Information about Australia's coast, including its estuaries and coastal waterways and climate change impact. Global action - facts and fiction. Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency - Home. Comparing Carbon Policies Internationally: the 'challenges' - Productivity Commission. Emission Reduction Policies and Carbon Prices in Key Economies - Productivity Commission. Commissioned study This study has concluded. The final report was sent to government on 31 May 2011 and released on 9 June 2011.
A supplement to this report was released on 16 December 2011. The Australian Government asked the Productivity Commission to undertake a study on the effective carbon prices that result from emissions and energy reduction policies in Australia and other key economies. Effective carbon prices include both explicit carbon prices from emission taxes and tradeable permits, and the implicit prices of other measures, such as direct regulation of technologies, renewable energy targets, or subsidies for low emissions technology. The Commission was to: In conducting the study, the Commission was to: consult with the business sector, government agencies and other interested parties as appropriate in Australia and internationally draw on credible evidence both nationally and internationally, including by utilising local research expertise in economies being examined.
Carbon market overview - Products & services - Point Carbon. Climate change is mainly caused by an accumulation of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere. At the Rio Conference in 1992, there was a broad international recognition of the need for a common effort in order to mitigate climate change. This resulted in the first international legally binding agreement aiming to curb greenhouse gas emissions – the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). According to the UNFCCC, industrialised countries, or Annex I countries, have the main responsibility to mitigate climate change.
In 1997, concrete targets for curbing GHG emissions were established in the Kyoto Protocol. The reduction targets established in the Kyoto Protocol can be met by reducing domestic GHG emissions (through domestic/regional emissions trading schemes and other policy measures), or by utilising the flexible mechanisms allowed under the Kyoto Protocol: Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM) and Joint Implementation (JI). Participants to the Kyoto Protocol. 13.3.3.4 Actions - AR4 WGIII Chapter 13: Policies, instruments, and co-operative arrangements. 13.3.3.4.1 Targets While many types of commitments are identified in the literature on climate change, the most frequently evaluated commitment is that of the binding absolute emission reduction target as included in the Kyoto Protocol for Annex I countries.
The broad conclusion that can be drawn from the literature is that such targets provide certainty about future emission levels of the participating countries (assuming targets will be met). These targets can also be reached in a flexible manner across GHGs and sectors as well as across borders through emission trading and/or project-based mechanisms (in the Kyoto Protocol case, this is referred to as Joint Implementation (JI) and as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). One crucial element is defining and agreeing on the level of the emission targets. Examples of processes to agree on a target include: Participating countries make proposals (pledges) for individual reductions on a bottom-up basis. 13.3.3.4.2 Flexibility provisions. 11.7.6 Technological spillover - AR4 WGIII Chapter 11: Mitigation from a cross-sectoral perspective.
Mitigation action may lead to more advances in mitigation technologies. Transfer of these technologies, typically from industrialized nations to developing countries, is another avenue for spillover effects. However, as discussed in Chapter 2, effective transfer implies that developing countries have an active role in both the development and the adaptation of the technologies. The transfer also implies changes in flows of capital, production and trade between regions.
Sijm et al. (2004) assess the spillover effects of technological change. However, results from bottom-up and top-down models are strongly influenced by assumptions and data transformations and that lead to high levels of uncertainty. The existence of spillover effects also changes the theoretical conclusions in the economics literature. Emissions trading. Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change - HM Treasury. Sir Nicholas Stern, Head of the Government Economic Service and Adviser to the Government on the economics of climate change and development, is delighted to present his report to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the Economics of Climate Change: The Stern team has moved to the Office of Climate Change. Publications posted after the Stern Review including the series of papers printed in the World Economics Journal, are now available on the Stern team page on the Office of Climate Change website. Some of the above documents are available in Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF).
If you do not have Adobe Acrobat installed on your computer you can download the software free of charge from the Adobe website. For alternative ways to read PDF documents and further information on website accessibility visit the HM Treasury accessibility page. Back to top Office of Climate Change. 11.7.2 Carbon leakage - AR4 WGIII Chapter 11: Mitigation from a cross-sectoral perspective. The Story of Cap & Trade IPCC WGII - AR4 Review Comments. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY - AR4 WGIII Chapter 11: Mitigation from a cross-sectoral perspective. Mitigation potentials and costs from sectoral studies The economic potentials for GHG mitigation at different costs have been reviewed for 2030 on the basis of bottom-up studies.
