IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/ciredw/halshs-03265636.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Carbon Pricing and Power Sector Decarbonisation: Evidence from the UK

Author

Listed:
  • Marion Leroutier

    (PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, CIRED - Centre International de Recherche sur l'Environnement et le Développement - Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AgroParisTech - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - Université Paris-Saclay - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

Decreasing greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation is crucial to tackle climate change. Yet, empirically little is known on the effectiveness of economic instruments in the power sector. This paper examines the impact of the UK Carbon Price Support (CPS), a carbon tax implemented in the UK power sector in 2013. Compared to a synthetic control unit built from other European countries, emissions from the UK power sector declined by 26 percent on an average year between 2013 and 2017. Bounds on the effects of potential UK confounding policies and several placebo tests suggest that the carbon tax caused at least 80% of this decrease. Three mechanisms are highlighted: a decrease in emissions at the intensive margin; the closure of some high-emission plants at the extensive margin; and a higher probability of closure than in the synthetic UK for plants at risk of closure due to European air quality regulations. This paper shows that a carbon tax on electricity generation can lead to successful decarbonisation.

Suggested Citation

  • Marion Leroutier, 2021. "Carbon Pricing and Power Sector Decarbonisation: Evidence from the UK," CIRED Working Papers halshs-03265636, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:ciredw:halshs-03265636
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-03265636
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-03265636/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jonathan Colmer & Ralf Martin & Mirabelle Muûls & Ulrich J. Wagner, 2020. "Does pricing carbon mitigate climate change? Firm-level evidence from the European Union emissions trading scheme," CEP Discussion Papers dp1728, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    2. Lawrence H. Goulder & Robert N. Stavins, 2011. "Challenges from State-Federal Interactions in US Climate Change Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(3), pages 253-257, May.
    3. Gilbert E. Metcalf & James H. Stock, 2023. "The Macroeconomic Impact of Europe's Carbon Taxes," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 15(3), pages 265-286, July.
    4. Grischa Perino, 2018. "New EU ETS Phase 4 rules temporarily puncture waterbed," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 8(4), pages 262-264, April.
    5. Martin, Ralf & de Preux, Laure B. & Wagner, Ulrich J., 2014. "The impact of a carbon tax on manufacturing: Evidence from microdata," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 1-14.
    6. Alberto Abadie & Javier Gardeazabal, 2003. "The Economic Costs of Conflict: A Case Study of the Basque Country," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 113-132, March.
    7. Grischa Perino & Robert A. Ritz & Arthur van Benthem, 2019. "Overlapping Climate Policies," NBER Working Papers 25643, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Nikolay Doudchenko & Guido W. Imbens, 2016. "Balancing, Regression, Difference-In-Differences and Synthetic Control Methods: A Synthesis," NBER Working Papers 22791, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. 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).
    10. Laurent Gobillon & Thierry Magnac, 2016. "Regional Policy Evaluation: Interactive Fixed Effects and Synthetic Controls," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 98(3), pages 535-551, July.
    11. Jan Abrell & Mirjam Kosch & Sebastian Rausch, 2019. "How Effective Was the UK Carbon Tax? — A Machine Learning Approach to Policy Evaluation," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 19/317, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.
    12. 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).
    13. Isaksen, Elisabeth Thuestad, 2020. "Have international pollution protocols made a difference?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    14. Chi Kong Chyong, Bowei Guo, and David Newbery, 2020. "The Impact of a Carbon Tax on the CO2 Emissions Reduction of Wind," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1).
    15. Kim, Man-Keun & Kim, Taehoo, 2016. "Estimating impact of regional greenhouse gas initiative on coal to gas switching using synthetic control methods," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 328-335.
    16. Abadie, Alberto & Diamond, Alexis & Hainmueller, Jens, 2010. "Synthetic Control Methods for Comparative Case Studies: Estimating the Effect of California’s Tobacco Control Program," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 105(490), pages 493-505.
    17. Guo, B. & Newbery, D., 2020. "The Cost of Carbon Leakage: Britain’s Carbon Price Support and Cross-border Electricity Trade," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2014, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    18. Van den Bergh, Kenneth & Delarue, Erik, 2015. "Quantifying CO2 abatement costs in the power sector," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 88-97.
    19. Julius J. Andersson, 2019. "Carbon Taxes and CO2 Emissions: Sweden as a Case Study," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 11(4), pages 1-30, November.
    20. David M. Newbery & David M. Reiner & Robert A. Ritz, 2018. "When is a carbon price floor desirable?," Working Papers EPRG 1816, Energy Policy Research Group, Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.
    21. A. Denny Ellerman & Claudio Marcantonini & Aleksandar Zaklan, 2016. "The European Union Emissions Trading System: Ten Years and Counting," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 10(1), pages 89-107.
    22. Rivers, Nicholas & Schaufele, Brandon, 2015. "Salience of carbon taxes in the gasoline market," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 23-36.
    23. Alberto Abadie & Alexis Diamond & Jens Hainmueller, 2015. "Comparative Politics and the Synthetic Control Method," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 59(2), pages 495-510, February.
    24. Guo, B. & Newbery, D. & Gissey, G., 2019. "The Impact of Unilateral Carbon Taxes on Cross-Border Electricity Trading," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1951, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    25. Bowei Guo & David Newbery, 2020. "The Cost of Trade Distortion: Britain's Carbon Price Support and Cross-border Electricity Trade," Working Papers EPRG2005, Energy Policy Research Group, Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.
    26. I. A. Grant Wilson & Iain Staffell, 2018. "Rapid fuel switching from coal to natural gas through effective carbon pricing," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 3(5), pages 365-372, May.
    27. Lee, Kangil & Melstrom, Richard T., 2018. "Evidence of increased electricity influx following the regional greenhouse gas initiative," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 127-135.
    28. Staffell, Iain, 2017. "Measuring the progress and impacts of decarbonising British electricity," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 463-475.
    29. Christoph Böhringer & Henrike Koschel & Ulf Moslener, 2008. "Efficiency losses from overlapping regulation of EU carbon emissions," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 33(3), pages 299-317, June.
    30. Alberto Abadie, 2021. "Using Synthetic Controls: Feasibility, Data Requirements, and Methodological Aspects," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 59(2), pages 391-425, June.
    31. World Bank & Ecofys, "undated". "State and Trends of Carbon Pricing 2018," World Bank Publications - Reports 29687, The World Bank Group.
    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. Qiu, Dawei & Dong, Zihang & Zhang, Xi & Wang, Yi & Strbac, Goran, 2022. "Safe reinforcement learning for real-time automatic control in a smart energy-hub," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 309(C).
    2. 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).

