Are Sub-National Agreements for Carbon Abatement Effective?

Terrence W. Iverson, Joanne Burgess and Edward Barbier
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Terrence W. Iverson: Department of Economics, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80526, USA

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 14, 1-9

Abstract: Although national commitments to the Paris Climate Accord have waned, carbon mitigation by sub-national entities is on the rise globally. We examine the effectiveness of sub-national jurisdictions (e.g., states, provinces, cities) in collectively enacting greenhouse gas abatement strategies. We develop a simple model to explore the conditions under which an agreement among sub-national jurisdictions within a country may lead to substantial carbon abatement relative to a national policy determined through majority rule. We find that, in the absence of a functional national policy response, a coordinated sub-national agreement can generate meaningful abatement. This could form an important stopgap measure in the absence of better alternatives.

Keywords: carbon abatement; climate change; climate policy; greenhouse gas emissions; Paris Climate Agreement; sub-national agreements (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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