Trading Woody Biomass and Negative Emissions Under a Climate Mitigation Scenario

On October 1 Alice Favero presented our joint paper on trade of woody biomass at the conference "Power Generation and the Environment, Choices and Economic Trade-offs" organized by the University of Wyoming School of Energy Resources and the Center for Energy Economics and Public Policy at Jackson Hole, WY.

The link to the presentation here.
The link to the video here.

Favero, Alice and Emanuele Massetti. 2012. "Trading Woody Biomass and Negative Emissions Under a Climate Mitigation Scenario." Yale University and FEEM, mimeo.

Abstract:
Bio-energy has the potential to be a key mitigation option if combined with carbon capture and sequestration (BECCS) because it can generate electricity and absorb emissions at the same time. However, biomass is not distributed evenly across the globe and regions with a potentially high demand might be constrained by limited domestic supply. Therefore, climate mitigation policies might create an incentive to trade biomass internationally. This paper evaluates the potential of the trade of woody biomass under three carbon taxes which lead to a stabilization target of 4.6 W/m2, 3.8 W/ m2 and 3.3 W/ m2 radiative forcing by 2100 using the integrated assessment model WITCH. Results show that in all scenarios there is big incentive in trading biomass: more than 50% of biomass consumed globally is from the international market. Regions trade 16-52 EJ in 2050 and 52-84 EJ/yr in 2100. The value of biomass traded is equal to  US$ 1-9 Trillion in 2100. The effect of the biomass trade on the climate polices is significant: it offers an additional abatement of GHGs emissions of 150-340 GtCO2 for the same tax depending on the scenario. Finally, we simulate a cap-and-trade scheme with a stabilization target of 3.8 W/ m2 in 2100 in order to study the implications of biomass trade on the carbon market. We found that biomass trade has a downward effect of 30% on the price of permits by 2100 and reduces the policy cost by 11% for 2010-2050 and by 15% for 2010-2100.


The link to the program and other presentations here.


October 1, 2012
Session One: CCS Themes
The Cost of Power Generation with CCS vs. the Alternatives
Howard Herzog, Senior Research Engineer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Energy Initiative

A Flexible Policy Mechanism to Incentivize "CCS-ready" Without Delaying Replacement of Old Coal-fired Power Plants
Dalia Patiño-Echeverri, Gendell Assistant Professor for Energy Systems and Public Policy, Duke University

The Challenges of CCS for an Operating Utility
Ron Harper, Retired CEO of Basin Electric and Cooperative

Keynote Address
A Practitioner's Guide to a Low-carbon Economy: Lessons From the UK

Samuel Fankhauser, Co-Director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and Deputy Director of the Center for Climate Change Economics and Policy

Session Two: Policy
On Designing an Efficient CO2 Emissions Cap and Trade System
Scott Atkinson, Professor, University of Georgia Department of Economics

The Competitiveness Impacts of Climate Change Mitigation Policies
Joseph Aldy, Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School

Environmental Policies on the Grid:  Findings from an Integrated Economic, Engineering, and Environmental Model
Daniel Shawhan, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Session Three: Regulation Analysis Themes
The Impact of CO2, NOx, and SO2 Regulation on Electricity Production
Rolf Fare, Department of Economics and Department of Agriculture and Resource Economics, Oregon State University

Costs and Emissions Reductions from Clean Air Act Regulation of Greenhouse Gases from Coal-Fired Power Plants
Joshua Linn, Fellow, Resources for the Future

Can a Unilateral Carbon Tax Reduce Emissions Elsewhere?
Don Fullerton, University of Illinois, Department of Finance

October 2, 2012
Session Four:  Alternative Resources
Trading Woody Biomass and Negative Emissions Under a Climate Mitigation Scenario
Alice Favero, Visiting Research Assistant, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies

New Cost Estimates for Forest Carbon Sequestration in the United States
Andrew Plantinga, Professor, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Oregon State University

Uranium and Nuclear Power: Past, Present and Future
Charles Mason, UW Department of Economics & Finance; H.A. True Chair in Petroleum and Natural Gas Economics

Session Five: Costs & Pricing
Pricing Carbon in the US: A Model-based Analysis of Power Sector Only Approaches
Adele Morris, Fellow and Policy Director for the Climate and Energy Economics Project, The Brookings Institute

Estimating the Value of Additional Wind and Transmission Capacity in the Rocky Mountain West
Robert Godby, Associate Professor, UW Department of Economics and Finance

Evaluating Climate Policy Portfolios in the Electricity Sector: The Role of Multiple Market Failures
Carolyn Fischer, Resources for Future

Analysis of the Bingaman Clean Energy Standard Proposal
Karen Palmer, Senior Fellow and Research Director, Resources for Future

Investments and Public Finance in a Green, Low Carbon Economy

The paper on "Investments and Public Finance in a Green, Low Carbon Economy" joint with Carlo Carraro and Alice Favero is forthcoming on Energy Economics. A pre-print is available here.