    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. Leroutier, Marion, 2022. "Carbon pricing and power sector decarbonization: Evidence from the UK," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    2. Marion Leroutier, 2021. "Carbon Pricing and Power Sector Decarbonisation: Evidence from the UK," Working Papers halshs-03265636, HAL.
    3. Pier Basaglia & Sophie Behr & Moritz A. Drupp, 2023. "De-Fueling Externalities: How Tax Salience and Fuel Substitution Mediate Climate and Health Benefits," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 2041, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    4. Pier Basaglia & Sophie M. Behr & Moritz A. Drupp, 2023. "De-Fueling Externalities: Causal Effects of Fuel Taxation and Mediating Mechanisms for Reducing Climate and Pollution Costs," CESifo Working Paper Series 10508, CESifo.
    5. Rafaty, R. & Dolphin, G. & Pretis, F., 2020. "Carbon pricing and the elasticity of CO2 emissions," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 20116, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    6. Rafaty, Ryan & Dolphin, Geoffroy & Pretis, Felix, 2021. "Carbon Pricing and the Elasticity of CO2 Emissions," RFF Working Paper Series 21-33, Resources for the Future.
    7. Brehm, Johannes & aus dem Moore, Nils & Gruhl, Henri, 2022. "Driving Innovation? – Carbon Tax Effects in the Swedish Transport Sector," VfS Annual Conference 2022 (Basel): Big Data in Economics 264085, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    8. Zhang, Yue-Jun & Cheng, Hao-Sen, 2021. "The impact mechanism of the ETS on CO2 emissions from the service sector: Evidence from Beijing and Shanghai," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    9. Arcila, Andres & Baker, John D., 2022. "Evaluating carbon tax policy: A methodological reassessment of a natural experiment," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    10. Daniel Albalate & Germà Bel & Ferran A. Mazaira-Font, 2020. "Ensuring Stability, Accuracy and Meaningfulness in Synthetic Control Methods: The Regularized SHAP-Distance Method," IREA Working Papers 202005, University of Barcelona, Research Institute of Applied Economics, revised Apr 2020.
    11. Bruno Ferman & Cristine Pinto & Vitor Possebom, 2020. "Cherry Picking with Synthetic Controls," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(2), pages 510-532, March.
    12. Irene Botosaru & Bruno Ferman, 2019. "On the role of covariates in the synthetic control method," The Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 22(2), pages 117-130.
    13. Dennis Shen & Peng Ding & Jasjeet Sekhon & Bin Yu, 2022. "Same Root Different Leaves: Time Series and Cross-Sectional Methods in Panel Data," Papers 2207.14481, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2022.
    14. Niklas Potrafke & Fabian Ruthardt & Kaspar Wuthrich, 2020. "Protectionism and economic growth: Causal evidence from the first era of globalization," Papers 2010.02378, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2022.
    15. Michael Funke & Kadri Männasoo & Helery Tasane, 2023. "Regional Economic Impacts of the Øresund Cross-Border Fixed Link: Cui Bono?," CESifo Working Paper Series 10557, CESifo.
    16. Peter Backus & Thien Nguyen, 2021. "The Effect of the Sex Buyer Law on the Market for Sex, Sexual Health and Sexual Violence," Economics Discussion Paper Series 2106, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    17. Tomasz Serwach, 2023. "The European Union and within‐country income inequalities. The case of the new member states," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(7), pages 1890-1939, July.
    18. Runst, Petrik & Thonipara, Anita, 2020. "Dosis facit effectum why the size of the carbon tax matters: Evidence from the Swedish residential sector," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    19. Ayala, Luis & Martín-Román, Javier & Navarro, Carolina, 2023. "Unemployment shocks and material deprivation in the European Union: A synthetic control approach," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 47(1).
    20. Tomasz Serwach, 2022. "The European Union and within-country income inequalities. The case of the New Member States," Working Papers hal-03548416, HAL.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Synthetic control method carbon tax; Synthetic control method; Carbon tax; Electricity generation;
    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:hal:ciredw:halshs-03265636. 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.