IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rff/dpaper/dp-15-15.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Primer on Comprehensive Policy Options for States to Comply with the Clean Power Plan

Author

Listed:
  • Palmer, Karen

    (Resources for the Future)

  • Paul, Anthony

    (Resources for the Future)

Abstract

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed regulations to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2)from existing fossil electricity generators in its proposed Clean Power Plan rule under section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act. The proposal is based on the best system of emissions reductions (BSER) and calls for states to develop plans to achieve reductions that are demonstrated to be equivalent to those attained by the application of BSER to each state. Policy options from which states may choose are not restricted - the BSER and state plans are distinct from one another. This primer describes the different types of incentive-based comprehensive policies that states could adopt and how policy design features can address particular objectives including overall cost-effectiveness, distributional consequences for electricity consumers and producers, administrative costs, and emissions of other pollutants. We also elucidate some trade-offs that state policymakers will face as they develop their plans for Clean Power Plan compliance.

Suggested Citation

  • Palmer, Karen & Paul, Anthony, 2015. "A Primer on Comprehensive Policy Options for States to Comply with the Clean Power Plan," RFF Working Paper Series dp-15-15, Resources for the Future.
    • Handle: RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-15-15
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.rff.org/RFF/documents/RFF-DP-15-15.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. James B. Bushnell & Stephen P. Holland & Jonathan E. Hughes & Christopher R. Knittel, 2017. "Strategic Policy Choice in State-Level Regulation: The EPA's Clean Power Plan," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 9(2), pages 57-90, May.
    2. Koichiro Ito, 2014. "Do Consumers Respond to Marginal or Average Price? Evidence from Nonlinear Electricity Pricing," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(2), pages 537-563, February.
    3. Burtraw, Dallas & Palmer, Karen L. & Kahn, Danny, 2005. "Allocation of CO2 Emissions Allowances in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Cap-and-Trade Program," Discussion Papers 10650, Resources for the Future.
    4. Joshua Linn & Nathan Richardson, 2013. "Cutting Carbon, Take Two: A Brief Guide to Federal Electricity-Sector Climate Policy without Cap-and-Trade," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 35(3), pages 377-397.
    5. Dallas Burtraw & Josh Linn & Karen Palmer & Anthony Paul, 2014. "The Costs and Consequences of Clean Air Act Regulation of CO2 from Power Plants," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(5), pages 557-562, May.
    6. Munnings, Clayton & Morgenstern, Richard & Wang, Zhongmin & Liu, Xu, 2014. "Assessing the Design of Three Pilot Programs for Carbon Trading in China," RFF Working Paper Series dp-14-36, Resources for the Future.
    7. Tammy M. Thompson & Sebastian Rausch & Rebecca K. Saari & Noelle E. Selin, 2014. "A systems approach to evaluating the air quality co-benefits of US carbon policies," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 4(10), pages 917-923, October.
    8. Burtraw, Dallas & Palmer, Karen & Munnings, Clayton & Weber, Paige & Woerman, Matt, 2013. "Linking by Degrees: Incremental Alignment of Cap-and-Trade Markets," RFF Working Paper Series dp-13-04, Resources for the Future.
    9. Bovenberg, A. Lans & Goulder, Lawrence H., 2002. "Environmental taxation and regulation," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 23, pages 1471-1545, Elsevier.
    10. Carolyn Fischer & Alan K. Fox, 2007. "Output-Based Allocation of Emissions Permits for Mitigating Tax and Trade Interactions," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 83(4), pages 575-599.
    11. Blonz, Joshua & Burtraw, Dallas & Walls, Margaret A., 2010. "Climate Policy’s Uncertain Outcomes for Households: The Role of Complex Allocation Schemes in Cap and Trade," RFF Working Paper Series dp-10-12, Resources for the Future.
    12. Baumol,William J. & Oates,Wallace E., 1988. "The Theory of Environmental Policy," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521322249, September.
    13. Bryan K. Mignone & Thomas Alfstad & Aaron Bergman & Kenneth Dubin & Richard Duke & Paul Friley & Andrew Martinez & Matthew Mowers & Karen Palmer & Anthony Paul & Sharon Showalter & Daniel Steinberg & , 2012. "Cost-effectiveness and Economic Incidence of a Clean Energy Standard," Economics of Energy & Environmental Policy, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3).
    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. Becker, Jonathon M., 2023. "Tradable performance standards in a dynamic context," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    2. Yu, Zhongjue & Geng, Yong & Calzadilla, Alvaro & Bleischwitz, Raimund, 2022. "China's unconventional carbon emissions trading market: The impact of a rate-based cap in the power generation sector," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 255(C).
    3. Kato, Shinya & Takeuchi, Kenji, 2017. "A CGE analysis of a rate-based policy for climate change mitigation," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 88-95.
    4. Harrison Fell & Daniel Kaffine & Daniel Steinberg, 2017. "Energy Efficiency and Emissions Intensity Standards," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 4(S1), pages 201-226.
    5. Zhang, Duan & Chen, Yihsu & Tanaka, Makoto, 2018. "On the effectiveness of tradable performance-based standards," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 456-469.
    6. Palmer, Karen & Burtraw, Dallas & Paul, Anthony & Yin, Hang, 2017. "Using Production Incentives to Avoid Emissions Leakage," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(S1), pages 45-56.
    7. Woo, C.K. & Chen, Y. & Zarnikau, J. & Olson, A. & Moore, J. & Ho, T., 2018. "Carbon trading’s impact on California’s real-time electricity market prices," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 579-587.
    8. Patankar, Neha & Fell, Harrison G. & Rodrigo de Queiroz, Anderson & Curtis, John & DeCarolis, Joseph F., 2022. "Improving the representation of energy efficiency in an energy system optimization model," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 306(PB).

