 Climate Policies: A Burden, or a Gain?Thierry Bréchet and Henry Tulkens The Energy Journal, 2015, vol. 36, issue 3, 155-170 Abstract: That climate policies are costly is evident and therefore often create major fears. But the alternative (no action) also has a cost. Therefore, mitigation costs netted of the damage costs avoided are the only figure that can seriously be considered as the “genuine cost†of a policy. We elaborate on this view of a policy’s cost by distinguishing between its “direct†cost component and its avoided damage cost component; we then confront the two so as to evaluate its genuine cost. As damages avoided are equivalent to the benefits generated, this brings climate policies naturally in the realm of benefit-cost analysis. However, the sheer benefit-cost criterion may not be a sufficient incentive for a country to be induced to cooperate internationally, a necessary condition for an effective global climate policy. We therefore also explore how to make use of this criterion in the context of international climate cooperation. Keywords: Climate policy; Integrated assessment models; Benefit-cost analysis; International cooperation (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:sae:enejou:v:36:y:2015:i:3:p:155-170 DOI: 10.5547/01956574.36.3.tbre Access Statistics for this article More articles in The Energy Journal |
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