{"word_count": 1230, "character_count": 8639}
Economic Implications of EU Mitigation Policies: Domestic and International Effects / Francesco Bosello, Marinella Davide &#38; Isabella Alloisio. Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, April 2016, 30 p. (Nota di lavoro ;  34.2016) http://ageconsearch.umn.edu//handle/234938The EU has a consolidated climate and energy regulation: it played a pioneering role by adopting a wide range of climate change policies and establishing the first regional Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS). These policies, however, raise several concerns regarding both their environmental effectiveness and their potentially negative effect on the economy, especially in terms of growth and competitiveness. The paper reviews the European experience in order to understand if these concerns are supported by quantitative evidence. It thus focuses on key economic indicators, such as costs, competitiveness and carbon leakage as assessed by quantitative ex-ante and ex-post analyses. A dedicated section, extends the investigation to the potential extra-EU spillover of the EU mitigation policy with a particular attention to developing countries. The objective of the paper is to highlight both the limits and the opportunities of the EU regulatory framework in order to offer policy insights to emerging and developing countries that are on the way to implement climate change measures. Overall, the European experience shows that the worries about the costs and competitiveness losses induced by climate regulation are usually overestimated, especially in the long term. In addition, a tightening climate policy regime in the EU might in fact negatively impact developing countries via deteriorated trade relations. Nonetheless it tends to facilitate a resource relocation that if well governed could be beneficial to those countries where the poor are mainly involved in rural activities.Évaluation de la politique de développement de l’usage du vélo pour les transports du quotidien. Commissariat général au développement durable, mai 2016, 4 p. (Le point sur - N°231) http://www.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/Evaluation-de-la-politique-de.htmlLes politiques publiques en faveur de l’usage du vélo ont dopé la pratique du vélo pour les déplacements du quotidien en zone urbaine. Leur bilan socioéconomique est positif. Le principal avantage de ces politiques pour la société réside dans l’amélioration de la santé qui résulte de la pratique du vélo. Le vélo peut ainsi être un atout au sein d’une politique de déplacements urbains, en particulier s’il complète l’offre de transport en commun notamment dans les situations où ce dernier n’est pas pertinent. Les politiques « vélo » n’ont toutefois pas détourné massivement les automobilistes de l’usage de la voiture et le partage de la voirie reste un enjeu. Plus globalement, ces éléments plaident en faveur d’une prise en compte coordonnée des différents modes de transport au sein d’une politique globale de transport.Can technology unlock unburnable carbon? / Sara Budinis, Samuel Krevor, Niall Mac Dowell, Nigel Brandon and Adam Hawkes. Imperial London College ; Sustainable Gas Institute, May 2016, 87 p. (white paper 2) http://www.sustainablegasinstitute.org/technology-unlock-unburnable-carbon/To stay within the 2°C carbon budget, a very significant reduction in fossil fuel consumption is required. If we are to meet our carbon budget the majority of global fossil fuel reserves cannot be combusted: the unburnable carbon. The role of technologies such as Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) may be critical in enabling a greater quantity of fossil fuel to be combusted within a low-carbon framework. However, the potential for CCS to alleviate the carbon constraint is still controversial and uncertain, with a number of studies reaching different conclusions. This extensive review paper will assess the current state of knowledge regarding the ‘unburnable carbon’ issue, and attempt to provide clarity by quantitatively defining the potential role of CCS in unlocking the unburnable carbon over the next 85 years.Operationalizing the Paris Agreement Article 6 through the Joint Crediting Mechanism (JCM) - Key Issues for Linking Market Mechanisms and the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) / Aryanie Amellina, Kazuhisa Koakutsu,  Alexis R. Rocamora and Chisa Umemiya. Institute for GLobal ENvironmental Strategies, May 2016, 67 p. (discussion paper) http://pub.iges.or.jp/modules/envirolib/view.php?docid=6634This report aims to inform the current progress and lessons from the Joint Crediting Mechanism (JCM) and how they will contribute to the efforts in climate mitigation, especially for the Post-2020 to achieve the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in the context of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. Upon the analysis of IGES researchers, this report offer findings from the JCM as inputs for the JCM partner countries, Parties, and international negotiators for the further development of the cooperative approaches as market mechanism options to support Parties towards achieving their NDCs.The incentives to North-South transfer of climate-mitigation technologies with trade in polluting goods / M. Glachant, J. Ing, and J.P. Nicolai. CER-ETH – Center of Economic Research at ETH Zurich, April 2016, 30 p. (Working Paper 16/242) http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2758545The need to transfer climate mitigation technologies towards the developing world has been acknowledged since the beginning of climate negotiations. Little progress has however been made as shown by Article 10 of the Paris Agreement. One reason is that these technologies could become vital assets to compete on global markets. This paper presents a partial equilibrium model with two regions, the North and the South, and imperfect competition in the international polluting goods market to analyze the North’s incentives to accept technology transfer. Results crucially depend on the existence of environmental cooperation. When both northern and southern governments set emission quotas non-cooperatively, inducing fewer global emissions is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for the North to accept the transfer. In contrast, when governments set quotas cooperatively, the North never accepts the transfer because it only leads to a partial relocation of pollutant goods production to the South. We derive the implications for the global regulation of climate change.High and Dry: Climate Change, Water, and the Economy / Richard Damania, coord., with Morgan Bazilian, Stephane Dahan, Stephane Hallegatte, IrinaKlytchnikova, Scott Moore, Lia Nitake, Diego Rodriguez, Jason Russ, and William Young. Washington : World Bank, May 2016, 69 p. http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/water/publication/high-and-dry-climate-change-water-and-the-economyThis new World Bank report finds that water scarcity, exacerbated by climate change, could hinder economic growth, spur migration, and spark conflict. However, most countries can neutralize the adverse impacts of water scarcity by taking action to allocate and use water resources more efficiently.Which Social Cost of Carbon? A Theoretical Perspective / Matthew J. Kotchen. NBER Working Paper No. 22246, May 2016, 30 p. http://environment.yale.edu/kotchen/wpapers/whichscc.pdfThis paper develops a theoretical foundation for the social cost of carbon (SCC). The model highlights the source of debate over whether countries should use the global or domestic SCC for regulatory impact analysis. I identify conditions under which a country's decision to internalize the global SCC, as currently practiced in the United States, is individually rational. Nevertheless, I show how obtaining international consensus on a particular value will be more challenging than often appreciated. I introduce the notion of "strategic SCC" to reflect each country's preference for a globally internalized shadow value on emissions conditional on a true value of the global SCC and a distribution of the domestic SCCs among countries. While all countries have a strategic SCC greater than their domestic SCC, a country's strategic SCC can be greater than or less than the global SCC. How these preferences translate into agreement depends on institutional arrangements for collective decision-making, for which I provide empirical evidence based on various decision rules. A central contribution of the paper is demonstration of the need for more research on the theoretical underpinnings of the SCC for policy analysis, because establishing and using the SCC among sovereign countries is not simply an application of estimating and internalizing an externality.