Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Sustainability and
Green Life
Lecture 8 – Environmental Economics II
Policy Instruments
• What type of intervention works best?
– There are two types of instrument – command‐
and‐control approach and market‐based
instruments (MBIs)
• Command‐and‐control: environmental policy
set by the government that relies on
regulation such as permission, prohibition,
standard setting and enforcement.
• It has been the dominant method of
environmental regulation in the majority of
countries.
Policy Instruments
• Command‐and control approach is more
commonly used to control environmental
problems in Hong Kong.
• It sets out the uniform acceptable level of
environmental quality to be enforced by the
authority.
• Penalty is incurred for any violation.
• The most prevalent of the standards are
technology‐based and performance‐based
standards.
Policy Instruments
• Technology‐based standards specify the
method, and sometimes the actual equipment,
that firms must use to comply with a particular
regulation.
– E.g. code of practice must be followed for a certain
types of industrial activities.
Policy Instruments
• A performance standard sets a uniform control
target for firms, while allowing some latitude
in how this target is met but might not dictate
the means by which this is achieved.
– E.g. Emission reduction target of four major air
pollutants (SO2, NOX, RSP and VOC)
2015 & 2020 Emission Reduction Targets/Ranges for the Hong Kong
2015 Emission Reduction Targets 2020 Emission Reduction Ranges
Pollutant
(as compared with 2010) (as compared with 2010)
Policy Instruments
• Advantages and disadvantages of Command‐
and‐Control Approach
• Pros:
– It provide a clear outcome, and is relatively simple
to monitor compliance.
– The authority can respond more quickly
to activities which do not abide by the
set standards.
– When the target pollutant is highly toxic that
concern over their impact outweighs any
economic efficiency concerns.
Policy Instruments
• Cons:
– It offers no incentive to the polluters to improve
the quality of the environment beyond the
standard set by a particular law.
– It is inflexible for firms to adopt new technologies
to reduce pollution because each polluter might
have differing cost structures or operations. It can
be costly to resort to unduly expensive means of
controlling pollution to meet the same standard.
– Since the standards are imposed by government
authority, it can be outdated and compromises
may be made in the political process.
Policy Instruments
• Market‐based Instruments (MBIs): address
the market failure of 'environmental
externalities' either by incorporating the
external cost of production or consumption
activities.
• It aims to encourage polluters to find
innovative, cost‐effective ways to reduce the
environmental emissions by offering them
rewards or by doling out punishments.
Policy Instruments
• Taxes:
– Tax levy on pollution generating activities because
it is an externality. The amount of tax shall equal to
the damages it imposed.
– By raising the price for polluting to reflect social
cost, environmental taxes ensure that polluters
take responsibility for the full costs of their actions.
• E.g. Environmental Levy Scheme on Plastic
Shopping Bags
– It incurs fixed price for each unit of
emission but it doesn’t fix the amount
of emission either individually or
collectively.
Policy Instruments
• Create property rights:
– By creating private property rights, the owner
would be responsible for the depletion of the
natural resources, and thus the price will increase
and their use will decline.
• E.g. privatization of grazing land
– By setting contractual arrangement, common
property regimes can be effectives as long as
access to the resources is
properly managed.
Policy Instruments
• Establish a proxy market:
– Tradable permits allows rights to discharge
pollution or exploit resources that can be
exchanged through either a free or controlled
permit market.
• E.g. tradable quota of fishing rights
– The regulatory authority sets a limit on the total
amount of emissions/uses, followed by issuing
allowable permits. They then
leave it to the market to trade
the permits.
Source: http://worldoceanreview.com/
Policy Instruments
• Pros:
– Allow the polluter to determine the most cost‐
effective way to reduce their emissions.
– Regulator requires less information under an incentive
program since there is greater motivation for polluters
to devise their own innovative solutions. Therefore,
the regulator does not need to know how cost‐
effective various control options will be, or what the
cost is at any particular installation, because the
source will be held accountable for all of their actions
and will pay both pollution control costs and damage
costs.
Policy Instruments
• Cons:
– Inspection and enforcement may also be essential to
prevent evasion of liability
– Taxes also present political obstacles since no industry
likes to see increased taxes and politicians do not want
to lose support by passing legislation that includes
more taxes.
– regulators attempt to address pollution issues across
diverse areas and/or industries. However, pollution
taxes are sometimes desired by companies if they are
applied to all since the equal taxation is viewed as ‘fair.’
Case study – Climate Change
• A change in average weather conditions, or in
the time variation of weather around longer‐
term average conditions (i.e. more or
fewer extreme weather events).
