Directed Technical Change and Climate Policy
Name
MITJPSPGC_Rpt134.pdf
Size
518.33 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
de5ad1246757aeb588a97eae915359e1
Author(s)
Otto, Vincent M.
Loeschel, Andreas
Reilly, John M.
Date Issued
April 2006
Publisher
MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change
Citation
Report no. 134
Series/Report no.
Report no. 134
Abstract
This paper studies the cost effectiveness of climate policy if there are technology externalities. For this purpose, we develop a forward-looking CGE model that captures empirical links between CO2 emissions associated with energy use, directed technical change and the economy. We find the cost-effective climate policy to include a combination of R&D subsidies and CO2 emission constraints, although R&D subsidies raise the shadow value of the CO2 constraint (i.e. CO2 price) because of a strong rebound effect from stimulating innovation. Furthermore, we find that CO2 constraints differentiated toward CO2-intensive sectors are more cost effective than constraints that generate uniform CO2 prices among sectors. Differentiated CO2 prices, through technical change and concomitant technology externalities, encourage growth in the non-CO2 intensive sectors and discourage growth in CO2-intensive sectors. Thus, it is cost effective to let the latter bear relatively more of the abatement burden. This result is robust to whether emission constraints, R&D subsidies or combinations of both are used to reduce CO2 emissions.
Description
Abstract in HTML and technical report in PDF available on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change website (http://mit.edu/globalchange/www/).
Subjects
directed technical change
climate policy
computable general equilibrium model
R&D
Persistent DSpace Link
