Assessing China's unconventional carbon pricing system
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Currently, China is the world's largest emitter of CO2, accounting for about 28 percent of global emissions. At the time of this writing, China just announced that it aims to have CO2 emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. Achieving this target requires dramatically reducing the reliance on fossil fuel. One of the biggest efforts China is planning is the nationwide carbon emissions trading system that has been piloted in several provinces since 2013. Once implemented, this system will become the world's largest emissions trading system. This dissertation assesses the economic impacts of China's forthcoming nationwide carbon emissions trading system. China's emissions trading system differs from a conventional cap and trade (C&T) system and a carbon tax, the carbon pricing instruments used elsewhere. This nation will employ a tradable performance standard (TPS). A key property of TPS is its rate-based allowance allocation approach. The rate-based approach makes TPS implicitly subsidize output as an implicit output subsidy, which has significant consequences for cost-effectiveness and distributional impacts. This dissertation aims at assessing the economic impacts of this unconventional emissions trading system. It considers the first phase of the system that covers only electricity sector and the second phase that covers electricity, cement and aluminum sectors, offering theoretical analysis and numerical simulations. In Chapter 2, with matching analytically and numerically solved models, we assess the cost-effectiveness and distributional impacts of China's forthcoming TPS for reducing CO2 emissions from the power sector. In Chapter 3, I extend the single-sector partial equilibrium model employed in Chapter 2 to a multi-sector general equilibrium model to examine the impacts of China's TPS across the whole economy. A general equilibrium model is also necessary for the assessments of China's TPS that potentially will be implemented in multiple sectors. In Chapter 4, I examine the impacts of market power on the cost-effectiveness of TPS and C&T. To the best of my knowledge, this chapter is the first study that focuses on the impacts of market power on a rate-based allowance trading system. I consider two types of market power: the market power in the carbon allowance market and the market power in the electricity market. I show how the two types of market power affect TPS and C&T differently.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2020; ©2020 |
| Publication date | 2020; 2020 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Long, Xianling |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Goulder, Lawrence H. (Lawrence Herbert) |
| Thesis advisor | Goulder, Lawrence H. (Lawrence Herbert) |
| Thesis advisor | Sweeney, James L |
| Thesis advisor | Weyant, John P. (John Peter) |
| Degree committee member | Sweeney, James L |
| Degree committee member | Weyant, John P. (John Peter) |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Management Science and Engineering |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Xianling Long. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Management Science and Engineering. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2020. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2020 by Xianling Long
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Also listed in
Loading usage metrics...