I copy here the abstract of the paper:

The paper evaluates the impacts on investments and public finance of a transition to a green, low carbon, economy induced by carbon taxation.  Four global tax scenarios are examined using the integrated assessment model WITCH.  Taxes are levied on all greenhouse gases (GHGs) and lead to global GHG concentrations equal to 680, 560, 500 and 460 ppm CO2-eq in 2100. Investments in the power sector increase with respect to the Reference scenario only with the two highest taxes. Investments in energy-related R&D increase in all tax scenarios, but they are a small fraction of GDP. Investments in oil upstream decline in all scenarios. As a result, total investments decline with respect to the Reference scenario. Carbon tax revenues are high in absolute terms and as share of GDP. With high carbon taxes, tax revenues follow a “carbon Laffer”curve. The model assumes that tax revenues are flawlessly recycled lump-sum into the economy. In all scenarios, the power sector becomes a net recipient of subsidies to support the absorption of GHGs. In some regions, with high carbon taxes, subsidies to GHG removal are higher than tax revenues at the end of the century.


Carraro, C., A. Favero and E. Massetti. 2012. “Investments and Public Finance in a Green, Low Carbon Economy.” Energy Economics, forthcoming.

Incentives and stability of international climate coalitions: an integrated assessment

On June 12 2012 I presented the paper "Incentives and stability of international climate coalitions: an integrated assessment" joint with Valentina Bosetti, Carlo Carraro, Enrica De Cian and Massimo Tavoni at the Cowles Foundation Summer Conference on "Macronomics and Climate Change” at Yale University.

 Full presentation in pdf here.

In the paper we show why cooperation among world countries to reduce GHG emissions is possible if targets are not to stringent.


We find that cooperation is possible and profitable but:

• The 2°C target is not supported by cost-benefit analysis even under extreme assumptions on damages and discounting
• Even with more modest targets coalitions are not stable
• International transfers are needed to «bribe in» reluctant countries

Policy implication: be less ambitious when negotiating the post-2020 climate architecture

Caveats:

• Alternative bargaining rules might deliver different results
• Much cheaper mitigation costs might induce more cooperation
• Ethical considerations might be used to assess impacts instead of monetary evaluations of future damages

The paper was recently published as CEPR working paper here and a short-article appeared on voxeu.org here.

Investments and Financial Flows Induced by Climate Mitigation Policies

On Monday November the 14th I presented the highlights of the paper "Investments and financial flows induced by climate mitigation polcies" at the International Business Green Economies Dialogue session at the OECD in Paris.

• We show that investments in the power sector increase in all but the moderate carbon tax scenarios, in the long term.

• Investments increase as the price of the carbon tax increases above 50$ per ton of CO2-eq.

• However the ratio of investments in the power sector to investments in all other sector does not increase with respect to the present level, with the only exception being the very high tax scenario.

• Investments in R&D increase about 4-fold in the high tax scenarios.

• Revenues from carbon taxes reach about 3 trillions $ in 2045 in the highest tax scenario. Revenues decline after 2050 because the tax base disappears.

• With the right signals markets can provide sufficient investments in the power sector.

• Governments should finance frontier research in new carbon-free technologies.

• Revenues from carbon taxes are large and can be used to reduce distortionary taxes or provide fundings to cover increased spending for pensions.

The presentation can be downloaded here.

An older version of the paper is here.

Special Issue on INEA: Reconciling Domestic Energy Needs and Global Climate Policy: Challenges and Opportunities for China and India

Carlo Carraro and I have recently edited a special issue of INEA. We collect a set of articles that take stock of the current status of the negotiations and suggest an unconventional, pragmatic way forward.

All the articles recognize that China and India will not enter a textbook-style international climate agreement soon. They are also aware that the future international climate architecture will be fragmented and incomplete at least until 2020. Therefore, the inability to build a large binding agreement with absolute targets is not seen as a tragedy, but rather as a fact that should be considered as a starting point for future steps towards global emission reductions. For this reason all articles take a long-term perspective. As Zhang notes in his article, the real question when dealing with China and India is post‑2020 and not pre‑2020.

