Steering the Climate System: Using Inertia to Lower the Cost of Policy

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Lemoine, Derek; Rudik, Ivan
• 署名单位: University of Arizona; National Bureau of Economic Research; Iowa State University; Iowa State University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.20150986
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 2947-2957
• 关键词: FOSSIL-FUEL; ECONOMICS; stabilization; mitigation

摘要

Common views hold that the efficient way to limit warming to a chosen level is to price carbon emissions at a rate that increases exponentially. We show that this Hotelling tax on carbon emissions is actually inefficient. The least-cost policy path takes advantage of the climate system's inertia to delay reducing emissions and allow greater cumulative emissions. The efficient carbon tax follows an inverse-U-shaped path and grows more slowly than the Hotelling tax. Economic models that assume exponentially increasing carbon taxes are overestimating the cost of limiting warming, overestimating the efficient near-term carbon tax, and overvaluing technologies that mature sooner.