A Multistage Sustainable Production–Inventory Model with Carbon Emission Reduction and Price-Dependent Demand under Stackelberg Game

Carbon tax is an emission regulation, which widely used to curb the carbon emissions generated from firms. In the context of carbon tax policy, firms need to determine an optimal carbon reduction level and optimal product prices. To address firms’ decision-making challenges, this paper considers a two-echelon supply chain consisting of a single manufacturer and a single retailer under carbon tax policy; it establishes a Stackelberg game model with a risk-averse retailer and a risk-neutral manufacturer who is the leader of the game. The paper studies the influence of the government’s carbon tax policy and retailer’s risk-averse attitude on the optimal decision of the supply chain. The result shows that when the retailer is risk aversion, the degree of risk aversion of the retailer is positively correlated with the wholesale price of the manufacturer and unit carbon emission reduction, and within a certain range of carbon emission reduction cost coefficient, it is positively correlated with the price of products; with the increase of the carbon tax rate imposed by the government, the retail price of unit products, the wholesale price of the manufacturer, and the carbon emission reduction of unit products also increase. Finally, the results are verified by numerical examples.

In order to cope with the climate problem of global warming and respond to the call of the United Nations to reduce carbon emissions, China has put the goals of carbon peaking in 2030 and carbon neutrality in 2060 forward and has promoted the transformation and upgrading of the economic development mode and the green, low-carbon development path. In international practice, various countries have widely adopted the carbon trading market and tax policy as effective carbon emission reduction mechanisms and tools. In 2012, China implemented a carbon trading pilot project and established a national unified carbon trading market in 2021 based on accumulated experience, but the carbon tax has not yet been introduced. According to the international carbon tax practice and the current situation in China, the introduction of the carbon tax is conducive to the establishment of a sound carbon emission reduction system and the promotion of green and low-carbon development from the macro-control level. In this paper, we analyzed the necessity and theoretical research of carbon tax policy in China and explored the feasibility of a carbon tax in China by combining the internationally advanced carbon tax practice. By establishing a CGE model at the carbon-tax level and using the social accounting matrix (SAM) as the database, we simulated the impact of implementing carbon tax policies under different carbon tax prices on China’s environmental and economic benefits and whether the double-dividend effect of a carbon tax can be effectively realized. The results show that the carbon tax will help reduce carbon emissions and significantly affect carbon reduction. However, in the short term, it has a negative effect on economic development. Accordingly, it is suggested that a scientific carbon tax system should be established according to national conditions, and a carbon tax should be introduced at a lower carbon tax price. The carbon tax should be supplemented by carbon tax subsidies to ensure effective carbon emission reduction so as to alleviate the inhibiting effect on economic development. At the same time, the compound carbon emission reduction mechanism of carbon trading and tax should be improved to lay the institutional foundation for the early realization of the carbon neutrality target.

With the rapid growth in carbon emissions from transport, reducing these emissions is becoming as important as reducing emissions from production. We took a transporter as a member of the supply chain system and constructed a three-echelon supply chain composed of a manufacturer, transporter, and retailer. This study applies the Stackelberg game and Nash game to research the optimal carbon emission reductions, pricing, and social welfare when the government imposes a carbon tax on carbon emitters and consumers are environmentally conscious. The four scenarios were designed as follows: 1) non-cooperative decision-making (NN model), in which neither carbon emission reduction cooperation nor pricing cooperation takes place; 2) local-cooperative decision-making Ⅰ (CN model), in which only cooperation in the field of carbon emission reductions takes place; 3) local-cooperative decision-making Ⅱ (NC model), in which cooperation in the field of pricing without cooperation in the area of carbon emission reductions takes place; and 4) overall-cooperative decision-making (CC model), in which both cooperation in the field of carbon emission reductions and cooperation in the area of pricing take place. The results show that economic (as profit of the supply chain system), social (as pricing and social welfare), and environmental benefits (as the optimal carbon emission reductions) for the three-echelon supply chain will improve with the deepening of cooperation among the supply chain members. Carbon tax policies have different impacts on clean and polluting supply chains. High carbon tax can encourage clean supply chain to increase carbon emission reduction, but will lead to the reduction of carbon emission of polluting supply chain. A cross-shareholding contract is designed to coordinate the supply chain and achieve the optimal state of the overall cooperative decision. Finally, the paper provides suggestions on carbon emission reductions for enterprises and policymaking for the government.

