IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/gunwpe/0529.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Synergies and Trade-offs between Climate and Local Air Pollution: Policies in Sweden

Author

Listed:
  • Bonilla, Jorge

    (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University)

  • Coria, Jessica

    (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University)

  • Sterner, Thomas

    (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University)

Abstract

In this paper, we explore the synergies and tradeoffs between abatement of global and local pollution. We built a unique dataset of Swedish heat and power plants with detailed boiler-level data 2001-2009 on not only production and inputs but also emissions of CO2 and NOx. Both pollutants are subject to strict policies in Sweden. CO2 is subject to multiple levels of governance using environmental instruments such as the EU ETS and Swedish carbon taxes; NOx – as a precursor of acid rain and eutrophication – is regulated by a heavy fee. Using a quadratic directional output distance function, we characterize changes in technical efficiency as well as patterns of substitutability in response to the policies mentioned. The fact that generating units face a trade-off between the pollutants indicates a need for policy coordination.

Suggested Citation

  • Bonilla, Jorge & Coria, Jessica & Sterner, Thomas, 2012. "Synergies and Trade-offs between Climate and Local Air Pollution: Policies in Sweden," Working Papers in Economics 529, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0529
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2077/29167
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ambec, Stefan & Coria, Jessica, 2013. "Prices vs quantities with multiple pollutants," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 123-140.
    2. Rolf Färe & Carlos Martins-Filho & Michael Vardanyan, 2010. "On functional form representation of multi-output production technologies," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 33(2), pages 81-96, April.
    3. Fare, Rolf & Grosskopf, Shawna & Weber, William L., 2006. "Shadow prices and pollution costs in U.S. agriculture," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 89-103, January.
    4. Charles Blackorby & R. Robert Russell, 1981. "The Morishima Elasticity of Substitution; Symmetry, Constancy, Separability, and its Relationship to the Hicks and Allen Elasticities," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 48(1), pages 147-158.
    5. G. M.P. Swann, 2009. "The Economics of Innovation," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 13211, December.
    6. Burtraw, Dallas & Krupnick, Alan & Palmer, Karen & Paul, Anthony & Toman, Michael & Bloyd, Cary, 2003. "Ancillary benefits of reduced air pollution in the US from moderate greenhouse gas mitigation policies in the electricity sector," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 650-673, May.
    7. Xepapadeas, Anastasios & de Zeeuw, Aart, 1999. "Environmental Policy and Competitiveness: The Porter Hypothesis and the Composition of Capital," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 165-182, March.
    8. Blackorby, Charles & Russell, R Robert, 1989. "Will the Real Elasticity of Substitution Please Stand Up? (A Comparison of the Allen/Uzawa and Morishima Elasticities)," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(4), pages 882-888, September.
    9. Caillaud, B. & Jullien, B. & Picard, P., 1996. "Hierarchical organization and incentives," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(3-5), pages 687-695, April.
    10. Nijkamp, Peter & Rietveld, Piet, 1981. "Multi-objective multi-level policy models : An application to regional and environmental planning," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 63-89.
    11. Hayfield, Tristen & Racine, Jeffrey S., 2008. "Nonparametric Econometrics: The np Package," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 27(i05).
    12. Eichner, Thomas & Pethig, Rüdiger, 2009. "Efficient CO2 emissions control with emissions taxes and international emissions trading," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(6), pages 625-635, August.
    13. M. Murty & Surender Kumar & Kishore Dhavala, 2007. "Measuring environmental efficiency of industry: a case study of thermal power generation in India," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 38(1), pages 31-50, September.
    14. Isaksson, Lena Hoglund, 2005. "Abatement costs in response to the Swedish charge on nitrogen oxide emissions," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 102-120, July.
    15. Åsa Löfgren & Adrian Muller, 2010. "Swedish CO 2 Emissions 1993–2006: An Application of Decomposition Analysis and Some Methodological Insights," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 47(2), pages 221-239, October.
    16. Fare, Rolf, et al, 1993. "Derivation of Shadow Prices for Undesirable Outputs: A Distance Function Approach," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 75(2), pages 374-380, May.
    17. Sterner, Thomas & Hoglund Isaksson, Lena, 2006. "Refunded emission payments theory, distribution of costs, and Swedish experience of NOx abatement," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 93-106, April.
    18. Rolf Färe & Shawna Grosskopf & Carl A. Pasurka & William L. Weber, 2012. "Substitutability among undesirable outputs," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(1), pages 39-47, January.
    19. Fare, Rolf & Grosskopf, Shawna & Noh, Dong-Woon & Weber, William, 2005. "Characteristics of a polluting technology: theory and practice," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 126(2), pages 469-492, June.
    20. Rolf Färe & Shawna Grosskopf & William L. Weber, 2001. "Shadow Prices of Missouri Public Conservation Land," Public Finance Review, , vol. 29(6), pages 444-460, November.
    21. Kumar, Surender & Managi, Shunsuke, 2011. "Non-separability and substitutability among water pollutants: evidence from India," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 16(6), pages 709-733, December.
    22. Li, Qi & Maasoumi, Esfandiar & Racine, Jeffrey S., 2009. "A nonparametric test for equality of distributions with mixed categorical and continuous data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 148(2), pages 186-200, February.
