Presentation at IAEE Meeting in Perth

I'm presenting on Tuesday afternoon at the IAEE Conference in Perth in one of the parallel sessions from 2-3:30pm. I've put my slides up on the web but as usual they probably aren't that informative without the accompanying talk. Several of us from ANU will be at the meeting and I am looking forward to meeting up with old and new colleagues from elsewhere. This is also my first time ever visiting Western Australia the only Australian state or mainland territory I haven't yet been to.

Taxes versus Trading versus Revenue Recycling

My colleagues Jack Pezzey and Frank Jotzo have a forthcoming paper in JEEM: "Tax-versus-trading and efficient revenue recycling as issues for greenhouse gas abatement" on the relative performance of emissions taxes versus emissions trading under uncertainty about both abatement costs and BAU emissions as well as different levels of revenue recycling. Uncertainty about future costs of abating emissions is well known to lead to a welfare advantage of emissions taxes over permit trading. They show that uncertainty about BAU emissions is more important and further increases the advantage of taxes. I think this is important because the massive fluctuations in the price of carbon in the EU market for example seems to be largely due to fluctuations in economic activity. They write: "overall our results substantially boost the welfare case for using a carbon tax instead of trading."

However, they argue that whether the raised revenue is efficiently recycled through cuts in existing distorting taxes will be practically of much greater significance than these differences between taxes versus trading. In the presence of existing distorting taxes an emissions tax can have negative impacts on welfare if those taxes are not also reduced - the so called "tax-distortion effect". However, I would have thought that the giving away of free permits or exclusion of activities from control is likely to be greater in extent than exemptions under a carbon tax. This would further increase the advantages of taxes. Or maybe I'm wrong about that?

Expert Review Registration Open for FoD WG3 AR5

Registration for expert review of the first order draft of Working Group III's contribution to the IPCC AR5 is now open. We'll be dealing with all these comments in Vigo in November. Right now we are still working on getting the FoD together :)

Nature Climate Change Article on the Introduction of Carbon Pricing in Australia

My colleague Frank Jotzo has an article in Nature Climate Change discussing the introduction of the carbon price in Australia from 1st July this year. It's a good summary if you haven't been following this issue closely.

Reminder: Christian Gross Seminar 29th June

Sorry that I haven't posted much recently. Things have been very busy with wrapping the seminar up and grading and preparing a course for next semester. As well Stephan Bruns is visiting from Jena to work with me and we are making good progress on our meta-analysis project. Christian Gross will also be here, but only for one day - 29th June - I will meet him at the IAEE meeting in Perth before that. Christian is giving a seminar at Crawford School at 12:30 on 29th June in Seminar Room 1 in the Stanner Building. More details are available here.

IEA Announce that Global CO2 Emissions Rose 3.2% in 2011

IEA announce that global CO2 emissions rose 3.2% in 2011. This is in line with our prediction in our Nature Climate Change paper that emissions growth in 2011 would be slower than in 2010 though it is still really quite rapid.