Greenhouse gas emissions are receiving greater concern in the world due to the recent Paris climate agreement with announcement of carbon emission targets by various countries to reduce anthropogenic global climate change. Industry and their supply chains are a major source of carbon emissions. Consequently, manufacturing firms have realized the importance of adopting environmental friendly supply chain management (SCM) practices and are implementing such plans in their business operations. The study presents a tyre remanufacturing supply chain tactical planning model that integrates economic and carbon emission objectives with a carbon tax policy consideration. A modified cross-entropy solution method was employed to solve the tyre remanufacturing tactical supply chain planning model with commercial solver. Numerical experiments are completed utilizing data from Indian tyre remanufacturing industry. The analysis of the numerical results give important organizational insights for industry practitioners and policy insights for the government on (1) possible financial and emissions reduction impacts of a carbon tax rate at the tyre remanufacturing supply chain tactical planning level, (2) the use of profit/emission objective trade off analysis for making informed decisions on investments in carbon emission reduction technology, and (3) possible way to decide carbon price for maximum environmental returns achieved without substantial impacts on the economy and competitive positioning of firms. Two carbon saving indices have been proposed for evaluation of carbon scenarios. The results have been analyzed with the help of these indices. A carbon tax and reward policy (CER) has also been proposed.

Impact of energy structure on carbon emission and economy of China in the scenario of carbon taxation

Purpose As climate challenges grow and countries set increasingly ambitious climate goals, the drive to find effective policy tools to address these issues is accelerating. This research aims to describe how the carbon tax and its impacts reduce carbon emissions. Design/methodology/approach This study employs bibliometric analysis to identify research trends and a systematic literature review to offer insights into how carbon taxes, as policy measures, can help reduce carbon emissions. It sourced relevant articles from Scopus databases using a range of keywords and keyword combinations. Findings The findings of this study indicate that the carbon tax is just one of many variables that can reduce carbon emissions. Its effectiveness varies by market maturity, with reductions of 5–21% in established markets. The best results come from hybrid approaches that use both carbon taxes and emission trading systems. When combined with carbon capture, utilization and storage technologies, these approaches could lead to a 32.5% reduction by 2060. Research limitations/implications Practically, policymakers should consider the effectiveness of the carbon tax (policy) in reducing carbon emissions. The study theoretical implications include highlighting various theories for future research and sharing the mapping variables related to organizations’ carbon emission reduction. Originality/value The study adds originality and value to the existing literature by establishing a connection between carbon taxes and carbon emissions. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first research that combines bibliometric analysis with systematic literature review to answer how carbon tax and its impacts reduce carbon emissions.

Sustainable biofuel consumption in air passenger transport driven by carbon-tax policy

The climate crisis and the increasing temperature of the earth have highlighted the need to reduce carbon emissions in supply chains, which has gradually become a global consensus. The focus has often been on traditional carbon emission industries, such as energy and transportation, while the pharmaceutical industry has received little attention. This paper, therefore, aims to fill that research gap by exploring the carbon emission reduction mechanisms of the pharmaceutical supply chain, specifically the role of public participation. We constructed a quadrilateral evolutionary game model, based on evolutionary game theory, consisting of local government, pharmaceutical manufacturers, wastewater treatment plants, and the public. By finding the equilibrium point of the system of replicator dynamics, evolutionary stable strategies are obtained. Our numerical simulation shows the impacts of the principal strategy change and the key variables. This paper also identifies some management implications: 1) When local governments implement a combination policy (carbon subsidies and carbon tax policy), the key is to formulate a subsidy level satisfactory to the four parties. If the subsidy level is in the middle level, the four parties are at their most willing to participate in carbon emission reduction. 2) When local governments implement a single policy (carbon tax policy), the carbon tax rate becomes the key variable. A high level of carbon tax accelerates carbon emission reduction in the pharmaceutical supply chain. 3) No matter what policies local governments implement, the free-rider effect between pharmaceutical manufacturers and wastewater treatment plants always hinders their low-carbon decisions. 4) Public reporting is an effective measure for promoting carbon emission reduction in the pharmaceutical supply chain. When local governments implement a combination policy, it can reduce the cost of reporting and improve the willingness of the public to report. Finally, we put forward suggestions for rationalizing carbon emission reduction.

Carbon emission has negative externalities, which will cause severe natural and social problems. In recent years, more and more attention has been paid to carbon emission reduction issue both in academic and application fields. This paper aims to explore the impact of punitive carbon tax and incentive carbon emission reduction subsidy on economy and environment through the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) framework. The results show that both carbon tax and carbon emission reduction subsidy policies can help to reduce carbon emissions and to improve environment quality. In addition, carbon emission reduction subsidy has a positive impact on economy, while carbon tax has the opposite impact. It follows that the incentive carbon emission reduction policy is more conducive to the coordinated development of economy and environment. This research can be a guideline for the government to formulate carbon emission abatement policies from the perspective of coordinated development.

Carbon tax is one of the most common carbon emission regulation policies, manufactures and customers must incorporate it in their pricing and purchase decisions. This paper examined the impact of the different carbon tax policies on the carbon emission and their profits. This problem is formulated as a Stackelberg game, the manufacture is the leader, the retailer is the follower, the manufacture’s optimal pricing decision and the customer purchase decisions are derived. Then the impact of carbon tax policy on these decisions and the carbon emission and the profits is also investigated. We found that carbon emission will be reduced if the carbon tax is absorbed by the customers and the carbon footprints of unit product is relative high compared with the setting that the carbon tax is absorbed by the manufacture and the carbon footprints of unit product is relative low.

