IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/eneeco/v112y2022ics0140988322003322.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Consignment auctions of emissions trading systems: An agent-based approach based on China’s practice

Author

Listed:
  • Wang, Baixue
  • Duan, Maosheng

Abstract

Policymakers of emissions trading systems (ETSs) around the world are faced with the challenges of how to allocate carbon allowances. On one hand, the free allocation would undermine the efficiency and fairness of ETSs, while on the other hand, a precipitous shift to auctions would put enormous economic pressure on covered entities. The consignment auction is supposed to combine the free allocation and the auction. However, few studies have investigated the consignment auction’s impacts on ETSs and commodity markets from a quantitative perspective. In this paper, an agent-based model is proposed, considering both the primary and secondary carbon markets, the commodity market and the behavior of firms. Simulation results based on China’s data show that, compared with the free allocation, the consignment auction can achieve a higher and more stable carbon price without significantly increasing the cost borne by firms, increase the liquidity of ETSs, and stimulate the technological advances of firms. Compared with the auction, the consignment auction reduces the volatilities of the commodity market induced by ETSs and facilitates the smooth operation of ETSs. Our results also suggest that the consignment auction is particularly suitable for the early stage of ETSs, while the auction remains the best allocation method as the ETS matures, as it significantly promotes long-term technological advances.

Suggested Citation

  • Wang, Baixue & Duan, Maosheng, 2022. "Consignment auctions of emissions trading systems: An agent-based approach based on China’s practice," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:eneeco:v:112:y:2022:i:c:s0140988322003322
    DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2022.106187
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988322003322
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.eneco.2022.106187?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

