The Challenges of Climate for Energy Markets

Timothy Brennan

No 09-111, UMBC Economics Department Working Papers from UMBC Department of Economics

Abstract: Among the many complex issues of technology, governance, and market design affecting the electricity sector, climate policy has become dominant. From the perspective of a nonspecialist looking at this changing dominance, a quiz illuminates some of the peculiar uses of language one can find in climate change and energy efficiency policy. Six economic challenges are then examined: cap-and-trade vs. taxes, non-price regulations, energy efficiency policies, mitigation vs. adaptation, trade effects, and transmission planning. Three additional challenges affect not just the means to the climate policy end but also the end itself: the “fat tails†problem, discount rates, and whether environmental protection should be evaluated by aggregating willingness to pay across persons. Planners in the public and private sectors need to be aware of not only the economic policy challenges but also arguments that may influence the intensity of the climate policies with which they have to cope.

Keywords: climate change; energy policy; electricity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L94 Q48 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2009-09-01, Revised 2009-09-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env and nep-pke
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.umbc.edu/economics/wpapers/wp_09_111.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Challenges of Climate for Energy Markets (2009)
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:umb:econwp:09111

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in UMBC Economics Department Working Papers from UMBC Department of Economics UMBC Department of Economics 1000 Hilltop Circle Baltimore MD 21250, USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christelle Viauroux ().