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THE EUROPEAN UNION (EU) HAS TO DATE FAILED TO IMPLEMENT AN EFFECTIVE RESPONSE TO THE CLIMATE CHANGE ISSUE. THIS ARTICLE IDENTIFIES A NUMBER OF EXPLANATORY FACTORS. IT ARGUES THAT, FIRST AND FOREMOST, THE PROPOSED STRATEGY HINGED ON MEASURES IN TWO AREAS WHICH HAVE TRADITIONALLY BEEN THE PREROGATIVE OF THE MEMBER STATES, NAMELY ENERGY AND FISCAL POLICY. IN A GENERAL CLIMATE OF SUBSIDIARITY, THERE HAS BEEN LITTLE READINESS (ESPECIALLY BY SOME MEMBER SATES) TO CEDE MORE SOVEREIGNTY. FURTHERMORE, OTHER ISSUES, SUCH AS LACK OF STRONG LEADERSHIP, UNCERTAINTY ABOUT COSTS, ECONOMIC CONCERNS AND HEAVY INDUSTRIAL LOBBYING, HAVE ALSO INFLUENCED POLICY DEVELOPMENTS. THE LACK OF EFFECTIVE EU-LEVEL MEASURES MEANS THAT EMISSION REDUCTIONS WILL DEPEN ON ACTION IN THE MEMBER STATES, AT NATIONAL, REGIONAL AND LOCAL LEVELS. HOWEVER, THE ARTICLE FINDS RELATIVELY FEW INCIDENCE OF EFFECTIVE POLICIES BEING IMPLEMENTED AT OTHER LEVELS OF DECISION-MAKING AND A GENERAL LACK OF CO-ORDINATION BETWEEN THE DIFFERENT LEVELS. IT THUS COMES AS NO SURPRISE THAT THE ACHIEVEMENT OF THE EU'S CO-2 STABILIZATION TARGET FOR 2000 NOW LOOKS INCREASINGLY UNCERTAIN. THE ARTICLE CONCLUDES THAT, DESPITE SOME POSITIVE SIGNS, THERE APPEARS TO BE A LACK OF POLITICAL WILL TO ESTABLISH AN EFFECTIVE EU-LEVEL RESPONSE TO THE PROBLEM OF CLIMATE CHANGE.

Diese Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit moralischen Verpflichtungen von Individuen im Kampf gegen den Klimawandel. Es wird untersucht, ob Individuen dazu verpflichtet sind, individuelle Emissionen einzuschränken. Dies ist in zwei Abschnitte unterteilt. Im ersten Abschnitt wird untersucht, ob individuelle Emissionen Schädigungen verursachen. Dabei werden zwei Positionen verglichen. Die erste Position besagt, dass individuelle Emissionen Schädigungen verursachen. Diese Position steht der zweiten Position diametral entgegen. Vertreter*innen dieser Position argumentieren dafür, dass individuelle Emissionen keine Schädigungen verursachen. In dieser Arbeit wird gegen die zweite Position argumentiert. Es wird erklärt, dass Vertreter*innen dieser die Natur des Klimawandels missverstehen und dass empirische Schätzungen diese Aussage schwächen. Weiters wird gezeigt, dass dem Nicht-Identitätsproblem durch eine Substituierung des zugrundeliegenden Konzepts von Schädigung begegnet werden kann. Der erste Abschnitt schließt mit dem Resultat, dass individuelle Emissionen Schädigungen verursachen. Im zweiten Abschnitt werden moralische Folgen aus dem Resultat des ersten Teils untersucht. Dabei wird der Punkt berücksichtigt, dass der Klimawandel ein existenzielles Risiko darstellt. Es wird argumentiert, dass dies auch in der Diskussion von individuellen Emissionen zu berücksichtigen ist. Anschließend wird die Beziehung zwischen der Rolle von Individuen und der Rolle von Staaten und Unternehmen untersucht. Daraus, dass Individuen eine vergleichsweise geringe Menge an Emissionen verursachen und Staaten und Unternehmen die größten Emittenten sind, wird geschlussfolgert, dass der Fokus im Kampf gegen den Klimawandel auf letztere zu richten ist. Dabei wird argumentiert, dass Individuen unter stärkeren moralischen Verpflichtungen stehen, dem Klimawandel auf Ebene der Politik und der Wissenschaft zu begegnen, als individuelle Emissionen einzuschränken. ; This work deals with moral obligations of individuals to fight climate change. More specifically, it deals with the question if individuals are morally obliged to refrain from individual emissions. This work is divided into two sections. The first section deals with the question if individual emissions cause harm. To do that, two positions are compared. The first position states that individual emissions cause harm. This position is diametrically opposed to the second position according to which individual emissions do not cause harm. I argue against these attempts to deny harms caused by individual emissions. I state that proponents of that position misunderstand the nature of climate change and that empirical estimations weaken that position. Moreover, the challenge posed by the non-identity problem can be met by substituting the underlying conception of harm. The first section of this work concludes with the statement that individual emissions cause harm. The second section of this work is based on the first section. There, moral consequences following from the proposition that individual emissions cause harm are discussed. It is also considered that climate change poses an existential risk. It is argued that this has to be considered in the discussion surrounding individual emissions. In following passages, the relation between the role of individuals and the role of states and companies is discussed. Following from the fact that states and companies are the largest emitters and individuals are merely responsible for small amounts of emissions it is stated that in the fight against climate change we should primarily concentrate on getting the latter to do their jobs. This work concludes with the statement that individuals are under stronger moral obligations to fight climate change on large-scale levels than to reduce individual emissions. ; vorgelegt von Benedikt Namdar ; Zusammenfassungen auf Deutsch und Englisch ; Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, Masterarbeit, 2020 ; (VLID)5681265

