GFDL R30 models all provide good simulations of twentieth-century global mean temperature changes when they include both anthropogenic and natural forcings. Such good agreement could result from a fortuitous cancellation of errors, for example, by balancing too much (or too little) greenhouse warming by too much (or too little) aerosol cooling. Despite a very large uncertainty for estimates of the possible range of sulfate aerosol forcing obtained from measurement campaigns, results show that the spatial and temporal nature of observed twentieth-century temperature change constrains the component of past warming attributable to anthropogenic greenhouse gases to be significantly greater (at the 5% level) than the observed warming over the twentieth century. The cooling effects of aerosols are detected in all three models. Both spatial and temporal aspects of observed temperature change are responsible for constraining the relative roles of greenhouse warming and sulfate cooling over the twentieth century. This is because there are distinctive temporal structures in differential warming rates between the hemispheres, between land and ocean, and between mid- and low latitudes. As a result, consistent estimates of warming attributable to greenhouse gas emissions are obtained from all three models, and predictions are relatively robust to the use of more or less sensitive models. The transient climate response following a 1% yr−1 increase in CO2 is estimated to lie between 2.2 and 4 K century−1 (5–95 percentiles).


2022 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher M. Wade ◽  
Justin S. Baker ◽  
Jason P. H. Jones ◽  
Kemen G. Austin ◽  
Yongxia Cai ◽  
...  

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