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This article describes the birth of air pollutant regulation and its transformation, which, formerly under state control, moved on to a regime based on market instruments. The author shows the gradual commercialization of the approach to air pollution problems, whose origins can be traced to the United States, summarized in three different historic moments: the Emission Trading Program (1982), the Average between Refineries (1985), and the Acid Rain Program (1995). These experiments, in a framework of the command and control environmental regulatory regime, led to the creation of the first atmospheric contaminant emissions market in world history and opened up the road to the new "cap and trade" environmental regulatory regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the environmental rights and duty of Pennsylvania to address climate change by reducing carbon emissions and investing carbon allowance auction funds into environmental protection. Topics discussed include the purpose and history of the Environmental Rights Amendment (ERA), functionality of the cap and trade systems and the operation of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), and possible duty counterarguments in light of issues on separation of powers.

The article discusses the challenges facing companies in the U.S. due to a policy challenge on emissions control in the presence of abatement investments in pollution markets under a carbon tax economic domain. Topics discussed include costs and efficacy of investments for carbon dioxide emissions abatement, impact of policy uncertainty with an emissions tax against a cap-and-trade instrument, and promotion of cost-effective efforts to control the risks of climate change.

The Penn State climate scientist who helped author the “hockey stick” global warming temperature graph describes the campaign to discredit him following the theft of emails, including some he wrote, from servers at England’s University of East Anglia. Climate-change denial groups said the emails showed unethical conduct, but scientific organizations and academic panels said this was not the case, defending Mann and the credibility of climate science. Mann believes the widespread media coverage contributed to the failure of the US Senate to take action on carbon dioxide emission controls this summer. But he cites polls showing that the matter may not have compromised public belief in climate science and expresses optimism that policymakers will force emissions reductions in time to avert truly catastrophic changes to Earth’s climate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the strategic options available to companies reacting to the market-oriented conditions that address global warming and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). In addition to political and regulatory activities, there are market changes affecting corporations, global warming and emissions reduction such as emissions trading that create an atmosphere of corporate uncertainty. The United States continues to oppose the Kyoto Protocol's global emission reduction approach, instead advocating the exploration of specific technological options. The article discusses current climate change policies such as emissions trading, Joint Implementation and the Clean Development Mechanism that allow companies to achieve GHG reduction by interacting with other parties, and explores how managers can choose between innovative strategies that improve a company's assets and competitive position as the result of the new environmental technologies.