In a 3-2 majority, the UK Supreme Court delivered a landmark ruling today, significantly impacting the consideration of climate impacts in the oil and gas licensing process. While the Government's approach so far has been to only consider exploration and production emissions, the Court's decision establishes that emissions resulting from burning the produced oil and gas (regardless of where it occurs) have to also be considered. The ruling is significant as it is the first highest court decision to adopt this interpretation on climate impacts of fossil fuel production. It will no doubt have a knock-on effect on at least three other cases pending before lower courts in the UK, and potentially affect cases both within and outside the European Union.

In the absence of an international agreement on climate policy, unilateral carbon abatement creates two problems: It tends to have a detrimental effect on domestic competitiveness, and it leads to an increase in carbon emissions abroad (leakage). This paper analyses two policies that have recently been proposed to mitigate these problems: Border tax adjustments (BTA) and integrated emission trading (IET). The former policy levies a quantity-based, the latter an emission based duty on imports from non-abating countries. In a stylised two-country model we demonstrate that the policies address both problems. However, BTA protects domestic competitiveness more effectively, while IET achieves a greater reduction in foreign emissions. A computational general equilibrium analysis of the unilateral abatement policy adopted by the European Union confirms our theoretical insights for the sectors covered by the offsetting measures. However, the implications for the competitiveness of noncovered sectors are negative. These two effects constitute the central trade-off in the implementation of both policies.

We assess recent Chinese climate policy proposals in a multi-region, multi-sector computable general equilibrium model with a Chinese carbon emissions trading scheme (ETS). When the emissions intensity per GDP in 2020 is required to be 45% lower than in 2005, the model simulations indicate that the climate policy- induced welfare loss in 2020, measured as the level of GDP and welfare in 2020 under climate policy relative to their level under business-as-usual (BAU) in the same year, is about 1%. The Chinese welfare loss in 2020 slightly increases in the Chinese rate of economic growth in 2020. When keeping the emissions target fixed at the 2020 level after 2020 in absolute terms, the welfare loss will reach about 2% in 2030. If China's annual economic growth rate is 0.5 percentage points higher (lower), the climate policy-induced welfare loss in 2030 will rise (decline) by about 0.5 percentage points. Full auctioning of carbon allowances results in very similar macroeconomic effects as free allocation, but full auctioning leads to higher reductions in output than free allocation for ETS sectors. Linking the Chinese to the European ETS and restricting the transfer volume to one third of the EU's reduction effort creates at best a small benefit for China, yet with smaller sectoral output reductions than auctioning. These results highlight the importance of designing the Chinese ETS wisely.

