The Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic has resulted in global lockdowns, sharply curtailing economic activity. It is a unique experiment with substantial impacts that will form the agenda for research. ...There are five sets of questions: the short-term impacts on emissions, the natural environment and environmental policy, including regulations and COP26; longer-term consequences from the deployment of macroeconomic monetary and fiscal stimuli, and investment in green deals; possible further deglobalisation and its impact on climate change and nature; intergenerational environmental impacts including debt and pollution burdens on future generations; and possible behavioural changes to the environment, both positive and negative.
The transformation of Britain's energy policy in the last two decades has been more radical than any such change in developed economies. Since 1979 the great state energy monopolies created after the ...Second World War have been privatised and made subject to competition. Images of Arthur Scargill and the miners' strike of the 1980s remain vivid, but what effect has the new market philosophy had on Britain's energy industries? Since 1979 the National Coal Board, British Gas and the Central Electricity Generating Board have all been broken up. Energy trading, electricity pools, auctions and futures markets first developed, but they failed to solve the old energy policy problems of security of supply and network integrity, and the new ones of the environment and reliance on gas. The government introduced a new regulatory regime as a temporary necessity but regulation did not wither away, rather it grew to be more pervasive. Changing the ownership of the industries did not reduce the government's involvement, it simply changed its form. The 1980s and 1990s were years of energy surpluses and low fossil-fuel prices. There was little need to invest, and much of the investment in the so-called dash for gas was artificially stimulated. The new owners sweated the assets, and engaged in major financial engineering. Takeovers consolidated the industry into a smaller number of dominant firms. As investment priorities became more urgent, with the environmental pressures of climate change and the gradual switch to imported gas, the market philosophy was found wanting. Energy policy could not rely solely on the market. And it is the government which finds itself responsible for resolving the core issues of energy policy. Helm's book tells this story. It is a major study of the new market approach to energy policy in Britain since 1979. It describes the miners' strike, the privatisations of the gas, electricity, nuclear generation, and coal industries, and looks at events such as the dash for gas, regulatory failures in setting monopoly prices, and the takeovers and the consolidations of the late 1990s. Helm sets out the achievements of the new market philosophy, but also analyses why it has ultimately failed to turn energy industries into normal commodity businesses.
What would a sustainable economy look like? What would it take to live within our environmental means? Legacy answers these and other questions, setting out the key features of the sustainable ...economy. It explains what it would take to properly maintain different types of capital, why polluters would have to pay, why the current generation would have to fund the necessary maintenance of our natural assets, and why we would have to save to invest. The message is a tough one: we are way off course in terms of meeting these conditions and we cannot escape the consequences. This book explains what we would have to do to mend our ways. In doing so, it highlights the feebleness of current approaches to net zero and biodiversity loss as well as our great neglect of the core infrastructures, and why we are not meeting our duties to the next generation. This title is Open Access.
The international framework for a climate change agreement is up for review as the initial Kyoto Protocol period to 2012 comes to an end. Though there has been much enthusiasm from political and ...environmental groups, the underlying economics and politics remain highly controversial. This book takes a cool-headed look at the critical roadblocks to agreement, examining the economics of climate change, the incentives of the main players (the United States, EU, China), and the policies which governments can put in place to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and ultimately shift our economies onto a low-carbon path. It questions the basis of much of the climate change consensus and debates the Stern Review's main findings. Aside from a reassessment of the economics of climate change, the book looks at the geography of the costs and benefits of climate change — the very different perspectives of Africa, China, Europe, and the United States — as well as the prospects for a new global agreement. It also considers policy instruments at the global level (whereas much of the literature to date is nationally and regionally based). Trading and R&D, along with more radical unilateral options, including geoengineering, are discussed. Finally, the book describes the institutional architecture — drawing on evidence from previous attempts in other areas, as well as proposals for new bodies.
The Carbon Crunch Helm, Dieter
2012, 2013, 2013-09-02, 20120101
eBook
An economist's take on "why the world's efforts to curb the carbon dioxide emissions behind global warming have gone so wrong, and how it can do better" ( Financial Times ). Despite commitments to ...renewable energy and two decades of international negotiations, global emissions continue to rise. Coal, the most damaging of all fossil fuels, has actually risen from 25% to almost 30% of world energy use. And while European countries congratulate themselves on reducing emissions, they've increased their carbon imports from China and other developing nations, who continue to expand their coal use. As standards of living improve in developing countries, coal use can only increase as well—and global temperatures along with it. Written by an Oxford economist who specializes in environmental issues, this book goes beyond pieties and pipe dreams to address the practical realities that are preventing us from making progress on this crucial issue—and what we can do differently before it's too late. "Should be compulsory reading for the entire political class as well as the bureaucratic elite and the commentariat."— New Statesman "An optimistically levelheaded book about actually dealing with global warming."— Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "A powerful and heartfelt plea for hard-nosed realism."— New Scientist
European energy and climate change policy rests on two main pillars: the internal energy market (IEM), and the climate change package (CCP). The IEM aimed at third party access and unbundling, ...neglecting the physical infrastructure and the basis for asset valuations and hence the harmonisation of network charges. The Commission plans to complete the IEM by 2014—almost a quarter of a century after embarking on the policy. Yet even if all the IEM directives are implemented, the EU will remain far from a single competitive market. The CCP was grounded on short term targets (the 2020-20-20 programme) on the assumption that fossil fuel prices would rise, making renewables competitive, and hence yielding a competitive advantage to the EU. The EUETS was intended to lead the way to a global trading system and an international agreement at Copenhagen. The EU has reduced the production of carbon emissions, but only as a result of de-industrialisation and slow growth, and at the expense of rising carbon consumption. Renewables have not led to green growth, but rather to a further eroding of competitiveness. The EUETS price has collapsed. In order for the EU to put the IEM and the CCP back on track, both need to be radically reconsidered. The IEM requires a refocusing on physical infrastructure, common accounting rules and an EU-wide approach to capacity markets and renewables trading. The CCP requires a refocusing on carbon consumption, on limiting the dash-for-coal, and on future rather than current renewables.
•The design of the internal energy market.•The design of the climate change package.•The interaction between the internal energy market and the climate change package.•Required reforms.
The paper considers the main components of energy policy, in particular the challenges of network security of supply, long-term contracts and the environmental constraints. It is argued that policy ...should take account of multiple market failures and context dependent. Given energy liberalisation in the 1980s and 1990s, interventions based upon market-based instruments should be given greater prominence. Institutional reform to reflect the shift in focus towards investment in non-carbon technologies and the security issues associated with networks is proposed, notably the creation of an energy agency.
Abstract
The UK is, like its peers in the EU, just under 80% dependent on fossil fuels. This figure has come down just over 10% since the 1970s, a period when the UK had major energy-intensive ...industries, most of which are now gone. The government is committed to achieving net zero for the electricity sector by 2035 on the pathway to net zero for the whole economy by 2050.. The Labour opposition has set 2030 as its electricity target. Setting out the scale of this challenge, this paper demonstrates how implausible the 2035 target is. On present policies there is little prospect that the 2035 target will be met (and virtually none for the Labour 2030 target). This paper reviews the multiple current policies and the capacity objectives and explores what would have to happen to meet the target. It sets out some of the consequences of failure to deliver, and the expectation of that failure.
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