Source: NASA
Case study – Climate Change
• These changes in turn, could cause:
– More severe storms and droughts
– Increased risk of flooding (security and rising sea
defense cost)
– Land surface loss due to rising sea levels (
population migration & infrastructure adaptation
costs)
– Agricultural disruption (affect food availability)
– Increased temperature (increase risk of water‐ &
food‐borne diseases and spread of tropical
diseases)
– Loss of natural habitats
Case study – Climate Change
• Instruments used to combat climate change:
• Command‐and‐control:
– Buildings Energy Efficiency Ordinance (HK)
– The developers or building owners of newly
constructed buildings should ensure that 4 key
types of building services comply with the design
standards of the Building Energy Code (BEC).
Case study – Climate Change
– Performance‐based Building Energy Code focuses
on a building's total energy consumption as
compared to the energy budget of a hypothetical
building (a building meeting all the prescriptive
code requirements), and the energy saving over
the energy budget can be used as a trade‐off for
some of the requirements in the prescriptive
codes.
Case study – Climate Change
• Market Instruments:
– Carbon Tax (Australia)
– The carbon tax is effective from 2014.
– Facilities that emitted more than 25,000 tonnes of
CO2 equivalent annually during 2012‐13 or 2013‐
14 were directly liable under the carbon tax.
– Certain industries qualified for industry assistance,
in the form of free units that could be used under
the carbon tax, to enable them to remain
competitive in international markets that are not
subject to a carbon tax.
Case study – Climate Change
– About 75,000 businesses were liable to pay the
carbon tax during 2013‐14.
– Of these about 370 were directly liable under the
carbon tax, around 1,000 paid an equivalent
carbon tax through synthetic greenhouse gas
levies and the
remainder
paid an equivalent
carbon tax
through the fuel
tax system.
Case study – Climate Change
– This cost will initially be set at $23, and increase
gradually until 2015, that will shift to a trading
scheme that will let the market set the cost.
– The treasury projections for 2050 are in real terms
(discounted for inflation) from a minimum of $131
per tonne to a maximum of $275 per tonne.
Case study – Climate Change
– How will the carbon tax affect people’s lives?
– What is the pros and cons of carbon tax?
– You may think from the perspective of individual,
corporate, government, the nation, and the globe.
Kenneth, for your use
only: Pros and Cons:
http://greengarageblo
g.org/8‐main‐pros‐
and‐cons‐of‐the‐
carbon‐tax
Case study – Climate Change
– Outcome:
– Carbon tax in Australia has been axed in 2014.
Australian citizens, unhappy with the increased
cost, voted out the ruling party proposing carbon
tax. Another political party then moved into the
house and removed carbon tax.
Case study – Climate Change
• Market Instruments:
– Cap and Trade system (EU)
– A proxy market
– Cap: total amount of certain greenhouse
gases that can be emitted by installations
covered by the system.
– Typically, the cap is further reduced over
time to result in lower and lower emissions
as the program is implemented over
multiple years.
Case study – Climate Change
– Cap and Trade system (EU)
• The regulatory agency
starts with a historical
amount of emissions in a
specific geographical area
• He then sets a cap lower
than the historic emissions
• He allocates emission
allowances to various
market participants. Source: http://www.oilsandsmagazine.com/
• Within the cap, companies
can trade emission
allowances as needed.
Case study – Climate Change
– Do you think it is effective to mitigate climate
change?
– You may think from the perspective of individual,
corporate, government, the nation, and the globe.
Pros Cons
Reduce GhG emission No effective carbon reduction from
global scale
Source of revenue for the nation Slow process
碳交易的故事:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CiAeLW6Y1s
Case study – Climate Change
– Outcome:
– Cap and Trade system in EU quickly fell victim to
fraud and mismanagement since companies over‐
reported the amount of carbon emitted in order to
ensure they were allocated enough credits. Too
many carbon permits were freely issued, putting
downward pressure on carbon prices. Intertwined
with the fact that clean energy power was
promoted and economy recession emerged, many
manufacturing operations shut down. The price of
carbon, which was initially set at $30 per
tonne, fell to zero in 2007 when there were no
buyers left.
Case study – Climate Change
– Carbon Offsetting
– Scientific consensus states that carbon emissions
must be reduced by 80% by 2050 to avoid
temperature rise of more than 2oc.
– Carbon offsetting is to use carbon credits to enable
businesses to compensate for their emissions by
funding an equivalent carbon dioxide saving
elsewhere.
– Offset credits for eco‐friendly technologies are
purchased by developed nations
Case study – Climate Change
– Some organizations offer offsetting projects.
– Business or individual can first calculate their
carbon footprint and decide how much CO2 they
want to offset.