• Re-examination of the EKC hypothesis, taking into account the role of international trade. • International trade postpones the peak time of global CO 2 emissions. • The validity of the EKC for global CO 2 emissions, the role of trade cannot be overstated. • Based on the production principle and on the consumption principle, 39 countries can be classified into 5 groups. In the three decades since the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis was proposed, there have been a massive amount of empirical studies on the relationship between per capita income and carbon dioxide (CO 2) emissions based on the production accounting approach. International trade has played a critical role in effectively and efficiently allocating resources in the process of economic globalization. Through international trade, part of the responsibilities for CO 2 emission mitigation which should have been taken by consumers have been transferred to the producers of traded goods and resources. The focus of this research is on the re-examination of the EKC hypothesis, taking the role of international trade into account. The findings are as follows. In the first stage, we calculated the CO 2 emissions of 39 countries using the input-output analysis approach based on production accounting and consumption accounting. Currently, China is the largest CO 2 emitter, surpassing the U.S. However, the per capita CO 2 emissions of China lag behind those of the U.S. In the second stage, although both an inverted U-shaped curve and an N-shaped curve were obtained, the cubic functional form model is better fitted. In addition, the turning point occurs earlier if adopting the production-based accounting rather than adopting the consumption-based accounting, implying that international trade postpones the peak time of global CO 2 emissions. From the above analysis, it follows that when testing for the validity of the EKC for global CO 2 emissions, the role of trade cannot be overstated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Most life cycle inventories (LCIs) of electricity consumed in different regions of the USA disregard the power that is being traded between these regions, while the US EPA's eGRID database does not contain scope 3 or noncombustion emissions. The relevance of these omissions has not yet been comprehensively quantified in the literature. This paper aims to close this knowledge gap. Methods: The parameterized inventory models that underlie all publicly available grid mix datasets in the GaBi databases were configured to create 26 eGRID subregional LCIs based on data from EPA's eGRID2014 database and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's FERC-714 report on power trade for the same reference year. Results were calculated regarding climate change, acidification, eutrophication, particulate matter, smog formation, and blue water consumption per kilowatt hour of electricity and compared for direct plant emissions only, the cradle-to-gate production mix (including scope 3), and the cradle-to-gate consumption mix (including scope 3 and power imports). Results and discussion: Results showed that the scope 3 burdens represent the most significant data gap if not accounted for. Specifically, the GWP results show median increases of around + 18% for GWP100 and of + 30% for GWP20 when scope 3 GHG emissions are added to the direct plant emissions. Other impact categories showed even larger increases when compared to direct plant emissions, with a maximum increase of + 573% in eutrophication potential for the subregion CAMX. While the median deviations of the consumption mixes compared to the production mixes are moderate, individual subregions show significant increases in environmental burdens for selected metrics. However, power trade seems less of an issue for the impact category of climate change as only the CAMX subregion shows an increase larger than 10% when power trade is accounted for. Conclusions: A cradle-to-gate production mix can be a suitable proxy of the environmental burdens of electricity consumed in many subregions, but it can also lead to significant errors for others depending on the environmental metric(s) one is trying to assess. Power plant emissions by themselves (scope 2) that exclude both scope 3 emissions and power trade cannot be recommended for use in any kind of carbon accounting or other environmental analysis because they suffer from severe data gaps and may skew the comparison of the environmental burdens associated with power consumption in the different subregions significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Comprehensive accounting for global CO 2 emissions flow and emission intensities in 49 regions and 200 sectors for 21 years. • Developed a powerful data visualization of CO2 emissions for all 49 regions. • China surpassed US, EU in direct and indirect emissions. • Infrastructure and export contribute to the rapid growth of China's. Indirect CO 2 emissions are gaining increasing interests in addition to direct CO 2 emissions, as policy makers become more aware of the possibilities for structural and technical change, sometimes resulting from policies, to move CO 2 emissions along supply chains. An analysis of the composition of emissions and carbon efficiency of production and their development over time may inform the formulation of demand-side and supply-side solutions for emission reduction over the entire life-cycle. In addition, understanding of emissions embodied in trade (EET) at intermediate and final stages is crucial for allocation of emission responsibilities in a fair manner. Hence, we account for global direct and indirect intermediate and final CO 2 emissions using the global, multiregional input-output model EXIOBASE 3.3. We present results for the flow of embodied carbon through the economies of 49 countries and regions using an interactive visualization and provide a comparative analysis of China, the US, and the EU. It shows that China has undergone rapid, continuous increase in both intermediate and final indirect CO 2 emissions compared to the other two economies from 1995 to 2015, to 26.1 Pg and 11.0 Pg respectively. Emission intensities in China are on average 3.7 times of the US and 2.4 times of the EU in the year 2015, implying the possibility of further reducing emission by efficiency improvement and fuel switching. CO 2 EETs of intermediate production by sectors in the three economies are also reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the United States has consistently experienced a recent declining growth in carbon dioxide emissions, the country is currently the largest emitter of CO2 after China and suffers a biocapacity reserve deficit. Against the backdrop of further identifying the determinants of carbon emissions in the United States, this study employed the dynamic Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach to observing the tripartite impact of trade policy, migration index, and health care on carbon emission over the period 1990: Q1–2018: Q2. By incorporating renewable energy consumption and the real gross domestic product (GDP) to control for unobserved factors, the study found that migration and carbon emissions are positively related in the long and short run. The trade policy is only significant in the short run but with negative linkage with carbon emission. There is no significant evidence of short- or long-term health impact on carbon emission. Also, impacts of both renewable energy consumption and the real GDP are significant in terms of carbon emission. With the series of robustness and diagnostic tests employed, the study provides significant valid results. Additionally, a policy framework toward cutting back CO2 emissions to ensure sustainable development is provided in the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an editorial in which the editor discusses on role of California's governor Jerry Brown against ongoing climate change in the world. Topics include withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Climate agreement under the U.S. President Donald Trump; details on the Global Climate Action Summit hosted by Jerry in San Francisco; and details on proposal of integration of California's Cap and Trade program with European Union and China with an aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

What do experiments do for governance? Along with pragmatist and performative conceptions, we argue that they do not test already existing conditions of governing, but actively transform such conditions. Experiments help to realize specific models of governance by co-producing collective knowledge and material practices. We analyze a series of experiments with “emissions trading” in the USA between 1968 and 2000. The historical perspective shows how different types of experiments worked together: experiments in the laboratory and in the field supported each other in creating epistemic and political authority. This “ping-pong between lab and field” produced subjects and objects, facts and values, knowledge and power and aligned them in a new socio-material configuration, thus realizing emissions trading as a new form of governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses several decisions issued by U.S. federal and state courts between October 1, 2016, and September 30, 2017 concerning toxic tort and environmental law. It reports several cases including "Petitpas v. Ford Motor Co.," that held no duty was owed to an allegedly exposed worker's girlfriend; Supreme Court's distinction between misfeasance and nonfeasance in "Riedel v. ICI Americas Inc.; and "Georgia Pacific, LLC v. Farrar" related to product containing asbestos.

