This paper presents the background and policy issues surrounding development of a commercial market for captured carbon dioxide, and seeks to foster among policymakers a deeper understanding of : both the generation and carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies involved, as well as their costs; the technical and regulatory barriers to deployment of those technologies, and the opportunities CCS
Climate change represents a new and somewhat daunting topic for many businesses. The challenge is compounded by the diverse and uncertain projections of changes in temperature, precipitation patterns, extreme events, and other effects. This paper outlines a sensible business approach to analyzing and adapting to the physical risks of climate change. It focuses on a critical first step in assessing these climate impacts: understanding the potential risks to business and the importance of taking action to mitigate those risks.
As the United States seeks to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from motor vehicles and to lessen its dependence on imported oil, biofuels are gaining increasing attention as one possible solution. This paper offers an introduction to the current state of play for biofuels: the technologies used in their production, their GHG emissions, and associated policy issues.
Effort to develop a mandatory climate policy is accelerating and it seems likely that a national market-based strategy for dealing with climate change is on the near term horizon.
In the United States to date, most of the first genuine steps toward addressing the challenge of climate change have taken place at the state level. Many states have proceeded in a meaningful, comprehensive fashion while the federal government struggles to take its first significant step toward legislative or regulatory action. Yet it is clear that these state actions, even when taken together, are not enough to put the United States on a course to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the level deemed necessary by the science.
This report offers a comprehensive analysis of a suite of climate policy initiatives associated with a cap and trade program with the goal of identifying those empirical and design issues that most influence the economic consequences of their enactment. Empirically, present-value policy costs heavily depend on the actual outcomes of household consumption-saving and labor-leisure decisions, the magnitudes of and any induced changes in sectoral demand elasticities and technological trends, and the resulting time paths of permit prices and market interest rates.
This report evaluates the initial trial phase of the EU Emissions Trading System and provides lessons for the EU moving forward as well as for the development of cap-and-trade programs in the United States.
The objective of this report is to illustrate insights into alternative policy options and the potential impact nationally and explicitly at the state level associated with a modest GHG control policy. Differences in the structure of the economy across the United States are likely to cause these impacts to diverge from those estimated for the country as a whole.
Greenhouse gas emissions from developing countries will likely surpass those from developed countries within the first half of this century, highlighting the need for developing country efforts to reduce the risk of climate change. While developing nations have been reluctant to accept binding emissions targets,
