General Equilibrium Analysis of CO2 Mitigation Options
Thursday, 23 September 2010, 12:30pm to 2:00pm
Speaker: Adolf Stroombergen, chief economist and director, Infometrics.
Venue: Spectrum Theatre, BP House, 20 Customhouse Quay Wellington.
You can download a printable flyer here (PDF 366KB).
Abstract
Recent years have seen many suggestions for policies that would assist New Zealand to meet some future ‘post-Kyoto’ type of international emissions reduction obligation. These range from simply having the government purchase from offshore whatever number of emission permits are required to cover the country’s excess emissions, financed by general taxation; to more targeted polices such as subsidised or compulsory use of biofuels, a ban on thermal generation, a multitude of energy conservation and energy efficiency programmes, and average vehicle fleet fuel efficiency standards. And of course numerous variations on an emissions trading scheme (ETS). Some of the more tenuous policies have been discarded, but there is still enough interest (and of course vested interest) in many options other than a pure ETS or pure carbon price. Do any of them have a sound economic case? In this paper we examine an ETS and some of the more prominent alternative (or complementary) policies in a consistent general equilibrium framework. Our objective is to ascertain which policy or policies enable New Zealand to meet some given international emissions obligation at lowest economic cost.
Biography
Adolf has been responsible for managing Infometrics consulting services since 1997. He has a PhD in economics and specialises in mathematical economics, econometrics and economic modelling. His work has included general equilibrium analyses of changes in import protection, road funding, climate change and carbon charges; econometric estimation of forecasting models and empirical relationships in the areas of corporate credit risk and organisational structure; and the development of microsimulation models of savings and the tertiary student loan scheme. Adolf has been a member of the Advisory Committee on Economic Statistics since 1996 and he was an Expert Reviewer for the IPCC Working Group II Third and Fourth Assessment Reports.