Traditionally, scholars debating the choice between emissions trading and a pollution tax as environmental policy instruments have not considered interactions between policies. Instead, they consider these environmental protection instruments in isolation. But governments usually do not rely on a tax or trading program exclusively to address significant environmental problems. Instead, a pollution tax or a trading program almost always operates in conjunction with other programs. The existence of multiple programs raises the question of which market-based instrument works best with other programs. This Article focuses on this question. This Article argues that a pollution tax works much better with other programs than emissions trading. A pollution tax provides an added impetus for pollution sources to accept complementary regulation. Pollution sources carrying out other requirements to reduce emissions end up reducing their tax bill and further enhancing environmental quality. Furthermore, because every ton of pollution remains subject to a tax, polluters acquire an incentive to consider going further than required when a more specific reduction requirement applies to them. By contrast, a trading program systematically undermines supplemental measures. Additional programs do not usually generate extra emission reductions, as any additional pollution reductions arising from a supplemental program will usually generate credits that can be sold to polluters as a substitute for their local compliance with the trading program. As a result, a new program working together with trading often raises compliance cost and limits flexibility without necessarily adding environmental benefits. For these reasons, emissions trading will have the tendency to retard the development of robust multi-faceted approaches to environmental problems. This Article asks whether a pollution tax's superiority in "playing nice with other instruments" constitutes an important advantage, and concludes that for a complex long-term problem like transboundary air pollution, it does. Indeed, this Article shows that this ability to play nice with other instruments, at least in some contexts, matters a great deal more than the efficiency and simplicity arguments that scholars have conventionally focused on in debating instrument choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The virtues and effects of federalism continue to generate political, judicial and scholarly ferment. While some federalism partisans champion exclusivity and separation, others praise the more common political choice to retain federal and state regulatory overlap and interaction. Much of this work, however, focuses on government learning or rule clarity, giving little or no attention to how different federalism choices can heighten or hedge risks of regulatory failure and policy reversal. These debates play out with unusual fervor and with high stakes in battles over climate change regulation. Despite broad agreement that any effective climate policy intervention must include national action, disagreement reigns regarding the retention of state authority. Prominent policymakers, industry voices, and scholars have championed a single regulator and clean authority delineation as the answer to the challenges of climate change. They characterize state climate policies as a weak or even harmful alternative, especially if overlapping or intertwined with a federal role. A global challenge like climate change does intuitively seem to be a quintessential setting for a single, comprehensive regulator, especially if addressed through market-utilizing regulation. This intuition, however, only makes sense under an idealized view of politics and regulatory efficacy. This Article introduces the concept of federalism hedging--namely retention of concurrent federal and state authority due to its benefits and especially protective effects, even in an area ideally regulated by a single national regulator-- then disaggregates sometimes blurred but related strains in federalism analysis. It illuminates federalism hedging dynamics through a theoretical and historical case study of climate regulation and federalism choice. This Article argues that where effective regulation is dependent on innovations and applies in areas characterized by rapid change in regulatory design, markets, and technology, such regulatory design choices--especially regarding federalism allocations of authority--should not be based on optimistic assumptions of steady progress and easy implementation. Effective regulatory structures should hedge risks, with special attention to linked political and economic dynamics. Regulation that retains room for both federal and state involvement and overlap can provide room for regulatory learning and adjustment, catalyze commitment and corrective efforts, while still fostering beneficial regulatory and market entrenchment and resulting stability through a web of similarly directed regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The demand for air quality depends on health impacts and defensive investments, but little research assesses the empirical importance of defenses. A rich quasi-experiment suggests that the Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) Budget Program (NBP), a cap-and-trade market, decreased NOx emissions, ambient ozone concentrations, pharmaceutical expenditures, and mortality rates. The annual reductions in pharmaceutical purchases, a key defensive investment, and mortality are valued at about $800 million and $1.3 billion, respectively, suggesting that defenses are over one-third of willingness-to-pay for reductions in NOx emissions. Further, estimates indicate that the NBP's benefits easily exceed its costs and that NOx reductions have substantial benefits. (JEL I12, Q51, Q53, Q58) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the legal and economic aspects of California's cap-and-trade environmental regulatory spending policy as of 2017, and it mentions the effort to reduce reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the California Environmental Quality Act, and the California Air Resources Board. The state's Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund is addressed, along with California's budget and investments in the California Strategic Growth Council's Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities program.

