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Incentives for energy efficiency in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme

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Abstract

This paper explores the incentives for energy efficiency induced by the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) for installations in the energy and industry sectors. Our analysis of the National Allocation Plans for 27 EU Member States for phase 2 of the EU ETS (2008–2012) suggests that the price and cost effects for improvements in carbon and energy efficiency in the energy and industry sectors will be stronger than in phase 1 (2005–2007), but only because the European Commission has substantially reduced the number of allowances to be allocated by the Member States. To the extent that companies from these sectors (notably power producers) pass through the extra costs for carbon, higher prices for allowances translate into stronger incentives for the demand-side energy efficiency. With the cuts in allocation to energy and industry sectors, these will be forced to greater reductions; thus, the non-ET sectors like household, tertiary, and transport will have to reduce less, which is more in line with the cost-efficient share of emission reductions. The findings also imply that domestic efficiency improvements in the energy and industry sectors may remain limited since companies can make substantial use of credits from the Kyoto Mechanisms. The analysis of the rules for existing installations, new projects, and closures suggests that incentives for energy efficiency are higher in phase 2 than in phase 1 because of the increased application of benchmarking to new and existing installations and because a lower share of allowances will be allocated for free. Nevertheless, there is still ample scope to further improve the EU ETS so that the full potential for energy efficiency can be realized.

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Notes

  1. Higher carbon efficiency is typically the result of improvements in energy efficiency. However, this is not necessarily the case for fuel switching, and it does not apply to carbon capture and storage either (IPCC 2005). We do not always make this distinction in the paper and the terms “carbon efficiency” and “energy efficiency” are used interchangeably.

  2. See Fischer (2005) for a recent overview of this topic.

  3. In addition, EUAs from phase 1 generally could not be transferred into phase 2 (see also Schleich et al. 2006). However, such banking of EUAs will be allowed starting from phase 2 onwards.

  4. France’s NAP was only accepted without a reduction of its allocation because France withdrew the NAP it submitted first and reduced its ET budget according to the EC’s formula (−14.7% or −22.9 million EUA/a).

  5. The NAPs submitted by the Member States together with the European Commission’s decisions are available at http://ec.europa.eu/environment/climat/2nd_phase_ep.htm. For all Member States, we use figures from approved NAPs, even for those which are challenging the EC’s decisions in court (Latvia, Estonia, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary).

  6. The set of EU-12 Member States includes the new Member States which have entered the European Union in 2004 and 2007: Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Rumania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. The remaining Member States will be referred to as EU-15 Member States.

  7. For a detailed description on the methodology, see Rogge et al. (2006).

  8. When interpreting the quantitative results, it should be kept in mind that these figures do not fully account for closures and new entrants.

  9. This condition then emerges from the first-order condition of the cost minimization problem for achieving a given emission target.

  10. In practice, such negative effects are likely to be small and limited to a few products including primary steel produced from blast oxygen furnaces, aluminum, or nitric acid (e.g., Peterson and Schleich 2007; Hourcade et al. 2008).

  11. These results were obtained for lower fuel prices than currently observed. Arguably, substantially higher fuel prices may lead to a different outcome since they tend to raise the costs for abatement measures available particularly in the ET sector (e.g., fuel switch).

  12. In general, Ramsey pricing refers to a linear pricing scheme designed for a multiproduct natural monopolist, which maximizes social welfare while allowing the monopolist sufficient profits to cover total costs. Ramsey pricing then implies prices above marginal costs in inverse proportion to the elasticity of demand (see Ramsey 1927).

  13. For an isoelastic demand function, the pass through rate will be more than one since, for example, an increase in costs by 10% would also result in a 10% increase in the power price.

  14. The observation that the price for EUAs in the (rather thin) spot market did not drop to zero but instead remained around or above 10 to 15€ per EUA once the number of surplus allowances became common knowledge in May 2006 is consistent with this interpretation.

  15. In fact, a clear ranking of environmental policies (emissions trading, environmental taxes, standards, emission rates) in terms of innovation is not possible once technology spillovers, market structure, or the regulator’s response to diffusion are taken into account (see Fischer et al. 2003; or Requate 2005).

  16. See also Bovenberg and Goulder (2002) and Bovenberg et al. (2005), who empirically and theoretically analyze the adverse distributional effects of auctioning emission allowances for emission-related industries. By the same token, profit losses of these industries may be avoided through the free allocation of emission allowances. However, the higher the abatement requirements, the higher is the efficiency costs of such compensating policies because they force the government to forego auctioning revenue and—in the absence of lump-sum taxation—to rely more heavily on regular distorting taxes.

  17. This reasoning implicitly assumes that the budget for installations receiving a benchmarking allocation is not fixed. If the budget were fixed, allocation would be independent of the benchmark level because a compliance factor would be applied to exactly balance the budget. In this case, allocation to an installation would correspond to that installation’s activity rate share.

  18. The Netherlands, Flanders, and Wallonia, where allocation is based on covenants or voluntary agreements, use BAT benchmarks for existing installations. However, as in phase 1, they use benchmarks to calculate the efficiency factor (i.e., difference between BAT and actual efficiency) which is used in the allocation formula (see “Appendix”).

  19. However, under the current closure rules, which essentially provide an output subsidy to incumbent installations (see below), free allocation to new entrants may be considered second best because it counters the bias against closure (Åhman and Holmgren 2006).

  20. Total emissions may increase if production is displaced to regions where companies are not subject to climate policy regulations and where production is more carbon-intensive than in the EU.

Abbreviations

BAT:

best available technology

BM:

benchmark

CCGT:

combined gas cycle turbines

CDM:

clean development mechanism

CHP:

combined heat and power

CITL:

community independent transaction log

CO2e:

CO2 equivalents

EC:

European Commission

ET:

emissions trading

EU:

European Union

EUA:

European Union allowance

EU ETS:

EU Emissions Trading Scheme

JI:

joint implementation

KM:

Kyoto Mechanisms (i.e. JI, CDM)

NAP:

National Allocation Plan

VET:

verified emissions table

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank four anonymous referees for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Participants at the European Council for Energy-Efficient Economy Summer Study 2007 in La Colle sur Loup, France, also provided helpful suggestions. Research assistance by Johanna Cludius, Christian Möhrmann, Jakob Rager, Manuel Strauch, and Saskia Ziemann is also acknowledged, as well as proofreading by Gillian Bowman-Koehler and Rob Passey. Parts of this research were sponsored by the Volkswagen Foundation.

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Table 3 Summary table of national allocation plans for phase 2

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Schleich, J., Rogge, K. & Betz, R. Incentives for energy efficiency in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. Energy Efficiency 2, 37–67 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12053-008-9029-3

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