Allocation Oddity

Mining my hard drive for stuff I did a few weeks back, when the Waxman Markey draft was just out, I ran across this graph:

Waxman-Markey electricity & petroleum prices

It shows prices for electricity and petroleum from the ADAGE model in the June EPA analysis. BAU = business-as-usual; SCN 02 = updated Waxman-Markey scenario; SCN 06 = W-M without allowance allocations for consumer rate relief and a few other provisions. Notice how the retail price signal on electricity is entirely defeated until the 2025-2030 allowance phaseout. On the other hand, petroleum prices are up in either scenario, because there is no rate relief.

Four questions:

  • Isn’t it worse to have a big discontinuity electricity prices in 2025-2030, rather than a smaller one in 2010-2015?
  • Is your average household even going to notice a 1 or 2 c/kwh change over 5 years, given the volatility of other expenses?
  • Since the NPV of the rate relief by 2025 is not much, couldn’t the phaseout happen a little faster?
  • How does it help to defeat the price signal to the residential sector, a large energy consumer with low-hanging mitigation fruit?

Things might not be as bad as all this, if the goal (not mandate) of serving up rate relief as flat or fixed rebates is actually met. Then the cost of electricity at the margin will go up regardless of allowance allocation, and there would be some equity benefit. But my guess is that, even if that came to pass, consumers would watch their total bills, not the marginal cost, and thus defeat the price signal behaviorally. Also, will people with two addresses and two meters, like me, get a double rebate? Yippee!

Waxman-Markey emissions coverage

In an effort to get a handle on Waxman Markey, I’ve been digging through the EPA’s analysis. Here’s a visualization of covered vs. uncovered emissions in 2016 (click through for the interactive version).

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The orange bits above are uncovered emissions – mostly the usual suspects: methane from cow burps, landfills, and coal mines; N2O from agriculture; and other small process or fugitive emissions. This broad scope is one of W-M’s strong points.

Reality-free Cap and Trade?

Over at Prometheus, Roger Pielke picks on Nancy Pelosi:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) adds to a long series of comments by Democrats that emphasize cost as a crucial criterion for evaluating cap and trade legislation, and specifically, that there should be no costs:

‘There should be no cost to the consumer,’ House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said Wednesday. She vowed the legislation would ‘make good on that’ pledge.

Of course, cost-free cap and trade defeats the purpose of cap and trade which is to raise the costs of energy, …

Pelosi’s comment sounds like fantasy, but it’s out of context. If you read the preceding paragraph in the linked article, it prefaces the quote with:

Top House Democrats are also considering a proposal to create a second consumer rebate to help lower- and middle-income families offset the higher energy costs of the cap-and-trade program.

It sounds to me like Pelosi could be talking specifically about net cost to low- and middle-income consumers. It’s hard to get a handle on what people are really talking about because the language used is so imprecise. “Cost” gets used to mean net cost of climate policy, outlays for mitigation capital, net consumer budget effects, energy or energy service expenditures, and energy or GHG prices.  So, “no cost” cap and trade could mean a variety of things:
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WCI Design Recommendations

Yesterday the WCI announced its design recommendations.

Update 9/26: WorldChanging has another take on the WCI here.
I haven’t read the whole thing, but here’s my initial impression based on the executive summary:

Scope

Major gases, including CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride.

What? In scope? How/where?
Large Industrial & Commercial, >25,000 MTCO2eq/yr

Combustion Emissions

Yes Point of emission

Process Emissions

Yes Point of emission
Electricity Yes “First Jurisdictional Deliverer” – includes power generated outside WCI
Small Industrial, Commercial, Residential Second Compliance Period (2015-2017) Upstream (“where fuels enter commerce in the WCI Partner jurisdictions, generally at a distributor. The precise point is TBD and may vary by jurisdiction”)
Transportation

Gasoline & Diesel

Second Compliance Period (2015-2017) Upstream (“where fuels enter commerce in the WCI Partner jurisdictions, generally at a terminal rack, final blender, or distributor. The precise point is TBD and may vary by jurisdiction”)

Biofuel combustion

No
Biofuel & fossil fuel upstream To be determined ?
Biomass combustion No, if determined to be carbon neutral  
Agriculture & Forestry No  

(See an earlier Midwestern Accord matrix here.)

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The GAO's Panel of Economists on Climate

I just ran across a May 2008 GAO report, detailing the findings of a panel of economists convened to consider US climate policy. The panel used a modified Delphi method, which can be good or evil. The eighteen panelists are fairly neoclassical, with the exception of Richard Howarth, who speaks the language but doesn’t drink the Kool-aid.

First, it’s interesting what the panelists agree on. All of the panelists supported establishing a price on greenhouse gas emissions, and a majority were fairly certain that there would be a net benefit from doing so. A majority also favored immediate action, regardless of the participation of other countries. The favored immediate action is rather fainthearted, though. One-third favored an initial price range under $10/tonCO2, and only three favored exceeding $20/tonCO. One panelist specified a safety valve price at 55 cents. Maybe the low prices are intended to rise rapidly (or at the interest rate, per Hotelling); otherwise I have a hard time seeing why one would bother with the whole endeavor. It’s quite interesting that panelists generally accept unilateral action, which by itself wouldn’t solve the climate problem. Clearly they are counting on setting an example, with imitation bringing more emissions under control, and perhaps also on first-mover advantages in innovation.

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