Evaluation of Environmental Taxation on Multiple Air Pollutants in the Electricity Generation Sector - Evidence from New South Wales, Australia

Zaida Contreras, Tihomir Ancev, and Regina Betz
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Tiho Ancev

Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy, 2014, vol. Volume 3, issue Number 2

Abstract: This paper investigates the effects of environmental taxes on the emissions intensity (measured as mass per TWh) of Nitrogen Oxides (NOx), Sulfur Oxides (SOx), Coarse Particulate Matter (CPM) and Fine Particulate Matter (FPM) from electricity generators in New South Wales (NSW), Australia. Electricity generators in NSW are subject to environmental taxation on air pollution through the Load Based Licensing (LBL) scheme. This paper evaluates whether this environmental policy, after ten years of operation, has led to a reduction in the emissions intensity of these air pollutants. The econometric estimation, based on a Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) model with fixed effects, shows that except for SOx, there is no evidence of emissions reduction that can be attributed to the LBL in NSW. In terms of enabling low-cost abatement through specific monitoring methods, there is no evidence of reduction in NOx or SOx emission intensities due to generators implementing continuous monitoring. By contrast, generators using periodic monitoring methods have lower emission intensities of CPM and FPM. The findings suggest that environmental taxes in NSW have been too low compared with marginal abatement cost estimates and so, they have not created sufficient incentives for generators to reduce their emission intensities across air pollutants.

JEL-codes: F0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.iaee.org/en/publications/eeeparticle.aspx?id=71 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to IAEE members and subscribers.

Related works:
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:aen:eeepjl:eeep3_2_08contreras

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.iaee.org/ ... ons/eeepjournal.aspx

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy from International Association for Energy Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by David Williams ().