The review confirms the Third Assessment Report (TAR) finding that there are substantial opportunities for mitigation levels of about 6 GtCO2-eq involving net benefits (costs less than 0), with a large share being located in the buildings sector. Additional potentials are 7 GtCO2-eq at a unit cost (carbon price) of less than 20 US$/tCO2-eq, with the total, low-cost, potential being in the range of 9 to 18 GtCO2-eq. The total range is estimated to be 13 to 26 GtCO2-eq, at a cost of less than 50 US$/tCO2-eq and 16 to 31 GtCO2-eq at a cost of less than 100 US$/tCO2-eq (370 US$/tC-eq).
As reported in Chapter 3, these ranges are comparable with those suggested by the top-down models for these carbon prices by 2030, although there are differences in sectoral attribution (medium agreement, medium evidence). Bioenergy. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Click to the link below to read details: Assessment Reports: These are published materials composed of the full scientific and technical assessment of climate change, generally in three volumes, one for each of the Working Groups of the IPCC, together with their Summaries for Policymakers, plus a Synthesis Report Special Reports: These are materials that provide an assessment of a specific issue and generally follow the same structure as a volume of an Assessment ReportMethodology Reports: These are materials that provide practical guidelines for the preparation of greenhouse gas inventories Translations in non-UN languagesReporting an Error These are published materials composed of the full scientific and technical assessment of climate change, generally in three volumes, one for each of the Working Groups of the IPCC, plus a Synthesis Report.
Each of the Working Group volumes is composed of individual chapters, an optional Technical Summary and a Summary for Policymakers. Cover. Carbon Tax Information, Carbon Tax Reference Articles - CanadaSpace Reference. Yohe et al. -- Economic Cost of Sea Level Rise. This project will develop methodological templates for investigating adaptation to the threat of rising sea in the context of coastal storms, for calibrating the value of information, for modeling how information is used (including the results of integrated assessments) and exploring other issues of related to assessing vulnerability to climate change in particular and global change more generally. Insight will be developed into (1) how to apply and adapt the method to coastal zones that lie beyond the boundaries of developed economies, how to bring state of the art erosion modeling to bear on the method and (2) how to incorporate a wide variety of institutional environments that restrict or enhance the efficacy of local adaptation decisions and strategies.
We expect, as well, to foster analyses of coastal zones in developing regions of the world. The role of adaptation in determining vulnerability to global change and/or global change policy will continue to be a second focus. ECON 101: Carbon Tax vs. Cap-and-Trade. The purpose of this page is to describe the differences between a carbon tax and carbon cap-and-trade policies using the most basic of all environmental economic models.
A Model of a Single Polluting Firm Consider a polluting firm that faces an increasing marginal pollution abatement cost curve (click on the thumbnail for a larger picture). Left unregulated it will choose to abate zero units of carbon and avoid the abatement costs represented by the area underneath the marginal abatement cost curve: B + C + D. Suppose a benefit-cost analysis has determined that optimal abatement occurs at the blue dot where the marginal benefit and marginal cost curves intersect. The resulting level of emissions is e* (measured right to left along the horizontal axis). Carbon Tax One way to achieve this level of abatement is to set a tax where marginal benefit equals marginal abatement cost -- represented by the horizontal "tax" line.
Results: Carbon Cap A Model with Two Polluting Firms Carbon Cap-and-Trade. Supreme Court aces climate change ruling By Douglas A. Henderson, Peter S. Glaser Last week, the Supreme Court tackled one of the country’s most contentious environmental issues, climate change, in AEP v. Connecticut. Without taking sides in the climate change debate, a unanimous court rejected an attempt by California, New York and six other states to circumvent the authority of Congress to determine national energy policy and to force certain industries to cap their carbon dioxide emissions by judicial fiat.
Written by Clinton-appointee Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Supreme Court’s decision is not pro-business or anti-business, and it’s surely not pro-environment or anti-environment. Rather, the case is pro-Constitution. The facts of the case are simple enough. These states sought an injunction that would require a significant reduction in the operation of the defendants’ coal-fueled electric generating stations. With a stroke of the pen, the court put an end to the states’ tort claims, hopefully for good.
