Conflicting evidence has been presented on carbon leakage, caused largely due to misconceptions over the term’s meaning. The confusion is worth disentangling because it is obscuring the debate on how to act, argue Misato Sato and Josh Burke. Read more
Carbon pricing should be part of nothing less than a significant and broad package of post-COVID fiscal reforms, say Esin Serin and Josh Burke, as they outline what these reforms should look like. Read more
This paper examines whether the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) has led companies to shift the location of production, thereby creating carbon leakage. Read more
Bob Ward reviews Bjorn Lomborg’s new book, 'False Alarm', finding the misuse of outdated, concocted and misinterpreted numbers on the costs of climate action and concluding that the book’s central claim that the ‘optimal’ level of global warming by 2100 would be 3.75˚C was completely out-of-date before it was even published. Read more
The Market Stability Reserve aims to provide carbon price stability for the EU emissions trading system (EU ETS) but serious questions are being asked about how much stability – if any – it provides, say Michael Pahle and Simon Quemin. Read more
The authors of this paper develop a theoretical model of emissions trading in the presence of transaction costs, calibrating the model to annual transactions and compliance data in the European Union emissions trading scheme over its second phase. Read more
The impact of COVID-19 on the price of carbon illustrates just how important it is to build flexibility into cap-and-trade systems and this is something policymakers should remember for the design of the UK’s post-Brexit emissions trading system, argue Josh Burke and Luca Taschini. Read more
Following reform of the EU emissions trading system (ETS) in 2018 further regulatory amendments are on the horizon as part of the 2021 review. This paper evaluates and compares the impacts of realistic regulatory changes within the ETS to inform the 2021 review and raise ambition, examining two main policy levers: the linear reduction factor and the market stability reserve. Read more
Josh Burke discusses (in this article for EU Observer) what Brexit will mean for UK climate policy and considers options for carbon pricing if it withdraws from the EU ETS. Read more
New research by Giovanni Marin and Francesco Vona finds that increases in energy prices substantially reduce energy consumption and carbon... Read more
