Where in the World is it Cheapest to Cut Carbon Emissions? Ranking Countries by Total and Marginal Cost of Abatement

David Stern, John Pezzey and Neil Lambie

CCEP Working Papers from Centre for Climate & Energy Policy, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University

Abstract: Countries with low marginal costs of abating carbon emissions may have high total costs, and vice versa, for a given climate mitigation policy. This may help to explain different countries' policy stances on climate mitigation. We hypothesize that, under a common percentage cut in emissions intensity relative to business as usual (BAU), countries with higher BAU emissions intensities have lower marginal abatement costs, but total costs relative to output will be similar across countries; and under a common carbon price, relative total costs are higher in emissions-intensive countries. Using the results of the 22nd Energy Modeling Forum, we estimate marginal abatement cost curves for the US, EU, China, and India, which we use to estimate marginal and total costs of abatement under a number of policy options currently under international debate. The results of this analysis provide support for our hypotheses.

JEL-codes: Q52 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env and nep-reg
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://ccep.anu.edu.au/data/2011/pdf/wpapers/CCEP1111Stern.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Where in the World is it Cheapest to Cut Carbon Emissions? Ranking Countries by Total and Marginal Cost of Abatement (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:een:ccepwp:1111

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CCEP Working Papers from Centre for Climate & Energy Policy, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCEP ().