IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/cnpexx/v23y2018i6p690-710.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How Low Can It Go? Analysing the Political Economy of Carbon Market Design and Low Carbon Prices

Author

Listed:
  • Kate Ervine

Abstract

Despite the ascendency of carbon pricing as a key regulatory strategy for governing anthropogenic climate change, insufficient attention has been paid to the issue of price discovery in emission trading schemes, now the dominant form of carbon pricing globally. By analysing the political economy of carbon market design, this paper highlights a number of design features that are instrumental in depressing carbon prices across the world’s emission trading schemes, keeping them well below those considered necessary to spur deep emission reductions in order to avoid catastrophic global warming. In doing so, it advances critiques of carbon trading by illuminating the extent to which carbon markets manifest as expressions of specific power relations rooted in the political economy of advanced capitalism, with low prices ensuring minimal disruption to business as usual.

Suggested Citation

  • Kate Ervine, 2018. "How Low Can It Go? Analysing the Political Economy of Carbon Market Design and Low Carbon Prices," New Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(6), pages 690-710, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:6:p:690-710
    DOI: 10.1080/13563467.2018.1384454
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13563467.2018.1384454
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13563467.2018.1384454?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Hu, Yuan & Kuhn, Lena & Zeng, Weizhong & Glauben, Thomas, 2023. "Who benefits from payments for ecosystem services? Policy lessons from a forest carbon sink program in China," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 214(C).
    2. Wei, Yigang & Liang, Xin & Xu, Liang & Kou, Gang & Chevallier, Julien, 2023. "Trading, storage, or penalty? Uncovering firms' decision-making behavior in the Shanghai emissions trading scheme: Insights from agent-based modeling," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C).
    3. Teun Schrieks & Julia Swart & Fujin Zhou & W. J. Wouter Botzen, 2023. "Lobbying, Time Preferences and Emission Tax Policy," Economics of Disasters and Climate Change, Springer, vol. 7(1), pages 1-32, March.
    4. Lukas Baumbach & Thomas Hickler & Rasoul Yousefpour & Marc Hanewinkel, 2023. "High economic costs of reduced carbon sinks and declining biome stability in Central American forests," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-11, December.
    5. Wei, Yigang & Li, Yan & Wang, Zhicheng, 2022. "Multiple price bubbles in global major emission trading schemes: Evidence from European Union, New Zealand, South Korea and China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    6. Muth, Daniel, 2023. "Pathways to stringent carbon pricing: Configurations of political economy conditions and revenue recycling strategies. A comparison of thirty national level policies," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 214(C).
    7. Michael Jakob & William F. Lamb & Jan Christoph Steckel & Christian Flachsland & Ottmar Edenhofer, 2020. "Understanding different perspectives on economic growth and climate policy," Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 11(6), November.

    More about this item

    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:taf:cnpexx:v:23:y:2018:i:6:p:690-710. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/cnpe20 .

    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.