 

In the free-access editorial we trace a well-defined pathway to include China and India in the international effort to control global warming. With a more active participation of the two large developing economies, developed countries would find it hard to avoid a more active engagement and the Gordian knot of climate policy could be cut.

We summarize this pathway through six key messages.

First, at least in the next decade, negotiators should focus more on sustainable development goals than on targets and timetables. 

Second, China and India will have a remarkably different impact on global climate change for several decades to come. At the same time, they follow different development paths and therefore should proceed along different negotiating trajectories.

 

Third, China may take on absolute emissions caps around 2030.

Fourth, there are many opportunities in China and India to reduce emissions by a large amount, and at low cost, between 2020 and 2050.

Fifth, in order to achieve consensus on very ambitious climate agreements it is necessary to agree on a new shared definition of the “common but differentiated responsibilities” (CBRD) principle.

Sixth, clear rules that deal with the non-compliance of OECD countries with Kyoto and other climate commitments must be established.

Table of contents:

Reconciling Domestic Energy Needs and Global Climate Policy: Challenges and Opportunities for China and India

Guest Editors: Carlo Carraro and Emanuele Massetti

Editorial, Carlo Carraro and Emanuele Massetti
 

Carbon tax scenarios for China and India: exploring politically feasible mitigation goals, by Emanuele Massetti
 

Climate agreements and India: aligning options and opportunities on a new track, by P. R. Shukla and Subash Dhar

In what format and under what timeframe would China take on climate commitments? A roadmap to 2050,  by Zhongxiang Zhang

China and India’s participation in global climate negotiations, by Sean Walsh, Huifang Tian, John Whalley and Manmohan Agarwal

Technical Innovation, Economic Development and Implications for Energy Use and Emissions

The UNESCO Energy Bulletin has published a longer and more articulated version of the World Bank Development Outreach article on emissions and economic development

Carlo Carraro and Emanuele Massetti. 2011. "Technical Innovation, Economic Development and Implications for Energy Use and Emissions." UNESCO Energy Bulletin, 2(11).

"In order to achieve the target of a 50% reduction of GHGs emissions by 2050 set forth during the G8 Summit in L’Aquila, Italy, in 2009, CO2 emissions per capita need to be lower than 1.14 tons in 2050, using 1990 as the benchmark year and assuming that an equivalent effort is undertaken to reduce emissions of all other GHGs. If we consider that in 2005 CO2 emissions per capita were about 4.5 tons and we expect a median future level in 2050 equal to 6 tons of CO2 per capita, we can easily conclude that we are definitely off-track. The historic pattern that links emissions to economic development needs to be reversed."


"Some solutions are already available and a well-crafted climate policy can stimulate their adoption. However, there are limited options available today to invert drastically the relationship between economic growth and emissions."

First Lead Author Meeting of IPCC AR5 WGIII

I just returned from the first Lead Authors meeting of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group III in Changwon, South Korea. This was the first of a series of meetings that will serve to prepare the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). The next meeting will be in New Zealand in Spring 2012. The AR5 will be ready in 2014.

Estimating Ricardian Models With Panel Data - NBER WP

The paper "Estimating Ricardian Models with Panel Data", joint with R. Mendelsohn, was published as NBER working paper last week.

Abstract:

Many nonmarket valuation models, such as the Ricardian model, have been estimated using cross sectional methods with a single year of data. Although multiple years of data should increase the robustness of such methods, repeated cross sections suggest the results are not stable. We argue that repeated cross sections do not properly specify the model. Panel methods that correctly specify the Ricardian model are stable over time. The results suggest that many cross sectional methods including hedonic studies and travel cost studies could be enhanced using panel data.

Massetti, E. and R. Mendelsohn (2011). “Estimating Ricardian Functions with Panel Data.” NBER Working Paper No. 17101, June 2011.

Postdoc at Yale

Starting from May 1st I will be Postdoctoral Fellow at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. I will spend two years at Yale as part of the outgoing phase of the International Outgoing Marie Curie Fellowship that I received this year.

The greening of development: no growth without energy

A short article for the World Bank Development Outreach Magazine, issue on Emerging Issues in Development Policy: The winding road to growth and equity, April 2011.

Economic development increases the demand for energy. This is true for countries at all income levels, although as economic growth progresses, the demand tends to increase more in the low- and middle-income countries than in high-income ones. But energy remains a key ingredient for economic growth at all stages of development.
With 5.4 billion people living in low and middle-income countries—out of  a global population of 6.5 billion—energy demand will very likely continue to grow at a fast pace for many years to come. [...]

Download the article.