A burning desire

ABSTRACT. The main goal of the paper is to provide the first ex-post analysis of the EU ETS in year 2013 in the Czech Republic, based on the analysis of the key EU ETS sector - combustion processes. Regarding the methodology, the empirical research was used as a one part, as a second part the Mamdani fuzzy rule-based system. Since the EUA market price was low in year 2013, the Czech companies within the combustion processes group had weak motivation to trade with the EUAs. However, the revenues obtained from the EUA auctions in year 2013 were higher than revenues obtained from the environmental taxes. Moreover, auctioned EUAs had the similar characteristics as the environmental taxes. We can say that the EUA behaved as an additional carbon tax - in case that the company exceeded the level of emission limit represented by free emission allowances.Keywords: emission trading; environmental taxation; EU ETS; Czech Republic.JEL Classification : H23, H3, Q48, Q58IntroductionGenerally, emission allowances trading, also called as cap and trade program, originally started up in the USA and currently it is frequently used throughout the world. National or sub-national emission trading systems are already operating in Australia, the European Union, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland and the United States, and are planned in Canada, China and South Korea (European Commission, 2013). Besides trading with emissions (mainly CO2, NOx, SO2), there are also tradable fish quota or trading in waste sector, water protection sector and land protection sector.The European Union established a scheme for CO2 and other greenhouse gases' emission allowances trading, the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS). The initial EU ETS was based on Directive 2003/87/EC, which established a fundamentally decentralized system for the pilot phase of emissions trading (2005 to 2007) and the Kyoto Protocol commitment phase (2008 to 2012). The key instruments were the National Allocation Plans (NAPs) (Wettestad et al., 2012). In year 2013, based on new Directive 2009/29/EC, the EU ETS came into Phase III (2013 to 2020), the post-Kyoto commitment period.The EU ETS is substantially larger and by far more complex than the pioneering US Sulphur Allowance System (Conrad et al., 2012). The EU ETS covers more than 11,000 power stations and manufacturing plants in the 28 EU member states as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. Aviation operators flying within and between most of these countries are also covered. In total, around 45% of total EU emissions are limited by the EU ETS (European Commission, 2013). The EU ETS covers both European Emissions Allowances - EUAs (since 2005) and European Aviation Allowances - EUAAs (since 2012). The market price of the allowances is determined by supply and demand at the exchange. Both in the first and in the second trading period, the EU emission allowances were traded mostly on the BlueNext trading exchange. In the third trading period, there is one significant big exchange, where the auctions can be organized - European Energy Exchange EEX (EEX, 2015).The regulatory framework of the EU ETS was largely unchanged for the first two trading periods of its operation (2005 - 2012); however the beginning of the third trading period in 2013 brings changes in common rules, published as Directive 2009/29/EC, which should strengthen the system. Since the EU emission allowances were previously grandfathered - for free (Wettestad et al., 2012), from year 2013 the significant yield of the emission allowances is auctioned. Grandfathering was widely criticized, mostly because it introduced significant distortions to the EU ETS (Falbo et al., 2013). Auctioning is the most transparent method of allocating allowances and puts into practice the polluter pays principle (Vicha, 2011; European Commission, 2013). Sectorial differentiation was also introduced, with (initially) far more auctioning of allowances for energy producers than energy-intensive industries. …

Anthropocene global warming is largely associated with fossil fuel carbon emissions. Temporal scaling provides a way to place current carbon emissions on a geological scale. The scaling of carbon emissions at the onset of hyperthermal events suggests that we might anticipate higher carbon emission rates over longer time scales than what we currently observe in the Anthropocene. However, this inference is uncertain due to limited data concerning the accumulations and time intervals of carbon emissions of Meso-Cenozoic hyperthermal events. While on the long-time hyperthermal-event scales of several to hundreds of kiloyears, modern carbon accumulations and emission rates are 9 times greater than those of the hyperthermal-event emissions. The present-day carbon release can be effectively compared to the onset of hyperthermal events through temporal scaling. If current carbon emission trends persist, we may reach the carbon emission thresholds for hyperthermal events in one to three hundred years, getting an intensified hydrological cycle, enhanced continental weathering and ocean acidification. And if the situation gets worse, we may reach the upper limit of the carbon emission threshold for hyperthermal events (e.g., Permian-Triassic Boundary event, PTB) with a biotic mass extinction over four to thirteen hundred years. This study offers new insights into current carbon emissions from a temporal scale perspective, enhancing our understanding of contemporary climate change.