Transport is the fastest-growing energy sector world-wide. Every year increasing numbers of drivers at the wheels of ever larger vehicles burn more petroleum products and emit more carbon dioxide. The danger is clear. Nations around the world have taken up the challenge to reduce oil use and the CO2 that comes with it. This report examines the multiple policy approaches being taken by IEA Member countries to reduce transport-related carbon emissions. These include improving fuel economy in new cars and trucks, as well as reducing fuel consumption by vehicles already on the road. Also covered are the use of alternative fuel sources and ways to cut the growth in travel, such as by improving transit systems and using new technologies to reduce congestion.

We use economic analysis to evaluate grandfathering, auctioning, and benchmarking approaches for allocation of emissions allowances and then discuss practical experience from European and American schemes. In principle, auctions are superior from the viewpoints of efficiency, fairness, transparency, and simplicity. In practice, auctions have been opposed by important sectors of industry, which argue that carbon pricing without compensation would harm international competitiveness. In the European Union's Emissions Trading System, this concern led to grandfathering that is updated at various intervals. Unfortunately, updating gives industry an incentive to change behavior to influence future allocation. Furthermore, the wealth transferred to incumbent firms can be significantly larger than the extra costs incurred, leading to windfall profits. Meanwhile, potential auction revenues are not available to reduce other taxes. By circumscribing free allocation, benchmarking can target competitiveness concerns, incur less wealth transfer, and provide a strategy consistent with transitioning to auctions in the long run.

During the last years, the renewable energy strategy of the European Union (EU) and the proposed policies and regulations, namely the Renewable Energy Directive (RED), have been heavily discussed among scientific circles and various interest groups. The sustainability of different biofuels and their contribution to the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the whole renewable strategy has become one of the most controversial issues. RED requires that the greenhouse gas emissions associated with production and use of biofuels are at least 35% lower than those associated with the production and use of conventional fuels to be classified as sustainable and therefore eligible for the mandatory blending scheme applied within the EU. In a recent working paper, we analyze the GHG emissions savings potential of rapeseed biodiesel. For this purpose, we ran a life cycle assessment of rapeseed biodiesel using the same basic methodology and background data contained in RED by considering the whole production chain from cultivation of the feedstock up to use of the biofuels. Unlike other studies, we refer only to publicly available and published data in our calculations. In order to ensure full transparency - again contrary to the vast majority of other studies - we provide a detailed documentation of all data. We follow a rather conservative approach by using average values and assuming common conditions along the supply chain in our scenarios. In most of the scenarios, rapeseed biodiesel does not reach the GHG emissions saving values using the formula contained in RED. Neither the RED typical value for rapeseed oil (45%) nor even the lower default value (38%) can be supported by the analysis. Furthermore, most of the scenarios indicate that rapeseed biodiesel does not reach the 35% threshold required by the EU Directive for being considered as sustainable biofuel. In the standard scenario, we calculate a GHG emissions saving value of not even 30% which is not only well below the GHG emissions saving values (default and typical) that can be found in RED but also far below the 35% threshold. To summarize, we are not able to reproduce the GHG emissions saving values published in the annex of RED. Therefore, the GHG emissions saving values of rapeseed biodiesel stated by the EU are more than questionable. Given these striking differences as well as the lack of transparency in the EU's calculations, we assume that the EU seems to prefer politically achieved typical and default values regarding rapeseed biodiesel over scientifically proven ones.

Using German microdata and a quasi-natural experiment, we provide evidence on how households respond to an increase in uncertainty. We find that household saving increases significantly following the increase in political uncertainty observed in the run-up to the 1998 German general election. We also find evidence of a labor supply response by workers who can use the margin offered by part-time employment. Our results are suggestive of the economic effects of "wars of attrition": when political disagreement leads to delays in adopting a reform or the possibility that earlier reforms may be revoked, the increased uncertainty could slow the economy.