Climate Change Policy

by Dieter Helm (Editor)

Overview

The threat posed by climate change has not yet been matched by international agreements and economic policies that can deliver sharp reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions. Although the Kyoto Protocol has now been ratified by Russia and hence come into legal effect, the USA, China, and India are all outside its emissions caps. Few European countries are on course to meet their own national targets, and even if fully implemented, it is widely acknowledged that the Kyoto Protocol would make little difference to the carbon concentrations in the atmosphere. In consequence, there is a search for a post-Kyoto framework, new institutions, and new economic policies to spread the costs and meet them in an economically efficient way. Carbon taxes and emissions trading are, in particular, being established in a number of developing countries. This volume provides an accessible overview of the economics of climate change, the policy options, and the scope for making significant carbon reductions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780191535871
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	05/05/2005
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Dieter Helm is an economist specialising in utilities, infrastructure, regulation and the environment, and concentrates on the energy, water and transport sectors in the UK and Europe. He is currently Fellow in Economics, New College, Oxford and holds a number of advisory board appointments, including the Prime Minister's Council for Science and Technology, the DEFRA Economic Academic Panel (Chair), the DTI Sustainable Energy Panel Advisory Board and the Ministeral Task Force on Sustainable Development.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction, Dieter Helm
2. Climate change policy: a survey, Dieter Helm
3. Uncertainty and climate change policy, Alistair Ulph
The Social Cost of Carbon
4. The social cost of carbon, David Pearce
5. Climate change policy, Robert Mendelsohn
6. Climate change costs, Richard Tol
Tradable Permits and Carbon Taxes
7. The tradable permits approach to protecting the commons, Tom Tietenberg
8. Carbon trading in the policy mix, Stephen Sorrell and Jos Sijm
9. Fiscal interactions and the case for carbon taxes over grandfathered carbon permits, Ian Perry
Interventions and Command and Control
10. Renewables, technical progress and innovation, Michael Grubb
11. Energy efficiency: the evidence, Stephen DeCanio
Kyoto and After
12. Will Kyoto work?, Christoph Böhringer
13. Alternatives to Kyoto, David Victor
14. After Kyoto: what to do next, Scott Barrett
Institutional Design
15. Credible carbon taxes, Dieter Helm, Cameron Hepburn, and Richard Mash
16. The IPCC: its role and influence, Philippe Sands
17. Whither climate-change policy?, Dieter Helm
18. Integrated assessment models, Chris Hope