This paper develops a method for forecasting the marginal abatement cost (MAC) of climate policy using three features of the failed Waxman-Markey bill. First, the MAC is revealed by the price of traded permits. Second, the permit price is estimated using a regression discontinuity design (RDD) comparing stock returns of firms on either side of the policy's free permit cutoff rule. Third, because Waxman-Markey was never implemented, I extend the RDD approach to incorporate prediction market prices which normalize estimates by policy realization probabilities. A final bounding analysis recovers a MAC range of $5 to $19 per ton CO2e. (JEL G12, G14, Q52, Q54, Q58) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the important insights on the design and performance of emissions trading schemes that implemented over the past 30 years which provides lessons for future applications of environmental policy instrument. Topics discussed include emission reduction credit systems used in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) which is part of Kyoto Protocol, the Regional Clean Air Incentives Market (RECLAIM) in southern California, and the trading of nitrogen oxides in the U.S.

In June 2013, President Obama issued a memorandum directing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to use its authority under Sections 111(b) and 111(d) of the Clean Air Act to address carbon pollution from new and existing power plants. Over two years later, the EPA issued the final rule, known as the Clean Power Plan, and a proposed federal plan that will be implemented in states that do not submit their own plan under the Clean Power Plan. Both the Clean Power Plan and the EPA's proposed federal plan rely heavily on emissions trading programs to reduce carbon emissions in a cost-effective manner. Emissions trading programs set a cap on the total amount of a pollutant permitted and allow sources to buy and sell allowances based on how much of the pollutant each source is reducing or emitting. Opponents of the Clean Power Plan and its trading provisions are challenging the rule on the grounds that it is beyond the EPA's authority under the Act. This Note suggests that these emissions trading provisions are valid for two related reasons: first, the EPA has successfully implemented emissions trading programs under Section 110 of the Act in the past that demonstrate the agency's longstanding history of using these programs; and second, emissions trading has been upheld by the Supreme Court as permissible under Section 110, and Section 111(d)--under which the Clean Power Plan was promulgated--contains two substantive references to Section 110. Taken together, the EPA's past use of emissions trading programs and the statutory references in Section 111 suggest that the trading provisions in the Clean Power Plan and the proposed federal plan are a permissible exercise of the EPA's authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors report on the errors in the 2016 and 2018 analyses by the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration regarding the cost benefits of fuel economy standards for vehicles. They mention the omission of used cars in the reports, the costs of compliance, and the possibility of emissions trading to avoid a rollback of standards.