    23. Sterner, Thomas & Turnheim, Bruno, 2009. "Innovation and diffusion of environmental technology: Industrial NOx abatement in Sweden under refunded emission payments," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(12), pages 2996-3006, October.
    24. Stiroh, Kevin J., 1999. "Measuring input substitution in thrifts: morishima, allen-uzawa, and cross-price elasticities," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 145-157, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Coria, Jessica & Hennlock, Magnus & Sterner, Thomas, 2018. "Fiscal Federalism, Interjurisdictional Externalities and Overlapping Policies," Working Papers in Economics 742, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    2. Coria, Jessica & Jaraite, Jurate, 2015. "Carbon Pricing: Transaction Costs of Emissions Trading vs. Carbon Taxes," Working Papers in Economics 609, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jorge Bonilla & Jessica Coria & Thomas Sterner, 2018. "Technical Synergies and Trade-Offs Between Abatement of Global and Local Air Pollution," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 70(1), pages 191-221, May.
    2. Wei, Chu & Löschel, Andreas & Liu, Bing, 2013. "An empirical analysis of the CO2 shadow price in Chinese thermal power enterprises," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 22-31.
    3. Bostian, Moriah B. & Herlihy, Alan T., 2014. "Valuing tradeoffs between agricultural production and wetland condition in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic region," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 284-291.
    4. Zhang, Ning & Huang, Xuhui & Qi, Chao, 2022. "The effect of environmental regulation on the marginal abatement cost of industrial firms: Evidence from the 11th Five-Year Plan in China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
    5. Zhou, Yi & Zhou, Wenji & Wei, Chu, 2023. "Environmental performance of the Chinese cement enterprise: An empirical analysis using a text-based directional vector," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    6. Matsushita, Kyohei & Yamane, Fumihiro, 2012. "Pollution from the electric power sector in Japan and efficient pollution reduction," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 1124-1130.
    7. Aparajita Singh & Haripriya Gundimeda, 2021. "Measuring technical efficiency and shadow price of water pollutants for the leather industry in India: a directional distance function approach," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 59(1), pages 71-93, February.
    8. Surender Kumar & Rakesh Kumar Jain, 2021. "Cost of CO2 emission mitigation and its decomposition: evidence from coal-fired thermal power sector in India," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 61(2), pages 693-717, August.
    9. Zhang, Ning & Huang, Xuhui & Liu, Yunxiao, 2021. "The cost of low-carbon transition for China's coal-fired power plants: A quantile frontier approach," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    10. Limin Du & Aoife Hanley & Chu Wei, 2015. "Marginal Abatement Costs of Carbon Dioxide Emissions in China: A Parametric Analysis," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 61(2), pages 191-216, June.
    11. Silva, Elvira & Magalhães, Manuela, 2023. "Environmental efficiency, irreversibility and the shadow price of emissions," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 306(2), pages 955-967.
    12. Rakesh Kumar Jain & Surender Kumar, 2018. "Shadow price of CO2 emissions in Indian thermal power sector," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 20(4), pages 879-902, October.
    13. Wen, Xiaojie & Yao, Shunbo & Sauer, Johannes, 2022. "Shadow prices and abatement cost of soil erosion in Shaanxi Province, China: Convex expectile regression approach," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 201(C).
    14. Jindal, Abhinav & Nilakantan, Rahul & Sinha, Avik, 2024. "CO2 emissions abatement costs and drivers for Indian thermal power industry," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    15. Huiming Xie & Xiaopeng Wang & Manhong Shen & Chu Wei, 2022. "Abatement costs of combatting industrial water pollution: convergence across Chinese provinces," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 24(9), pages 10752-10767, September.
    16. Fullerton, Don & Karney, Daniel H., 2018. "Multiple pollutants, co-benefits, and suboptimal environmental policies," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 52-71.
    17. Zhao, Yu & Zhong, Honglin & Kong, Fanbin & Zhang, Ning, 2023. "Can China achieve carbon neutrality without power shortage? A substitutability perspective," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 182(C).
    18. Zaida Contreras, Tihomir Ancev, and Regina Betz, 2014. "Evaluation of Environmental Taxation on Multiple Air Pollutants in the Electricity Generation Sector - Evidence from New South Wales, Australia," Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2).
    19. Kumar, Surender & Jain, Rakesh Kumar, 2019. "Carbon-sensitive meta-productivity growth and technological gap: An empirical analysis of Indian thermal power sector," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 104-116.
    20. Wang, Ailun & Hu, Shuo & Lin, Boqiang, 2021. "Emission abatement cost in China with consideration of technological heterogeneity," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 290(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Interaction of environmental policies; shadow pricing; directional distance function; climate change; local pollution.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H23 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Externalities; Redistributive Effects; Environmental Taxes and Subsidies
    • L51 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Economics of Regulation
    • L94 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Electric Utilities
    • L98 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Government Policy
    • Q48 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Government Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0529. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ann-Christin Räätäri Nyström (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/naiguse.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.