CarPri- Carbon Pricing after Paris

The goals set in the Paris Agreement (2°C target and NDCs) raise the central question of how nations can achieve these targets both effectively and efficiently. Under the umbrella of the internationally recognized Energy Modeling Forum (EMF), CarPri investigates the role of carbon pricing and the economic effects of various climate policy scenarios, deploying around 20 international institutes´ climate-economy models. In addition to an overview paper on the core scenarios of the project, each institute prepares an additional paper with a focus of their own choosing. The overarching issues for these individual contributions are on the one hand distributional effects for different income groups, and on the other hand effects of various international collaborations. The research results will be published in a special issue at Energy Economics and will inform political decision-makers and societal stakeholders about the economic and emissions-related consequences of various regulatory instruments.

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The project results confirmed and specified the efficiency potentials of international cooperation in CO₂ pricing to achieve the Paris climate goals. High efficiency gains are possible even with small coalitions. International emissions trading and the lump-sum reimbursement of revenues from CO₂ pricing to households have the potential to enable a climate policy that is in line with the 2°C target. Global emissions trading will achieve the 2°C target at roughly the same cost that individual countries have already implicitly agreed to with their NDCs. Pricing of CO₂ emissions can be progressive if the additional revenue is passed on to households. These results have been communicated to stakeholders in various formats and can help to actually achieve and scale up the NDCs.

The Figure shows the global welfare impacts in a scenario without international emission trading (labelled ref; lighter shaded bars) and in a scenario with global emission tra­ding (labelled global; darker shaded bars) for the three different ambition levels on emission re­duction NDC (current unconditional pled­ges), NDC+ (current conditional pledges), and NDC-2C (reductions in line with the 2°C target). On the x-axis, individual models are displayed. On the y-axis the global welfare changes (in Hicksian equivalent variation (HEV)) relative to a Baseline scenario without am­bitious emission reduction targets are displayed. On average, the global welfare losses associated with reaching NDC-2C under global emission trading are very similar to global welfare losses associated with reaching the current NDCs (NDC) without international emission trading.

Akın-Olçum, G. et al. (2022):
A model intercomparison of the welfare effects of regional cooperation for ambitious climate mitigation targets. Climate Change Economics.

Böhringer, C., Schneider, J. (2021):
The incidence of CO₂ pricing under alternative international market responses - A Computable General Equilibrium Analysis for Germany. Energy Economics 101: 105404.

Böhringer, C., Schneider, J., Peterson, S., Winkler, M. (2021):
Climate policies after Paris: Pledge, Trade and Recycle: Insights from the 36th Energy Modeling Forum Study (EMF36). Energy Economics 103: 105471.

Landis, F., Fredriksson, G., Rausch, S. (2021):
Between- and Within-Country Distributional Impacts from Harmonizing Carbon Pricing in the EU. Energy Economics 103: 105585.

Winkler, M., Peterson, S., Thube, S. (2021):
Gains from linking the EU and Chinese ETS under different assumptions on restrictions, transfer payments, and international trade. Energy Economics 104: 105630.