Observations have well established that aerosols from various sources in Asia, Europe, and Africa can travel across the Pacific and reach the contiguous United States (U.S.) at least on episodic bases throughout a year, with a maximum import in spring. The imported aerosol not only can serve as an additional source to regional air pollution (e.g., direct input), but also can influence regional air quality through the aerosol–cloud–radiation (ACR) interactions that change local and regional meteorology. This study assessed impacts of the transpacific aerosol on air quality, focusing on surface ozone and PM2.5, over the U.S. using the NASA Unified Weather Research Forecast model. Based on the results of 3-month (April to June of 2010) simulations, the impact of direct input (as an additional source) of transpacific aerosol caused an increase of surface PM2.5 concentration by approximately 1.5 µg m −3 over the west coast and about 0.5 µg m −3 over the east coast of the U.S. By influencing key meteorological processes through the ACR interactions, the transpacific aerosol exerted a significant effect on both surface PM2.5 (±6 µg m −3 ) and ozone (±12 ppbv) over the central and eastern U.S. This suggests that the transpacific transport of aerosol could either improve or deteriorate local air quality and complicate local effort toward the compliance with the U.S. National Ambient Air Quality Standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Methane emissions from the U.S. oil and natural gas supply chain were estimated by using ground-based, facility-scale measurements and validated with aircraft observations in areas accounting for ~30% of U.S. gas production. When scaled up nationally, our facility-based estimate of 2015 supply chain emissions is 13 ± 2 teragrams per year, equivalent to 2.3% of gross U.S. gas production. This value is ~60% higher than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency inventory estimate, likely because existing inventory methods miss emissions released during abnormal operating conditions. Methane emissions of this magnitude, per unit of natural gas consumed, produce radiative forcing over a 20-year time horizon comparable to the CO2 from natural gas combustion. Substantial emission reductions are feasible through rapid detection of the root causes of high emissions and deployment of less failure-prone systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Renewable fuel standards, low carbon fuel standards, and ethanol subsidies are popular policies to incentivize ethanol production and reduce emissions from transportation. Compared to carbon trading, these policies lead to large shifts in agricultural activity and unexpected social costs. We simulate the 2022 Federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and find that energy crop production increases by 39 million acres. Land-use costs from erosion and habitat loss are between $277 and $693 million. A low carbon fuel standard (LCFS) and ethanol subsidies have similar effects while costs under an equivalent cap and trade (CAT) system are essentially zero. In addition, the alternatives to CAT magnify errors in assigning emissions rates to fuels and can over or under-incentivize innovation. These results highlight the potential negative effects of the RFS, LCFS and subsidies, effects that would be less severe under a CAT policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay provides a historical overview of the implementation of the Québec cap-and-trade system, examines the advantages of such a system in tackling greenhouse gas emissions, explains the process leading up to the linking of cap and- trade systems with California within the partnership of the Western Climate Initiative, and provides an overview of the Québec system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In view of the Paris Climate Conference in December 2015, where the adoption of a universal, binding climate agreement is foreseen, this note examines the respective roles of the European Union (EU) and the United States (US) in shaping the international response to climate change, and considers the prospects for the adoption and implementation of such a new climate agreement. It considers how the EU and the US have contributed to the design and implementation of the relevant international legal norms, addressing the shift in leadership from the US to the EU in the 1990s, EU activism through the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) and ambitious emission reductions, and the renewed commitment from the Obama Administration since 2013, including US-China cooperation. This article discusses the EU and US perspectives on the adoption and implementation of a new climate agreement, focusing on its legally binding nature. The author concludes that an adequate system of monitoring and verification mechanisms at the domestic and international levels is a conditio sine qua non for any new climate agreement. A system of "checks and balances", limiting the role of international law to one of facilitation, rather than prescription, may be the first step towards an innovative and more effective normative framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the history, purpose and significance of the federal cap-and-trade air regulations adopted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which is an environmental regulation to mitigate climate change at both federal and state levels in the U.S. Topics discussed include the significance of the U.S. Clean Air Act, dormant Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

After several decades of improvement, water quality in the United States is getting worse, and the problem is primarily caused by runoff from non-point sources, such as farms and urban development. These non-point sources have never had regulatory mandates in the Clean Water Act, and have proven very difficult to control. With little likelihood of comprehensive statutory changes, the EPA and the states that administer the Clean Water Act have looked to other regulatory means to address this problem. One of the most prominent has been the use of markets in pollution (particularly for nutrient pollution from runoff) to provide incentives for control. In short, the agencies and the regulated private sector have latched on to the possibility of highly regulated sources (such as industrial emitters) paying largely unregulated sources (such as agricultural lands) to reduce runoff into the nation's waterbodies. In theory, this is consistent with the regulatory push towards efficiency and using markets as rational arbiters of pollution control. While this theory has been used on many small scales over the last fifteen years, recently the EPA and many states have announced a reliance on it at a very large scale in order to reverse water pollution decline, particularly in large waterbodies with dead zones, like the Chesapeake Bay. While I believe these markets could work in theory at this scale, I do not believe the administrative agencies have addressed problems with doing so. Because of the similarity in problems concerning environmental integrity and efficiency between nonpoint agricultural runoff and biological offsets in a carbon trading system, I believe that much of the analysis of addressing these offsets from a series of legislative proposals could provide a regulatory template for dealing with non-point source agricultural pollution. This Article proposes such a regulatory template based on these ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Powerful political actors in the international system quite frequently adopt unilateral policies whose implications extend beyond their respective borders. Examples include financial market regulation as well as taxation, trade and environmental policies. They do so to avoid lowest common-denominator outcomes in areas where they desire more ambitious international policies, and to motivate or coerce other countries to shoulder a part of the burden associated with problem solving. This article explores whether and how such unilateralism affects public opinion in other countries, arguing that such analysis can point to external constraints on unilateralism and is worthwhile also for normative reasons. Empirically, we examine the effect of a major unilateral European Union (EU) climate policy initiative, which regulates emissions from aircraft, on public opinion in India and the United States, the two largest democracies outside the EU. Based on survey experiments, we study the effects of cost and sovereignty considerations on people’s evaluation of the EU’s new policy. The results show that both types of concern play a significant role and may act as a constraint on unilateral European climate policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]