Directional Shadow Price Estimation of CO2, SO2 and NOx in the United States Coal Power Industry 1990–2010

Abstract

Shadow prices, also termed marginal abatement costs, provide valuable guidelines to support environmental regulatory policies for CO2, SO2 and NOx, the key contributors to climate change. However, a typical method estimates shadow price of each single by-product (pollutant) individually even the multiple pollutants may be generated simultaneously in the production process. This paper describes a multi-product marginal product approach to estimate directional shadow prices (DSPs). We apply the method to a case study of CO2, SO2 and NOx produced by coal power plants operating between 1990 and 2010 in the United States. We find that DSP shows 1.1 times the maximal shadow prices estimated in the current literature. We conclude that estimating the shadow prices of each by-product at a time without considering multiple by-products generation can lead to underestimating the shadow prices.