In this paper, the consequences of recognition of carbon emission allowances as financial instruments under the EU financial markets law including Directive 2014/65/EU of 15 May 2014 on markets in financial instruments (MiFID II) and the EU environmental law are analysed. We try to answer the question in what way the recognition of carbon emission allowances as financial instruments affected the functioning of the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS). In particular, we ask whether it is beneficial or detrimental in terms of the environmental and economic effectiveness of the EU ETS.

In Europe, ICT equipment and services account for 2.5%-4% for EU's carbon emissions. According to the Smart2020 report by the Global e-Sustainability Initiative, GeSI (2008), the ICT sector's emissions are expected to increase, from 0.53 billion tonnes (Gt) carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) in 2002 to 1.43 GtCO2e in 2020 (in Business As Usual, BAU, scenario). Thus, energy efficiency is a key research area especially in the digital world. The aim of this research is to monitor the hardware and software utilization of processor and to determine its efficiency. In this research, the energy utilization of a server has been observed using SNMPv3 and ways to improve the energy efficiency have been suggested based on the data collected. The power consumption of the system varies with different loads on the host application. Additionally, data is extracted about the CPU state of the server. This allows for a more rigorous comparative analysis and results show that energy efficiency can be improved under different circumstances which will be discussed in this paper.

ICT is currently responsible for 4% of the EU's carbon emission. In this industry, data centers are growing quickly to supply the escalating services and application demands. The design of high performance and energy-efficient data center networks is an important issue while still being confronted with many challenges such as scalability, reliability, etc. On the other hand, the network devices' difference in power consumption as well as property make the researching process more difficult to construct a routing algorithm that effectively works with various devices. This paper presents a novel energy-saving scheme that can flexibly control and route traffic relying on the difference of network devices' energy-profile. By using Open Flow mechanism and Net-FPGA cards based on Software Defined Networks, we successfully deploy energy-aware data center network, and its experimental results show that the novel scheme improves the power saving level and energy-efficiently works based on the switches' energy-profile.

This paper constructs a TVP-VAR model to examine the dynamic spillover effects among the EU carbon emission, crude oil, Chinese stock, and Chinese exchange rate markets. Our findings are as follows: (1) Spillover effects are primarily short-term, with strong inter-market connections observed across the four markets. (2) Stronger connections are observed between the EU carbon market, the crude oil market, and the Chinese stock market. China’s relaxed investment restrictions and RMB exchange rate policy lead to a significant negative relationship between the Chinese stock market and the RMB exchange rate. However, the effects of the EU carbon market and crude oil market on the RMB exchange rate remain uncertain. (3) The Ukraine conflict and the China-U.S. trade war significantly amplify spillover effects between the EU carbon market and the crude oil market. Additionally, the Paris Agreement, China-U.S. trade war, COVID-19, and the Russia-Ukraine conflict significantly increase the spillover effects of the crude oil and carbon emissions markets on Chinese stocks and exchange rates.

How will ecosystem carbon sequestration contribute to the reduction of regional carbon emissions in the future? analysis based on the MOP-PLUS model framework

The emission of greenhouse gases poses enormous pressure on current carbon emissions and carbon reduction. Accurate quantification of carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants is of great significance for achieving the dual carbon goal. To enable enterprises to better understand their carbon emissions, this study constructs a carbon emission model and carbon emission data accounting model for coal-fired power plants. Case data calculations and a carbon emission reduction analysis were conducted. The experiment showcases that the carbon sensitivity of the inner side of the boiler under control conditions is higher than that of the operating parameters controlled on the inner side of the steam turbine, with a maximum total value of 16.67 g/MJ; the annual average low calorific value of coal remains between 16,000 kJ/kg; the activity level of coal remains between 30,000 TJ; and the oxidation probability of coal char during combustion fluctuates, with a maximum of 99.8%. In the calculation of coal-fired carbon emissions, the fitting difference between the emissions of generator unit 1 and generator unit 2 is maintained within 2%. Overall, the CO2 emissions of power plants involved in the study are generally high. The model built through this study has well analyzed the carbon emissions of power plants. It is of great significance for the actual carbon emission reduction of coal-fired power plants.

