Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Electricity Generation Location And Benefits To Human Health: What Health Benefits Can Be Attributed To Rggi In New Jersey, New York, And Pennsylvania?, Todd Metcalfe

Dissertations - ALL

This paper estimates the benefits, primarily from human health gains, from the longest running U.S. CO2 control program. Further, it examines the patterns of electric generation to evaluate changes at regional and state levels, to better understand the potential of CO2 leakage, which is CO2 being emitted from generation that has moved from a regulated to a non-regulated state, and thus weakening the effects of the regulation.

This examination is achieved using a unique dataset of observed generation levels at fossil fuel plants from the year 2000 to 2013, in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. It is estimated that …

Capping Carbon, David M. Driesen

College of Law - Faculty Scholarship

This article addresses the problem of how to set caps for a cap-and-trade program, a key problem in pending legislation addressing global climate disruption. Previous scholarship on emissions trading programs focuses overwhelmingly on trading’s advantages and sometimes wrongly portrays environmental improvement as an automatic byproduct of adopting a cap-and-trade approach. A trading program’s success, however, depends critically upon timely and effective cap setting.

This article shows that often regulators have employed a best available technology (BAT) approach to cap setting for trading programs, i.e., setting the cap at a level that regulated polluters can achieve with government-identified technology. This descriptive …

The Missing Instrument: Dirty Input Limits, David M. Driesen, Amy Sinden

College of Law - Faculty Scholarship

This article evaluates an environmental protection instrument that the literature has hitherto largely overlooked, Dirty Input Limits (DILs), quantitative limits on the inputs that cause pollution. DILs provide an alternative to cumbersome output-based emissions trading and performance standards. DILs have played a role in some of the world's most prominent environmental success stories. They have also begun to influence climate change policy, because of the impossibility of imposing an output-based cap on transport emissions. We evaluate DILs' administrative advantages, efficiency, dynamic properties, and capacity to better integrate environmental protection efforts. DILs, we show, not only have significant advantages that make …

International Technology Transfer For Climate Policy, David Popp

Center for Policy Research

While the developed world is starting to limit emissions of greenhouse gases, emissions from the developing world are increasing as a result of economic growth. Reducing these emissions while still enabling developing countries to grow requires the use of new technologies. In most cases, these technologies are first created in high-income countries. Thus, the challenge for climate policy is to encourage the transfer of these climate-friendly technologies to the developing world. This policy brief reviews the economic literature on environmental technology transfer. It then discusses the implications of this literature for climate policy, focusing on the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) …

Sustainable Development And Market Liberalism's Shotgun Wedding: Emissions Trading Under The Kyoto Protocol, David M. Driesen

College of Law - Faculty Scholarship

This article analyzes the international emissions trading regime at the heart of the world's effort to address global warming as a means of exploring broader international governance issues. The trading regime seeks to marry two models of global governance, market liberalism, which embraces markets as the model of global governance, and sustainable development, which seeks to change development patterns to protect future generations.

This article explores a previously unacknowledged tension between market liberalism's goal of maximizing short term cost effectiveness and sustainable development's goal of catalyzing technological change for the benefit of future generations. This article presents new data and …

Sustainable Development And Market Liberalism's Shotgun Wedding: Emissions Trading Under The Kyoto Protocol, David M. Driesen

College of Law - Faculty Scholarship

This article analyzes the international emissions trading regime at the heart of the world's effort to address global warming as a means of exploring broader international governance issues. The trading regime seeks to marry two models of global governance, market liberalism, which embraces markets as the model of global governance, and sustainable development, which seeks to change development patterns to protect future generations.

This article explores a previously unacknowledged tension between market liberalism's goal of maximizing short term cost effectiveness and sustainable development's goal of catalyzing technological change for the benefit of future generations. This article presents new data and …