We study an emission-dependent dyadic fashion supply chain made up of a supplier and a manufacturer, both of which can reduce their own component/product emissions to serve the carbon-footprint sensitive consumers. With Carbon Tax regulation, we consider four scenarios resulting from two ways in form of adopting transfer price contract and/or introducing third-party emission-reduction service (TPERS) to enhance the efficiency of systematic emission reductions. We refine four models from these corresponding scenarios, which in turn constitute a decision-making framework composed of determining vertical incentives and choosing supply chain structures. By exploiting Stackelberg games in all models, we compare their emission reduction efficiencies and profitability for each pair of settings. Theoretic analysis and numerical studies show that adopting vertical transfer payment schemes can definitely benefit channel carbon footprint reduction and Pareto improvement of supply chain profitability, regardless of whether the emission-reduction service exists or not. However, whether introducing TPERS or not is heavily depending on systematic parameters when the transfer payment incentive is adopted there. We also provide insights on the sensitivity of carbon tax parameters with respect to the supply chain performance, overall carbon emission reduction, vertical incentive and TPERS adopting decision-makings.

Using the panel data of Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies spanning from 2007 to 2021, we explore the impact of the synergism of carbon emission trading policy and carbon tax policy on the carbon emission level of enterprises through the difference-in-difference model, intermediary effect model, regulatory effect model. The research results show that: (1) Carbon emission trading and carbon tax both promote enterprises’ carbon emission reduction. (2) There are three paths for carbon emission trading and carbon tax policies to encourage enterprises’ carbon emission reduction actions synergistically: improving enterprises’ green technology innovation level, optimising energy structure, and accelerating industrial structure optimisation. (3) Mediated regulatory effect results show that the greater the company’s government support and R&D investment, the greater the synergism between carbon trading and carbon tax policies to drive green technology innovation and the better the carbon emission reduction effect of the company. (4) The synergism between carbon trading and carbon tax policies positively fosters public ownership companies’ carbon emissions reductions and heavily polluted industry companies.

Sustainable inventory, pricing, and marketing strategies for imperfect quality perishable items with inspection errors and advertisement-, expiration date- and price-dependent demand under carbon emissions policies

The present study tries to investigate a joint inventory-pricing control problem in a dual-channel supply chain network for deteriorating products under carbon tax regulations. To this end, a mathematical model is developed with an objective function that can maximize the total profit. Then, the model is solved using the hybrid algorithm combined with the simulated annealing (SA) algorithm and the Gradient descent search. The theoretical results show that the developed model is concave. Findings suggest that an increase in the deterioration rate reduces the total profit. Moreover, whenever the carbon tax rises, the manufacturer tends to decrease the number of deliveries to the retail store but increases the amount of the delivered products in order to avoid unnecessary costs. Based on our results, price elasticity is the most influential parameter to determine the total profit of the dual-channel supply chain for deteriorating products under carbon tax policies.

This study investigates a green intermodal routing problem considering carbon tax regulation and a mixed (combined soft and hard) time window to improve cost- and time-effectiveness and promote carbon emission reduction in intermodal transportation. To enhance the feasibility of problem optimization, we model the uncertainty of both the carbon tax rate and the intermodal network capacity in the routing problem. By using interval fuzzy numbers to formulate the twofold uncertainty, an interval fuzzy linear optimization model is established to address the problem optimization, in which the optimization objective of the model is to minimize the total costs (consisting of transportation, time, and carbon emission costs). Furthermore, we conduct crisp processing of the proposed model to make the problem solvable, in which the optimization level, a parameter whose value is determined by the receiver before solving the problem, is introduced to represent the receiver’s attitude towards the reliability of transportation. We present a numerical experiment to verify the feasibility of the optimization model. The sensitivity analysis shows that the economics and environmental sustainability of the intermodal routing optimization conflict with its reliability. Improving the reliability of transportation increases both the total costs and the carbon emissions of the intermodal route. Furthermore, through comparison with deterministic modeling, the numerical experiment shows that modeling the twofold uncertainty can cover the different decision-making attitudes of the receiver, provide intermodal routes that are sensitive to the optimization level, enable flexible route decision-making, and avoid unreliable transportation. Through comparison with hard and soft time windows, the numerical experiment proves that the mixed time window is more applicable for problem optimization, since it can obtain the intermodal route that yields improved economics and environmental sustainability and simultaneously satisfies the receiver’s requirement for timeliness. Through comparison with the green intermodal route aiming at minimum carbon emissions, the numerical experiment indicates that carbon tax regulation under an interval fuzzy carbon tax rate is not feasible in all decision-making scenarios where the receivers have different attitudes regarding the reliability of transportation. When carbon tax regulation is infeasible, bi-objective optimization can provide Pareto solutions to balance the objectives of reduced costs and lowered carbon emissions. Finally, the numerical experiment reveals the influence of the release time of the transportation order at the origin and the stability of the interval fuzzy capacity on the routing optimization in the scenario in which the receiver prefers highly reliable transportation.