The carbon emissions are flooding into the atmosphere because of modern industry activities, burning of fossil fuels, land cleaning (etc.), contributing to global warming and associated climatic changes. These emissions are in the form of CO2. Hydrocarbon seeps, gas chimneys, exposure of geological structures on the earth's surface may also be causing carbon evaporations into the atmosphere. Presently, the salient issue is how to control and manage the carbon emissions. Capturing and storing these carbon emissions into sub-surface geological structural highs are typical solutions for million of years into the future. These solutions are derived through a process of geosequestration, which has been evolved from methodical views of ecology (ecosystems surrounding the sources of CO2 emitters), petroleum systems, geology, geophysics and geomorphology. In the present study, the authors propose an ontology based warehouse modeling of multiple data dimensions acquired from different knowledge domains. In geological and geophysical exploration domains, multiple data dimensions (entities/objects) are described and documented as done by numerous petroleum exploration companies. For example, geological structures and quality reservoirs are key domains, which are prerequisites for any geological storage. Several issues and challenges, faced by oil and gas industries, especially the data associated with carbon emissions - their data organization and management, are briefly discussed. Ontology focuses issues of semantics, conceptualization, and contextualization, while organizing exploration data dimensions. Data relationships that have been conceptualized are denormalized to attain fine-grained data structuring, which subsequently facilitate data mining and data visualization procedures. Several multidimensional star and snow-flake schemas are constructed to address the issues of data organization associated with current carbon emissions in the oil and gas industries and also manufacturing industries. The data structures that belong to different domain ontologies, are integrated in a warehouse environment. Data views extracted from these warehouse models are interpreted in the form of geological structures. Our study also ensures that these carbon emission storages are free from adverse structures, fractures and fissures, which otherwise causative to carbon leaks and emissions.

Why carbon leakage matters and what can be done against it

How to avoid history repeating itself: the case for an EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) price floor revisited

Some problems exist in the current carbon emissions benchmark setting systems. The primary consideration for industrial carbon emissions standards highly relate to direct carbon emissions (power-related emissions) and only a portion of indirect emissions are considered in the current carbon emissions accounting processes. This practice is insufficient and may cause double counting to some extent due to mixed emission sources. To better integrate and quantify direct and indirect carbon emissions, an embodied industrial carbon emissions benchmark setting method is proposed to guide the establishment of carbon emissions benchmarks based on input-output analysis. This method attempts to link direct carbon emissions with inter-industrial economic exchanges and systematically quantifies carbon emissions embodied in total product delivery chains. The purpose of this study is to design a practical new set of embodied intensity-based benchmarks for both direct and indirect carbon emissions. Beijing, at the first level of carbon emissions trading pilot schemes in China, plays a significant role in the establishment of these schemes and is chosen as an example in this study. The newly proposed method tends to relate emissions directly to each responsibility in a practical way through the measurement of complex production and supply chains and reduce carbon emissions from their original sources. This method is expected to be developed under uncertain internal and external contexts and is further expected to be generalized to guide the establishment of industrial benchmarks for carbon emissions trading schemes in China and other countries.

This paper explores how optimizing vessel speeds can help reduce carbon emissions in the maritime industry. Focusing on liner shipping routes between China and Europe, it examines how carbon pricing mechanisms, including carbon taxes and emissions trading under the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS), impact operational costs and emissions reduction. With the use of advanced optimization methods, such as the Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm-II (NSGA-II) and the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), this research explores the balance between adjusting vessel speeds and minimizing emissions. The findings show that shipping companies on the China–Europe route can reduce the financial strain of carbon pricing by carefully managing speeds and voyage times. This study compares two scenarios of carbon tax policy and carbon trading rights in terms of voyage costs and carbon emissions. The results of this comparison based on the given parameters indicate a reduction of 1124 tons of carbon emissions with the carbon tax policy scenario, while the carbon trading rights scenario allows for more voyages yearly (5.24 vs. 5.30). This demonstrates one policy being more economical, while the other is also more environmentally efficient. These insights support the development of strategies that align environmental goals with economic priorities, paving the way for more sustainable maritime operations. The study introduces its objectives and reviews relevant literature by presenting a detailed methodology, incorporating emissions modeling with clearly defined parameters. The analysis presents results that undergo sensitivity testing and limitations using MATLAB (R2022a version). The study concludes by discussing policy implications and recommendations for future research and practical advancement

主体功能区视角下的碳排放核算——以广东省为例

A comparative study on the volatility of EU and China’s carbon emission permits trading markets