A Litmus Test of Greenhouse Gas Policy Initiatives: Electric Utilities

本研究的目的是对应用于电力行业的竞争性温室气体政策举措的成本和有效性进行全面评估，电力行业已经成为任何解决全球变暖问题的主要参与者。现有的研究通常侧重于美国或全球经济总量，并以需求侧为导向，评估消费模式如何随着监管引起的价格变化而变化。相比之下，本项目实施了企业行为的应用宏观经济模型，以评估电力公司如何应对替代政策举措。该模型将用于比较和对比各种政策选择的关键特性，如对燃料征收碳含量税，对任何排放的温室气体的碳当量含量征税，命令减少排放，并减少指令，允许交易。为本项目设计的计量经济学模型和微观数据集将为每项政策模仿产生以下信息：二氧化碳、氧化亚氮、总碳当量排放量的预期减少量、减少这些排放量的边际成本、对电价的影响以及对二氧化硫和灰烬排放的同步影响。这些信息可用于根据相对成本和有效性对相互竞争的政策工具进行排名。

The purpose of this research is to develop a comprehensive assessment of the cost and effectiveness of competing greenhouse gas policy initiatives applied to the electric power industry, an industry already targeted as a primary participant in any solution to global warming. Existing studies typically focus on the aggregate U.S or global economies and have a demand-side orientation, evaluating how consumption patterns will change in response to regulation-induced price changes. In contrast, this project implements an applied macroeconomic model of firm behavior to assess how electric utilities would respond to alternative policy initiatives. The model will be used to compare and contrast the critical properties of various policy options such as a carbon-content tax on fuels, a tax on the carbon-equivalent content of any emitted greenhouse gas, a command reduction in emissions, and a command reduction with allowed trading. The econometric model and micro data set designed for this project will generate the following information for each policy imitative: the expected reductions in carbon dioxide, nitrous oxides, overall carbon-equivalent emissions, the marginal costs of reducing these emissions, the resulting impact on prices of electricity, and the coincident effects on both sulfur dioxide and ash emissions. This information can be used to rank competing policy tools in terms of relative costs and effectiveness.