IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mtu/wpaper/19_08.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Uncertainty, Risk and Investment and the NZ ETS

Author

Listed:
  • Suzi Kerr

    (Motu Economic and Public Policy Research)

  • Catherine Leining

    (Motu Economic and Public Policy Research)

Abstract

New Zealand is facing a challenging low-emission transition, and effective emission pricing needs to be part of the solution. In its pure form, an emissions trading system (ETS) fixes the quantity of emissions in regulated sectors and the market sets the emission price. In New Zealand’s current policy and market context, there is value in managing both unit supply and emission prices under the NZ ETS. While emission price changes in response to policy and market conditions are desirable to drive efficient abatement, excessive price instability can deter low-emission investment. This working paper, which evolved under Motu’s ETS Dialogue process from 2016 to 2018, explores key considerations for emission price management in the context of a specific working model for unit supply in the NZ ETS. Emission price instability can be reduced at its source by reinforcing policy commitment and improving market regulation and development. Emission price instability can be mitigated by incorporating a price ceiling (cost containment reserve backed by a fixed-price option) and a price floor (auction reserve price) into the auction mechanism. Decisions on price management should be coordinated with other decisions affecting unit supply, guided by an indicative ten-year trajectory for both unit supply and emission prices, and informed by independent advice. Two companion working papers address interactions between ETS price management and the choice of cap and linking to overseas markets. The three working papers elaborate on an integrated proposal for managing unit supply, prices, and linking in the NZ ETS that was presented in Kerr et al. (2017).

Suggested Citation

  • Suzi Kerr & Catherine Leining, 2019. "Uncertainty, Risk and Investment and the NZ ETS," Working Papers 19_08, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:mtu:wpaper:19_08
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://motu-www.motu.org.nz/wpapers/19_08.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wood, Peter John & Jotzo, Frank, 2011. "Price floors for emissions trading," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 1746-1753, March.
    2. Suzi Kerr & Catherine Leining, 2019. "Paying for Mitigation: How New Zealand Can Contribute to Others’ Efforts," Working Papers 19_09, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.
    3. Avinash K. Dixit & Robert S. Pindyck, 1994. "Investment under Uncertainty," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 5474.
    4. Jakob, Michael & Brunner, Steffen, 2014. "Optimal Commitment Under Uncertainty: Adjustment Rules for Climate Policy," Strategic Behavior and the Environment, now publishers, vol. 4(3), pages 291-310, August.
    5. Steffen Brunner & Christian Flachsland & Robert Marschinski, 2012. "Credible commitment in carbon policy," Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(2), pages 255-271, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Suzi Kerr & Catherine Leining, 2019. "Paying for Mitigation: How New Zealand Can Contribute to Others’ Efforts," Working Papers 19_09, Motu Economic and Public Policy Research.

    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. Olli-Pekka Kuusela & Jussi Lintunen, 2020. "A Cap-and-Trade Commitment Policy with Allowance Banking," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 75(3), pages 421-455, March.
    2. Aalbers, Rob & Shestalova, Victoria & Kocsis, Viktória, 2013. "Innovation policy for directing technical change in the power sector," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 1240-1250.
    3. Mo, Jian-Lei & Agnolucci, Paolo & Jiang, Mao-Rong & Fan, Ying, 2016. "The impact of Chinese carbon emission trading scheme (ETS) on low carbon energy (LCE) investment," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 271-283.
    4. Chiappinelli, Olga & May, Nils, 2022. "Too good to be true? Time-inconsistent renewable energy policies," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
    5. Florian Habermacher & Paul Lehmann, 2020. "Commitment Versus Discretion in Climate and Energy Policy," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 76(1), pages 39-67, May.
    6. Jian-Lei Mo & Lei Zhu, 2014. "Using Floor Price Mechanisms to Promote Carbon Capture and Storage (Ccs) Investment and Co2 Abatement," Energy & Environment, , vol. 25(3-4), pages 687-707, April.
    7. Edenhofer, Ottmar & Flachsland, Christian & Kalkuhl, Matthias & Knopf, Brigitte & Pahle, Michael, 2019. "Optionen für eine CO2-Preisreform," Working Papers 04/2019, German Council of Economic Experts / Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung.
    8. Ohlendorf, Nils & Flachsland, Christian & Nemet, Gregory F. & Steckel, Jan Christoph, 2022. "Carbon price floors and low-carbon investment: A survey of German firms," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    9. Rohlfs, Wilko & Madlener, Reinhard, 2011. "Multi-Commodity Real Options Analysis of Power Plant Investments: Discounting Endogenous Risk Structures," FCN Working Papers 22/2011, E.ON Energy Research Center, Future Energy Consumer Needs and Behavior (FCN).
    10. Koch, Nicolas & Fuss, Sabine & Grosjean, Godefroy & Edenhofer, Ottmar, 2014. "Causes of the EU ETS price drop: Recession, CDM, renewable policies or a bit of everything?—New evidence," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 676-685.
    11. Koch, Nicolas & Grosjean, Godefroy & Fuss, Sabine & Edenhofer, Ottmar, 2016. "Politics matters: Regulatory events as catalysts for price formation under cap-and-trade," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 121-139.
    12. Rob Aalbers & Victoria Shestalova & Viktoria Kocsis, 2012. "Innovation policy for directing technical change in the power sector," CPB Discussion Paper 223, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    13. Ben Abdallah, Skander & Lasserre, Pierre, 2016. "Asset retirement with infinitely repeated alternative replacements: Harvest age and species choice in forestry," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 144-164.
    14. Oscar Gutiérrez & Francisco Ruiz-Aliseda, 2011. "Real options with unknown-date events," Annals of Finance, Springer, vol. 7(2), pages 171-198, May.
    15. Timothy Erickson & Toni M. Whited, 2000. "Measurement Error and the Relationship between Investment and q," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(5), pages 1027-1057, October.
    16. Arve, Malin & Zwart, Gijsbert, 2023. "Optimal procurement and investment in new technologies under uncertainty," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    17. Shively, Gerald E., 2001. "Price thresholds, price volatility, and the private costs of investment in a developing country grain market," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 399-414, August.
    18. Frans P. Vries & Nick Hanley, 2016. "Incentive-Based Policy Design for Pollution Control and Biodiversity Conservation: A Review," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 63(4), pages 687-702, April.
    19. Marks, Phillipa & Marks, Brian, 2007. "Spectrum Allocation, Spectrum Commons and Public Goods: the Role of the Market," MPRA Paper 6785, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Stern, Nicholas, 2018. "Public economics as if time matters: Climate change and the dynamics of policy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 4-17.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Emissions trading; New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme; greenhouse gas; climate change mitigation; price ceiling; price floor;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:mtu:wpaper:19_08. 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: Maxine Watene (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/motuenz.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.