    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. Paul, Anthony & Palmer, Karen & Woerman, Matt, 2014. "Designing by Degrees: Flexibility and Cost-Effectiveness in Climate PolicyAbstract: Substantially reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from electricity production will require a transformation of t," RFF Working Paper Series dp-14-05, Resources for the Future.
    2. Anthony Paul & Karen Palmer & Matthew Woerman, 2015. "Incentives, Margins, And Cost Effectiveness In Comprehensive Climate Policy For The Power Sector," Climate Change Economics (CCE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 6(04), pages 1-27, November.
    3. Don Fullerton & Daniel H. Karney, 2018. "Potential State‐Level Carbon Revenue Under The Clean Power Plan," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 36(1), pages 149-166, January.
    4. Fell, Harrison & Maniloff, Peter, 2018. "Leakage in regional environmental policy: The case of the regional greenhouse gas initiative," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 1-23.
    5. William A Pizer & Steven Sexton, 2019. "The Distributional Impacts of Energy Taxes," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 13(1), pages 104-123.
    6. Chung, Sung H. & Weaver, Robert D. & Friesz, Terry L., 2013. "Strategic response to pollution taxes in supply chain networks: Dynamic, spatial, and organizational dimensions," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 231(2), pages 314-327.
    7. David M. Newbery & David M. Reiner & Robert A. Ritz, 2018. "When is a carbon price floor desirable?," Working Papers EPRG 1816, Energy Policy Research Group, Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.
    8. Yoshifumi Konishi & Nori Tarui, 2015. "Emissions Trading, Firm Heterogeneity, and Intra-industry Reallocations in the Long Run," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 2(1), pages 1-42.
    9. Palmer, Karen & Burtraw, Dallas & Paul, Anthony & Yin, Hang, 2017. "Using Production Incentives to Avoid Emissions Leakage," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(S1), pages 45-56.
    10. Becker, Jonathon M., 2023. "Tradable performance standards in a dynamic context," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    11. Lawrence H. Goulder & Ian W. H. Parry, 2008. "Instrument Choice in Environmental Policy," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 2(2), pages 152-174, Summer.
    12. Akhil Rao & Mark Moretto & Marcus Holzinger & Daniel Kaffine & Brian Weeden, 2023. "OPUS: An Integrated Assessment Model for Satellites and Orbital Debris," Papers 2309.10252, arXiv.org.
    13. Herman Vollebergh, 2004. "Lessons from the Polder: Is Dutch CO2-Taxation Optimal?," Working Papers 2004.6, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    14. Takumi HAIBARA & Hiroshi OHTA, 2011. "A New Proposal of Ecological Tax Reform," GSICS Working Paper Series 24, Graduate School of International Cooperation Studies, Kobe University.
    15. Munnings, Clayton & Morgenstern, Richard & Wang, Zhongmin & Liu, Xu, 2014. "Assessing the Design of Three Pilot Programs for Carbon Trading in China," RFF Working Paper Series dp-14-36, Resources for the Future.
    16. Bielen, David A., 2018. "Do differentiated performance standards help coal? CO2 policy in the U.S. electricity sector," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 79-100.
    17. David Martimort & Jérôme Pouyet & Carine Staropoli, 2020. "Use and abuse of regulated prices in electricity markets: “How to regulate regulated prices?”," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(3), pages 605-634, July.
    18. James B. Bushnell & Stephen P. Holland & Jonathan E. Hughes & Christopher R. Knittel, 2017. "Strategic Policy Choice in State-Level Regulation: The EPA's Clean Power Plan," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 9(2), pages 57-90, May.
    19. Philippe Quirion, 2004. "Prices versus Quantities in a Second-Best Setting," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 29(3), pages 337-359, November.
    20. Bushnell, James & Chen, Yihsu, 2012. "Allocation and leakage in regional cap-and-trade markets for CO2," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 647-668.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    tradable performance standard; climate policy; clean energy standard; cap and trade; allowance allocation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q42 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Alternative Energy Sources
    • Q48 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Government Policy
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming
    • Q58 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environmental Economics: 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:rff:dpaper:dp-15-15. 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: Resources for the Future (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rffffus.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.