 A regression on climate policy: The European Commission’s legislation to reduce CO2 emissions from automobilesManuel Frondel, Christoph Schmidt and Colin Vance Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 2011, vol. 45, issue 10, 1043-1051 Abstract: As part of its efforts to reach the targets of the Kyoto Protocol, in April 2009 the European Commission enacted new legislation to reduce the per-kilometer CO2 emissions of newly registered automobiles. This paper critically assesses this legislation with respect to its economic and technological underpinnings. First, we argue that the reliance on targets based on per-kilometer emissions not only conceals the true cost of compliance and thereby stifles informed public discourse, but is also less cost-effective than alternative measures such as emissions trading. Second, the emission targets stipulated in this legislation are based on linear-regression methods that we demonstrate to be poorly justified and misleading. Using instead stochastic-frontier analysis, which is argued to more accurately reflect the industry’s technological status quo, alternative targets are consequently proposed. Keywords: Technological progress; Private automobiles; Efficiency standards (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:transa:v:45:y:2011:i:10:p:1043-1051 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1016/j.tra.2009.12.001 Access Statistics for this article Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice is currently edited by John (J.M.) Rose More articles in Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice from Elsevier |
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