In Germany, emission allowances (European Union Allowances, EUAs) for the first trading period (2005-2007) were allocated completely free of charge. In the second trading period (2008-2012) annual volumes of 40 million EUAs will be sold (Article 19 ZuG (Zuteilungsgesetz – The German Allocation Act) 2012). After an initial phase during which EUAs have been sold by the state-owned bank KfW Bankengruppe ...
Weather variables, and sunshine in particular, are found to be strongly correlated with financial variables. I consider self-reported happiness as a channel through which sunshine affects financial variables. I examine the influence of happiness on risk-taking behavior by instrumenting individual happiness with regional sunshine, and I find that happy people appear to be more risk-averse in financial ...
I examine the impact of happiness on consumption and savings behavior using data from the DNB Household Survey from the Netherlands and the German Socio-Economic Panel. Instrumenting individual happiness with regional sunshine, the results suggest that happier people save more, spend less, and have a lower marginal propensity to consume. Happier people take more time for making decisions and have more ...
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) promises to allow for low-emissions fossil-fuel-based power generation. The technology is under development; a number of technological, economic, environmental and safety issues remain to be solved. CCS may prolong the prevailing coal-to-electricity regime and countervail efforts in other mitigation categories. Given the need to continue using fossil-fuels for some ...
Our paper deals with modeling the effects of introducing a market-based tool for improving end-users' efficiency in an energy market which is already regulated through a cap-and-trade system for green house gas emissions and a quota system meant to improve competitiveness of energy produced using renewable resources. Our results show that the regulation of energy demand achieves its underlying objects ...
In a carbon constrained world, at least four classes of greenhouse gas mitigation options are available: Energy efficiency, fuel switching, introduction of carbon dioxide capture and storage along with renewable generating technologies, and reductions in emissions of non-CO2 greenhouse gases. The role of energy technologies is considered crucial in climate change mitigation. In particular, carbon capture ...
How does emissions trading influence the competitiveness of the German industry? By increasing the costs of domestic production, emissions trading may induce the relocation of industrial production and the associated emissions – e.g. to non-EU countries with few or no climate protection regulations. On behalf of the German Emissions Trading Authority (DEHSt) at the Federal Environment Agency, the impacts ...
Tropical cyclones that make landfall on the coast of the USA are causing increasing economic losses. It is assumed that the losses are largely due to socio-economic developments, i.e. growing wealth and greater settlement of exposed areas. However, it is also thought that the rise in losses is caused by increasing frequency of severe cyclones resulting from climate change. The object of this paper ...
