CS3 In the News

Using detailed data from firms in China, Germany, and the United Kingdom, Karplus will investigate what characteristics of firms determine how policy affects production costs and firm competitiveness. Earlier seed grant led to U.S. EPA funding for Noelle Selin and Susan Solomon's project identifying new ways to evaluate the success of emissions-control measures tailored to reduce particulate pollution.

1. Is it appropriate for investors to hedge against market exposure by placing capital into technologies that result in cleaner burning fossil generation?

2. Will private and public investors accept the risk and continue on a path of cheap fossil fuels, or increase holdings toward the 20-30 percent non-carbon source allocation?

Inglis made the case for a “tax swap”: implementing a tax on carbon while offsetting its revenues with a reduction in income or payroll taxes. This way, Inglis said, the U.S. can unleash a wave of clean energy innovation, driving down planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions without harming economic growth. And by making the tax border-adjustable — meaning that imports to the U.S. from countries without their own carbon tax would face an import tax — Inglis said his plan would catalyze the rest of the world to tax carbon as well.

Paper: Philip J. Wolfe, Amanda Giang, Akshay Ashok, Noelle E. Selin, and Steven R. H. Barrett. Costs of IQ Loss from Leaded Aviation Gasoline Emissions. Environ. Sci. Technol., 2016, 50 (17), 9026–9033. dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.6b02910.

The President’s latest executive order would scrap regulations critical to addressing climate change. But would it also, as he promises, put miners “back to work”? John Reilly and Noelle Selin comment on the latest developments.