IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aen/journl/ej40-1-ritz.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Political Economy of a Carbon Price Floor for Power Generation

Author

Listed:
  • David M. Newbery, David M. Reiner, and Robert A. Ritz

Abstract

The EU carbon price lies well below estimates of the social cost of carbon and "target-consistent" carbon prices needed to deliver ambitious targets such as the 40% reduction target for 2030. In light of this, the UK introduced a carbon price floor (CPF) for its electricity sector in 2013 and the new Dutch Government has recently made a similar commitment, while successive French Governments have called for an EU-wide CPF. This paper analyzes the impacts and design of a power-sector CPF, both at the EU and national level, using a political-economy approach. We find a good case for introducing such a price-based instrument into the EU ETS. We suggest that a CPF should be designed to "top up" the EUA price to 25-30/tCO2, rising annually at 3-5% above inflation, at least until 2030. We argue that the new EU Market Stability Reserve enhances the value of a CPF in terms of delivering climate benefits, and discuss the potential for a regional CPF in North-West Europe. We also review international policy experience with price floors (and ceilings).

Suggested Citation

  • David M. Newbery, David M. Reiner, and Robert A. Ritz, 2019. "The Political Economy of a Carbon Price Floor for Power Generation," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1).
    • Handle: RePEc:aen:journl:ej40-1-ritz
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.iaee.org/en/publications/ejarticle.aspx?id=3275
    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. Lee, Juyong & Reiner, David M., 2023. "Determinants of public preferences on low-carbon energy sources: Evidence from the United Kingdom," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 284(C).
    2. Perino, G. & Ritz, R. & Van Benthem, A., 2019. "Understanding overlapping policies: Internal carbon leakage and the punctured waterbed," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1920, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    3. Marion Leroutier, 2021. "Carbon Pricing and Power Sector Decarbonisation: Evidence from the UK," CIRED Working Papers halshs-03265636, HAL.
    4. Gonçalves, Jorge & Costa, Manuel Luís, 2022. "The political influence of ecological economics in the European Union applied to the cap-and-trade policy11This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commerc," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 195(C).
    5. Grischa Perino & Robert A. Ritz & Arthur van Benthem, 2019. "Overlapping Climate Policies," NBER Working Papers 25643, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Zappa, William & Junginger, Martin & van den Broek, Machteld, 2021. "Can liberalised electricity markets support decarbonised portfolios in line with the Paris Agreement? A case study of Central Western Europe," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    7. Christian von Hirschhausen & Claudia Kemfert & Fabian Praeger, 2020. "Fossil Natural Gas Exit – A New Narrative for the European Energy Transformation towards Decarbonization," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1892, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    8. Quemin, Simon & Trotignon, Raphaël, 2021. "Emissions trading with rolling horizons," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    9. Hua, Weiqi & Chen, Ying & Qadrdan, Meysam & Jiang, Jing & Sun, Hongjian & Wu, Jianzhong, 2022. "Applications of blockchain and artificial intelligence technologies for enabling prosumers in smart grids: A review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    10. Simon Quemin, 2020. "Using Supply-Side Policies to Raise Ambition: The Case of the EU ETS and the 2021 Review," Working Papers 2002, Chaire Economie du climat.
    11. Marion Leroutier, 2021. "Carbon Pricing and Power Sector Decarbonisation: Evidence from the UK," Working Papers halshs-03265636, HAL.
    12. Leroutier, Marion, 2022. "Carbon pricing and power sector decarbonization: Evidence from the UK," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    13. Keppler, Jan Horst & Quemin, Simon & Saguan, Marcelo, 2022. "Why the sustainable provision of low-carbon electricity needs hybrid markets," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).
    14. Hintermayer, Martin, 2020. "A Carbon Price Floor in the Reformed EU ETS: Design Matters!," VfS Annual Conference 2020 (Virtual Conference): Gender Economics 224576, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    15. Hintermayer, Martin, 2020. "A carbon price floor in the reformed EU ETS: Design matters!," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    16. Böhringer, Christoph & Rosendahl, Knut Einar, 2022. "Europe beyond coal – An economic and climate impact assessment," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    17. Klaus Gugler & Adhurim Haxhimusa & Mario Liebensteiner, 2019. "Effective Climate Policy Doesn’t Have to be Expensive," Department of Economics Working Papers wuwp293, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Department of Economics.
    18. Gugler, Klaus & Haxhimusa, Adhurim & Liebensteiner, Mario, 2021. "Effectiveness of climate policies: Carbon pricing vs. subsidizing renewables," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    19. Gugler, Klaus & Haxhimusa, Adhurim & Liebensteiner, Mario, 2023. "Carbon pricing and emissions: Causal effects of Britain's carbon tax," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C).
    20. Vlad-Cosmin Bulai & Alexandra Horobet & Oana Cristina Popovici & Lucian Belascu & Sofia Adriana Dumitrescu, 2021. "A VaR-Based Methodology for Assessing Carbon Price Risk across European Union Economic Sectors," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(24), pages 1-21, December.
    21. Hintermayer, Martin, 2020. "A Carbon Price Floor in the Reformed EU ETS: Design matters!," EWI Working Papers 2020-3, Energiewirtschaftliches Institut an der Universitaet zu Koeln (EWI).
    22. Jeddi, Samir & Lencz, Dominic & Wildgrube, Theresa, 2021. "Complementing carbon prices with Carbon Contracts for Difference in the presence of risk - When is it beneficial and when not?," EWI Working Papers 2021-9, Energiewirtschaftliches Institut an der Universitaet zu Koeln (EWI), revised 16 Aug 2022.
    23. Timothy N. Cason & John K. Stranlund & Frans P. de Vries, 2022. "Investment Incentives in Tradable Emissions Markets with Price Floors Approach," Purdue University Economics Working Papers 1331, Purdue University, Department of Economics.
    24. Quemin, Simon, 2022. "Raising climate ambition in emissions trading systems: The case of the EU ETS and the 2021 review," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).

    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:ej40-1-ritz. 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.