IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aen/journl/ej36-3-hollan.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Unintended Consequences of Carbon Policies: Transportation Fuels, Land-Use, Emissions, and Innovation

Author

Listed:
  • Stephen P. Holland, Jonathan E. Hughes, Christopher R. Knittel, Nathan C. Parker

Abstract

Renewable fuel standards, low carbon fuel standards, and ethanol subsidies are popular policies to incentivize ethanol production and reduce emissions from transportation. Compared to carbon trading, these policies lead to large shifts in agricultural activity and unexpected social costs. We simulate the 2022 Federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and find that energy crop production increases by 39 million acres. Land-use costs from erosion and habitat loss are between $277 and $693 million. A low carbon fuel standard (LCFS) and ethanol subsidies have similar effects while costs under an equivalent cap and trade (CAT) system are essentially zero. In addition, the alternatives to CAT magnify errors in assigning emissions rates to fuels and can over or under-incentivize innovation. These results highlight the potential negative effects of the RFS, LCFS and subsidies, effects that would be less severe under a CAT policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephen P. Holland, Jonathan E. Hughes, Christopher R. Knittel, Nathan C. Parker, 2015. "Unintended Consequences of Carbon Policies: Transportation Fuels, Land-Use, Emissions, and Innovation," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3).
    • Handle: RePEc:aen:journl:ej36-3-hollan
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.iaee.org/en/publications/ejarticle.aspx?id=2626
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to IAEE members and subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wang, Min & Zhao, Jinhua, 2018. "Are renewable energy policies climate friendly? The role of capacity constraints and market power," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 41-60.
    2. Wang, Kunlun & Zheng, Leven J. & Zhang, Justin Zuopeng & Yao, Hongjiang, 2022. "The impact of promoting new energy vehicles on carbon intensity: Causal evidence from China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    3. Wang, Banban & Pizer, William A. & Munnings, Clayton, 2022. "Price limits in a tradable performance standard," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    4. Korting, Christina & Just, David R., 2017. "Demystifying RINs: A partial equilibrium model of U.S. biofuel markets," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 353-362.
    5. Fan, Jin & He, Haonan & Wu, Yanrui, 2016. "Personal carbon trading and subsidies for hybrid electric vehicles," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 164-173.
    6. Ye, Fanglin & Paulson, Nicholas & Khanna, Madhu, 2022. "Are renewable energy policies effective to promote technological change? The role of induced technological risk," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    7. Lade, Gabriel E. & Lin Lawell, C.-Y. Cynthia, 2015. "The design and economics of low carbon fuel standards," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 91-99.
    8. Lu, Yunguo & Zhang, Lin, 2022. "National mitigation policy and the competitiveness of Chinese firms," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    9. Xidong Zhang & Juan Zhang & Chengbo Yang, 2023. "Spatio-Temporal Evolution of Agricultural Carbon Emissions in China, 2000–2020," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-21, February.
    10. Khanna, Madhu & Wang, Weiwei & Hudiburg, Tara & DeLucia, Evan, 2016. "The Economic Cost of Including the Indirect Land Use Factor in Low Carbon Fuel Policy: Efficiency and Distributional Implications," 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts 235774, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    11. Plevin, Richard J. & Delucchi, Mark A. & O’Hare, Michael, 2017. "Fuel carbon intensity standards may not mitigate climate change," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 93-97.
    12. Gabriel E Lade & C -Y Cynthia Lin Lawell & Aaron Smith, 2018. "Policy Shocks and Market-Based Regulations: Evidence from the Renewable Fuel Standard," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 100(3), pages 707-731.
    13. Debnath, Deepayan & Whistance, Jarrett & Thompson, Wyatt, 2017. "The causes of two-way U.S.–Brazil ethanol trade and the consequences for greenhouse gas emission," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 2045-2053.
    14. Fan, Xinxin & Khanna, Madhu & Hartman, Theodore & VanLoocke, Andy, 2023. "Designing Payments for Multiple Ecosystem Services with Advanced Biofuels in the Mississippi River Basin," 2023 Annual Meeting, July 23-25, Washington D.C. 335787, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    15. Axsen, Jonn & Wolinetz, Michael, 2023. "What does a low-carbon fuel standard contribute to a policy mix? An interdisciplinary review of evidence and research gaps," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 54-63.
    16. Yeh, Sonia & Witcover, Julie & Lade, Gabriel E. & Sperling, Daniel, 2016. "A review of low carbon fuel policies: Principles, program status and future directions," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 220-234.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F0 - International Economics - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aen:journl:ej36-3-hollan. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: David Williams (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iaeeeea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.