Douglas A. Carbon Tax Center. Carbon Tax Center » Demographics. Carbon taxes, to be effective, will raise large sums of revenue. But generating revenue for the government isn’t their main job; indeed, swapping out revenues from existing and onerous taxes like payroll taxes against new revenues from carbon taxes, in revenue-neutral “tax shifts,” is built into many carbon tax proposals and is strongly supported by the Carbon Tax Center. Rather, the intent of robustly taxing carbon emissions is to cut those emissions by decisively raising prices of fossil fuels relative to conservation, efficiency and clean energy such as renewables. We don’t need more tax revenue in order to cut CO2 emissions, we need to shift more of the total tax burden onto dirty energy, and to do so without harming low- and middle-income families..
Effects of Carbon Taxes Differ Across the Income Range Most middle- and low-income households spend a larger percentage of their income on gasoline, other fuels and electricity than do higher-income households. We NEED a CARBON TAX! (Yes we do!) - Ars Technica OpenForum. Excelon -- since I am absolutely certain that this will be a bone of enormous contention in the coming years, let me point out that the statutory basis for this is as thoroughly established as it can possibly be. SCOTUS (and indeed a supreme court with a clear majority of "very conservative" Jurors) ruled that CO2 is a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, and that the EPA must proceed with it's regulatory responsibilities. The only way to stop this is for Congress to revise the Clean Air Act, which of course people are now threatening to do. See here for reportage of the Supreme Court Decision www.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/.../03scotus.html See here for Wikipedia's more detailed discussion of Mass. vs EPA 549 US 497 and links to original documents: ... ion_Agency See here for the EPA's endangerment finding: www.epa.gov/climatechange/endangerment.html In one sense having the EPA draft regulations will in fact lead to science-based regulations.
Quote: Essential Background. This time line detailing the international response to climate change provides a contextual entry point to the Essential Background. You can also use the links on the left-hand column under Essential Background to navigate this section. 2013 - Key decisions adopted at COP19/CMP9 include decisions on further advancing the Durban Platform, the Green Climate Fund and Long-Term Finance, the Warsaw Framework for REDD Plus and the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage. More on the Warsaw Outcomes. 2012 - The Doha Amendment to the Kyoto Protocol is adopted by the CMP at CMP8.
More on the Doha Amendment. Several decisions taken opening a gateway to greater ambition and action on all levels. 2011 — The Durban Platform for Enhanced Action drafted and accepted by the COP, at COP17. 2010 — Cancun Agreements drafted and largely accepted by the COP, at COP16. 2009 — Copenhagen Accord drafted at COP15 in Copenhagen. 2007 — IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report released. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. To publicize and disseminate findings of its reports to its key audiences, including the scientific and policymaker communities worldwide, IPCC produces outreach materials and organizes outreach activities such as events and presentations by IPCC representatives at various national and international meetings. This page contains information on these events, outreach materials produced by the IPCC and its partner organizations.
Emissions-euets.com. EUA/CER spread tendency and the legal framework for CER’s after 2012. Despite an extensive variety of provisions relating to the status of CER units in the post-2012 legal framework of the Directive 2009/29/EC (aiming generally at securing stability of the long-term green investments), at least one of these provisions should be of particular concern to the CER buyers and investors. The relevant legal scheme for the CER’s use in the framework of the EU ETS in the third trading period is set out in the Article 11a of the Directive 2009/29/EC (Use of CERs and ERUs from project activities in the Community scheme before the entry into force of an international agreement on climate change).
Those interested in particulars should refer to the body of the text of the Directive and now I would like to concentrate only on paragraph 9 of that Article, which states: “9. From 1 January 2013, measures may be applied to restrict the use of specific credits from project types. This problem is of course important, but, obviously, not the only one. Sustainable 60 >Sustainable 60| Unlimited. Home - Point Carbon - Providing critical insights into energy and environmental markets. Stern Review final report - HM Treasury. 2.2 Concept of Radiative Forcing - AR4 WGI Chapter 2: Changes in Atmospheric Constituents and in Radiative Forcing. IPCC Third Assessment Report - Climate Change 2001 - Complete online versions | UNEP/GRID-Arendal - Publications - Other. Economic Instruments and Environmental Policy | Dieter Helm.
IPCC Third Assessment Report - Climate Change 2001 - Complete online versions | UNEP/GRID-Arendal - Publications - Other. 13.2.1.2 Taxes and charges - AR4 WGIII Chapter 13: Policies, instruments, and co-operative arrangements.