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On the Potential Economic Costs of Cutting Carbon Dioxide Emissions in Portugal

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  • Alfredo M. Pereira

    () (Department of Economics, College of William and Mary)

  • Rui Manuel Marvão Pereira

    () (Thomas Jefferson Program in Public Policy, College of William and Mary)

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to estimate the impact of reducing carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion activities on economic activity in Portugal. We find that energy consumption has a significant impact on macroeconomic activity. In fact, a one ton of oil equivalent permanent reduction in aggregate energy consumption reduces output in the long term by €6,340. More importantly, and since carbon dioxide emissions are linearly related to the amounts of fuel consumed, our results allow us to estimate the costs of reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. We estimate that a uniform standard for reducing carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion activities would lead to a marginal abatement cost of €95.74 per ton of carbon dioxide. This is a first rough estimate of the potential economic costs of policies designed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. At this level one may conclude that uniform, across the board reductions in carbon emissions would have a clear negative effect on economic activity. Hence, at the aggregate level there is clear evidence for a trade-off between economic performance and a reduction in carbon emissions. This opens the door to the investigation of the scope for policy to minimize the costs of environmental policy and regulation.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Department of Economics, College of William and Mary in its series Working Papers with number 79.

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Length: 19 pages
Date of creation: 26 Oct 2008
Date of revision: 15 Sep 2010
Handle: RePEc:cwm:wpaper:79

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Keywords: carbon dioxide emissions; energy and the economy; environmental policy; vector autoregressive model;

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  1. Zhang, ZhongXiang & Folmer, Henk, 1998. "Economic modelling approaches to cost estimates for the control of carbon dioxide emissions1," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 101-120, February.
  2. Gonzalo, Jesús & Lee, Tae-Hwy, . "Pitfalls in testing for long run relationships," Open Access publications from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid info:hdl:10016/753, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
  3. Paul Crompton & Yanrui Wu, 2004. "Energy Consumption in China: Past Trends and Future Directions," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 04-22, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics.
  4. Gaskins, Darius W, Jr & Weyant, John P, 1993. "Model Comparisons of the Costs of Reducing CO2 Emissions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(2), pages 318-23, May.
  5. Lawrence J. Christiano & Martin Eichenbaum & Charles Evans, 1994. "The effects of monetary policy shocks: evidence from the flow of funds," Proceedings, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, issue Apr.
  6. Christiano, Lawrence J. & Eichenbaum, Martin & Evans, Charles L., 1999. "Monetary policy shocks: What have we learned and to what end?," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 65-148 Elsevier.
  7. Francis, Brian M. & Moseley, Leo & Iyare, Sunday Osaretin, 2007. "Energy consumption and projected growth in selected Caribbean countries," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(6), pages 1224-1232, November.
  8. Christopher A. Sims & Tao Zha, 1999. "Error Bands for Impulse Responses," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(5), pages 1113-1156, September.
  9. Alan Manne & Richard Richels, 1992. "Buying Greenhouse Insurance: The Economic Costs of CO2 Emission Limits," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 026213280x.
  10. William D. Nordhaus, 1993. "Reflections on the Economics of Climate Change," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 7(4), pages 11-25, Fall.
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