China’s Carbon Emission Trading Pilot Policy and China’s Export Technical Sophistication: Based on DID Analysis

This paper takes China’s carbon emission trading pilot policy as a quasi-natural experiment, and adopts a difference-in-difference approach and data from 30 provinces in China from 2008 to 2016 to empirically study the influence of this policy on China’s export technical sophistication. The empirical analysis revealed that the policy can generate a Porter effect and progressively promote China’s export technical sophistication by reinforcing carbon productivity. By analyzing the regional heterogeneity and influence channels, the policy is found to work better in the central-western region than in the eastern region. The reason for this finding is that the policy has brought innovation offset effects to the central-western region and increased carbon productivity, but the policy has not improved carbon productivity in the eastern region. By studying the effect of three measures of policy implementation on export technical sophistication, we found that restricting carbon emission quotas distributed to participating enterprises is necessary. In addition, we found that the financial punishment method for non-performance is advantageous to the enhancement of export technical sophistication. These research conclusions can provide directions and policy recommendations for upgrading the emissions trading market, as well as a learning case and some experience for countries that have not yet established carbon trading markets.

EXPLORING FAIR AND AMBITIOUS MITIGATION CONTRIBUTIONS OF ASIAN ECONOMIES FOR THE GLOBAL WARMING LIMIT UNDER THE PARIS AGREEMENT

Focusing on the mitigation responsibilities and efforts, this paper provides a unified estimation of allowable emission quotas for a number of Asian economies to limit the global temperature rise well below 2°C based on a range of effort-sharing approaches. The study also explores the inconsistency between their planned emission pathways under the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and the allowable emissions to achieve the 2°C target. The results show that most of the Asian developing economies would be in favor of the Equal-Per-Capita and Grandfather criteria, for which they would obtain more allowable emissions quota. However, even with the most favorable criterion, official mitigation pledges represented by NDCs are far less enough for these developing Asian economies such as China, India, Vietnam, Thailand and Pakistan, as their emission pathways under NDCs significantly exceed the ideal pathways under all effort-sharing approaches. In contrast, most of the Asian developed economies have already planned reductions of annual CO2 emissions under NDCs, in line with their ideal pathways under the most favorable effort-sharing approach. However, their reductions of emissions require deep strengthening of deployment in low-carbon, zero-carbon and negative-carbon techniques, given the current growing trend of emissions for these economies.

ON THE COASE THEOREM AS A THEORETICAL BASIS FOR THE KYOTO AND PARIS PROTOCOLS

Purpose of the study: a critical examination of the so-called Coase theorem, which is largely the theoretical basis of the idea of trading in emission quotas for greenhouse gas emissions. Since the research is theoretical, research methods: critical analysis of texts written by researchers who adhere to the economic mainstream and theoretical construction. In our opinion, Coase's theorem is essentially reduced to indicating that two conditions are implicitly assumed in the proof of the optimality of the ideal market model: 1) the absence of transaction costs; 2) fully defined property rights to all resources, in any way involved in the transactions in question. The problem is that these two conditions in a situation of environmental problems are completely unrealistic. Therefore, the question of optimal environmental and economic regulation cannot be considered closed. Moreover, it is impossible to present this problem as already solved when writing textbooks for students and graduate students. Those who study must be aware of the real complexity of the problem of unwanted externalities destroying the Earth's biosphere. Only in this case, having become managers and politicians, they will be able to stop negative processes in the biosphere and implement the declarations adopted in Rio de Janeiro, Kyoto and Paris in the common interests of all people living on Earth.

Optimal allocation of CO2 emission quotas at the city level in Bohai Rim Economic Circle based on multi-objective decision approach

As the most developed city circle in northern China, allocating CO2 emission quotas at the Bohai Rim Economic Circle (BREC) city level is essential for developing specific abatement policies. Thus, with reflecting multi-principles (fairness, efficiency, sustainability, and feasibility), this paper formulates the CO2 emission quotas allocation among cities in BREC in 2030 based on the multi-objective decision approach. We first propose three allocation schemes based on the principles of fairness, efficiency, and sustainability, which are conducted by entropy method, zero-sum gains data envelopment (ZSG-DEA) model, and CO2 sequestration share method, respectively. Then, the CO2 allocation satisfaction is defined and used to measure the feasibility principle which is integrated as the objective function of the multi-objective decision model together with three allocation schemes to obtain the optimal allocation results. The results show that cities with large energy consumption and less CO2 sequestration capacity, such as Tianjin, Handan, and Tangshan, experience a decrease in the emission quota shares from 2017 to 2030, indicating that these cities would undertake large emissions reduction obligations. Conversely, there is an increase in the shares of CO2 emission quotas when it comes to Beijing, Chengde, and Dalian, whose GDP, population, and CO2 sequestration capacity are relatively large. Sensitivity analysis shows that Beijing, Zibo, and Jinan are more sensitive to minimum satisfaction changes, and the total satisfaction experiences an increase first and declines thereafter. Based on the results above, cities with large pressure to reduce CO2 emissions should not only promote the economic development, but also improve the capacity of CO2 sequestration by enhancing environmental protection to realize emission reduction targets.

Determination of background concentrations of tropospheric ozone in natural and anthropogenically changed conditions using the phase portraits approach

Н основе анализа суточной и месячной динамики получены фоновые значения, которые могут впоследствии использоваться для управления качеством атмосферы в рамках квотирования выбросов. Полученные оценки верифицировались с использованием официальных методических указаний. Показано, что методики дают близки значения фоновых концентрация для более длительных периодов наблюдений. Tropospheric ozone is one of the most active and toxic pollutants in the atmosphere. The dynamics of its concentrations is determined not only by the characteristics of emissions of precursor substances, but also by the complex of meteorological conditions. Atmospheric quality control requires the regulation of emissions based on the consideration of background concentrations and acceptable hygiene standards. The proposed article presents approaches to the estimation of background concentrations using the analysis of phase portraits based on continuous observations of the concentrations of ozone, its precursor substances, as well as a number of meteorological parameters. The dynamic phase portraits for the conditions of Moscow (Southern Administrative District) and the background territory (Krasnye polyany) are analyzed. Based on the analysis of daily and monthly dynamics, background values are obtained, which can later be used to control the quality of the atmosphere within the framework of emission quotas arrangement. The obtained estimates were verified using official methodological guidelines. It is shown that the methods give similar values of background concentrations for longer periods of observations (month and more).