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

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Khezr, Peyman & MacKenzie, Ian A., 2018. "Consignment auctions," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 42-51.
    2. Ken Binmore & Paul Klemperer, 2002. "The Biggest Auction Ever: the Sale of the British 3G Telecom Licences," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(478), pages 74-96, March.
    3. Ledyard, John O. & Szakaly-Moore, Kristin, 1994. "Designing organizations for trading pollution rights," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 167-196, October.
    4. Xiong, Ling & Shen, Bo & Qi, Shaozhou & Price, Lynn & Ye, Bin, 2017. "The allowance mechanism of China’s carbon trading pilots: A comparative analysis with schemes in EU and California," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 185(P2), pages 1849-1859.
    5. Stavins Robert N., 1995. "Transaction Costs and Tradeable Permits," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 133-148, September.
    6. Liu, Beibei & He, Pan & Zhang, Bing & Bi, Jun, 2012. "Impacts of alternative allowance allocation methods under a cap-and-trade program in power sector," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 405-415.
    7. Bao, Qin & Tang, Ling & Zhang, ZhongXiang & Wang, Shouyang, 2013. "Impacts of border carbon adjustments on China's sectoral emissions: Simulations with a dynamic computable general equilibrium model," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 77-94.
    8. Ponta, Linda & Raberto, Marco & Teglio, Andrea & Cincotti, Silvano, 2018. "An Agent-based Stock-flow Consistent Model of the Sustainable Transition in the Energy Sector," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 274-300.
    9. Dormady, Noah & Healy, Paul J., 2019. "The consignment mechanism in carbon markets: A laboratory investigation," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 14(C), pages 51-65.
    10. Tang, Ling & Wang, Haohan & Li, Ling & Yang, Kaitong & Mi, Zhifu, 2020. "Quantitative models in emission trading system research: A literature review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    11. Liu, Yun & Tan, Bowen, 2021. "Consignment auctions revisited," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    12. Weber, Christopher L. & Peters, Glen P. & Guan, Dabo & Hubacek, Klaus, 2008. "The contribution of Chinese exports to climate change," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(9), pages 3572-3577, September.
    13. Tang, Ling & Wu, Jiaqian & Yu, Lean & Bao, Qin, 2015. "Carbon emissions trading scheme exploration in China: A multi-agent-based model," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 152-169.
    14. Guler, Kemal & Plott, Charles R & Vuong, Quang H, 1994. "A Study of Zero-Out Auctions: Testbed Experiments of a Process of Allocating Private Rights to the Use of Public Property," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 4(1), pages 67-104, January.
    15. Charles A. Holt & William Shobe & Dallas Burtraw & Karen Palmer & Jacob K. Goeree, 2007. "Auction Design for Selling CO2 Emission Allowances Under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative," Reports 2007-03, Center for Economic and Policy Studies.
    16. Burtraw, Dallas & McCormack, Kristen, 2017. "Consignment auctions of free emissions allowances," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 337-344.
    17. Tang, Ling & Wu, Jiaqian & Yu, Lean & Bao, Qin, 2017. "Carbon allowance auction design of China's emissions trading scheme: A multi-agent-based approach," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 30-40.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Liu, Yun & Tan, Bowen, 2021. "Consignment auctions revisited," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    2. Jae-Do Song & Young-Hwan Ahn, 2021. "Price Discovery of Consignment Auctions for Emission Permits," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(21), pages 1-13, October.
    3. Burtraw, Dallas & McCormack, Kristen, 2017. "Consignment auctions of free emissions allowances," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 337-344.
    4. Wang, M. & Zhou, P., 2022. "A two-step auction-refund allocation rule of CO2 emission permits," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    5. Junjun Zheng & Mingmiao Yang & Gang Ma & Qian Xu & Yujie He, 2020. "Multi-Agents-Based Modeling and Simulation for Carbon Permits Trading in China: A Regional Development Perspective," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(1), pages 1-20, January.
    6. Hongpeng Guo & Zhihao Lv & Junyi Hua & Hongxu Yuan & Qingyu Yu, 2021. "Design of Combined Auction Model for Emission Rights of International Forestry Carbon Sequestration and Other Pollutants Based on SMRA," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(20), pages 1-18, October.
    7. Tang, Ling & Wu, Jiaqian & Yu, Lean & Bao, Qin, 2017. "Carbon allowance auction design of China's emissions trading scheme: A multi-agent-based approach," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 30-40.
    8. Wei, Yigang & Liang, Xin & Xu, Liang & Kou, Gang & Chevallier, Julien, 2023. "Trading, storage, or penalty? Uncovering firms' decision-making behavior in the Shanghai emissions trading scheme: Insights from agent-based modeling," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C).
    9. Sonia Schwartz, 2009. "Comment distribuer les quotas de pollution ?. Une revue de la littérature," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 119(4), pages 535-568.
    10. Estelle Cantillon & Aurélie Slechten, 2023. "Market Design for the Environment," NBER Chapters, in: New Directions in Market Design, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Khezr, Peyman & MacKenzie, Ian A., 2018. "Consignment auctions," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 42-51.
    12. Veronika Grimm & Lyuba Ilieva, 2013. "An experiment on emissions trading: the effect of different allocation mechanisms," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 308-338, December.
    13. Liu, Yu & Tan, Xiu-Jie & Yu, Yang & Qi, Shao-Zhou, 2017. "Assessment of impacts of Hubei Pilot emission trading schemes in China – A CGE-analysis using TermCO2 model," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 762-769.
    14. Chia-Lin Chang & Michael McAleer, 2019. "Modeling Latent Carbon Emission Prices for Japan: Theory and Practice," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(21), pages 1-21, November.
    15. Last Name, First Name, 2009. "Distributional Impacts of Carbon Pricing Policies in the Electricity Sector," RFF Working Paper Series dp-09-43, Resources for the Future.
    16. Tang, Ling & Shi, Jiarui & Bao, Qin, 2016. "Designing an emissions trading scheme for China with a dynamic computable general equilibrium model," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 507-520.
    17. Solomon, Barry D., 1999. "New directions in emissions trading: the potential contribution of new institutional economics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 371-387, September.
    18. Yu, Dejian & Xu, Chao, 2017. "Mapping research on carbon emissions trading: a co-citation analysis," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 1314-1322.
    19. Haoran He & Yefeng Chen, 2021. "Auction mechanisms for allocating subsidies for carbon emissions reduction: an experimental investigation," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 57(2), pages 387-430, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Consignment auction; Emissions trading system; Allowance allocation; Agent-based model; System design;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C61 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Optimization Techniques; Programming Models; Dynamic Analysis
    • C63 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Computational Techniques
    • D44 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Auctions
    • Q43 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Energy and the Macroeconomy
    • Q48 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Government Policy

    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:eee:eneeco:v:112:y:2022:i:c:s0140988322003322. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eneco .

    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.