Forward-looking assessment of the GHG abatement cost: Application to China

Sheng Dai, Xun Zhou and Timo Kuosmanen

Energy Economics, 2020, vol. 88, issue C

Abstract: Evaluation of abatement costs is critical in setting reduction goals and devising climate policy. However, reliable forward-looking assessment of the short-term effects of climate policy remains a major challenge. Using panel data of 30 Chinese provinces during 1997–2015, we first estimate the marginal CO2 abatement costs using a novel data-driven approach, convex quantile regression. Based on the marginal abatement cost estimates and China's plans regarding carbon intensity reduction and economic growth, we present a forward-looking assessment of the abatement costs for Chinese provinces for 2016–2020. Our main finding is that all the Chinese provinces have a negative abatement cost, which means these provinces can benefit from an increase in the absolute level of CO2 emissions despite the constraint on carbon intensity. The magnitudes of economic benefits exhibit a significant regional disparity because some provinces can increase more CO2 emissions than others. However, there is still costly carbon intensity abatement relative to a counterfactual where the provinces meet their economic growth targets but in the absence of the intensity reduction constraints. Policy implications have been proposed to enhance the efficiency and fairness of climate policy in China.

Keywords: Abatement cost; Climate policy; Convex quantile regression; Forward-looking assessment; Regional disparity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O44 Q43 Q51 Q52 Q54 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988320300979
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:eneeco:v:88:y:2020:i:c:s0140988320300979

DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2020.104758

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Economics is currently edited by R. S. J. Tol, Beng Ang, Lance Bachmeier, Perry Sadorsky, Ugur Soytas and J. P. Weyant

More articles in Energy Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().