When do increasing carbon taxes accelerate global warming? A note on the green paradox

Ottmar Edenhofer and Matthias Kalkuhl

Energy Policy, 2011, vol. 39, issue 4, 2208-2212

Abstract: The "green paradox" by Hans-Werner Sinn suggests that increasing resource taxes accelerate global warming because resource owners increase near-term extraction in fear of higher future taxation. In this note we show that this effect does only occur for the specific set of carbon taxes that increase at a rate higher than the effective discount rate of the resource owners. We calculate a critical initial value for the carbon tax that leads to a decreased cumulative consumption over the entire (infinite) time horizon. Applying our formal findings to carbon taxes for several mitigation targets, we conclude that there is a low risk of a green paradox in case the regulator implements and commits to a permanently mal-adjusted tax. This remaining risk can be avoided by emissions trading scheme as suggested by Sinn--as long as the emission caps are set appropriately and the intertemporal permit market works correctly.

Keywords: Climate; policy; Resource; taxes; Supply-side; dynamics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (38)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301-4215(11)00030-9
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:enepol:v:39:y:2011:i:4:p:2208-2212

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

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