Use Of Flexibility Mechanisms Research Articles

Toolkit for optimization of administrative and legal provision of the security sector of Ukraine

The article is devoted to the study of the toolkit, with the help of which it is possible to optimize the administrative and legal provision of the security sector of Ukraine. Attention is focused on the fact that administrative and legal support outlines the boundaries of the subject structure of regulatory activity in such a way that it can be carried out not by any state bodies, but only by those that perform powerful public management functions. Subjects of administrative and legal support of the security sector include: 1) those that manage the security sector; 2) those that are part of the security sector and implement separate measures aimed at the proper state of national security.
 It has been established that the toolkit of administrative and legal provision of the security sector is a set of methods, techniques and methods used by authorized entities to regulate social relations, the content of which is aimed at protecting state sovereignty, territorial integrity, the democratic constitutional order and other national interests of Ukraine from possible threats.
 The toolkit of administrative and legal provision of the security sector is classified according to the following criteria: 1) depending on the subject of application; 2) depending on the form of external fixation; 3) depending on the direction of action; 4) depending on the object to be secured; 5) depending on the time of application, etc.
 Attention was drawn to the need to optimize the tools of administrative and legal provision of the security sector. The importance of the implementation of digital technologies in the activities of specially authorized entities in the field of security is analyzed. It is noted that the peculiarity of the security sector determines the additional need for prompt response to emerging threats and the use of flexible mechanisms for their elimination. It is proposed to amend the legislation by establishing the possibility of making decisions by the National Security Council in the form of directives that do not require additional implementation through the adoption of a corresponding decree by the President of Ukraine, are of general obligation and are adopted during the period of the legal regime of martial law.

Labour migration: Legal means of regulation in the context of contemporary challenges

For a long time, the Russian Federation has been one of the world’s leaders in terms of the number of international migrants, a significant proportion of which are labour migrants. This required the development of a legal framework that would make it possible, on the one hand, to ensure the security of the state and the host society, create conditions for a prompt and flexible response to the situation in the labour market, and, on the other hand, protect the rights and freedoms of foreign nationals working in Russia, and create an attractive migration climate. The article highlights the current developments in the statutory regulation of labour migration, the legal means used to respond to modern challenges and formulates the major problems facing government bodies. Purpose: on the basis of an analysis of the development of the migration legislation of the Russian Federation, to identify the features of the regulation of labour migration and determine the areas of modernisation of the legal framework in that field. Basic methods: formal-logical, system-structural, special-legal, comparative-legal; content analysis, etc. Results: by evaluating the dynamics of legal regulation of labour migration in the Russian Federation in recent decades, the following features can be distinguished: detailed and differentiated legal status of various categories of foreign nationals involved in labour activities in Russia; the focus of legislation on the use of flexible mechanisms for foreign labour intake, which presuppose taking into account professional qualities and the level of qualifications; increased role of supranational regulators in the legal regulation of migration relations (CIS, EAEU, etc.); introduction of the technological advance achievements into the public administration mechanism which made it possible to improve control measures and migration registration etc. The developed legal means for regulating migration processes need interval updating in order to ensure an adequate response to changes in political, social, economic and other conditions, effective impact on the migration situation by taking into account the purpose and intent of the state migration policy.

Editorial: Governing the EU's climate and energy transition through the 2030 Framework

Editorial: Governing the EU's climate and energy transition through the 2030 Framework

Cities and “budget-based” management of the energy-water-climate nexus: Case studies in transportation policy, infrastructure systems, and urban utility risk management

This article reviews city case studies to inform a framework for developing urban infrastructure design standards and policy instruments that together aim to pursue energy efficiency and greenhouse gas mitigation through city carbon budgets and water use efficiency and climate risk adaptation through city water budgets. This article also proposes combining carbon and water budgeting at the city-scale for achieving successful coupled city carbon and water budget (CCCWB) programs. Under a CCCWB program, key actors including local governments, infrastructure designers/operators, and households would be assigned a GHG emissions and water “budget” and be required by state or federal levels to keep within this budget through the use of flexibility mechanisms, incentive programs, and sanctions. Multiple incentives and cross-scale governance arrangements would be tied to energy-water systems integration, resource-efficient transportation and infrastructure development, and effective monitoring and management of energy use, emissions, climate risks to, and security of energy-water-transport-food and other critical systems. As a first step to promote strategies for CCCWB development, we systematically review approaches of and shortcomings to existing budget-based programs in the UK and US, and suggest improvements in three areas: measurement, modeling effectiveness of interventions for staying within a budget, and governance. To date, the majority of climate action or sustainability plans by cities, while mentioning climate impacts as a premise for the plan, do not address these impacts in the plan. They focus primarily on GHG mitigation while ignoring resource depletion challenges and energy-climate-water linkages, whereby water supplies can begin to limit energy production and energy shifts to mitigate climate change can limit water availability. Coupled carbon-water budget plans, programs, and policies—described in this study- may address these concerns as well as the emerging trends that will exacerbate these problems—e.g., including population growth, climatic changes, and emerging policy choices that are not coordinated. Cities and “Budget-Based” Management of the Energy-Water-Climate Nexus: Case Studies to Inform Strategy for Integrated Performance- and Incentive-Based Design and Policy Instruments. © 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 2017

Compliance of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol in the first commitment period

This article provides an ex post analysis of the compliance of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol during the first commitment period (2008–2012) based on the final data for national GHG emissions and exchanges in carbon units that became available at the end of 2015. On the domestic level, among the 36 countries that fully participated in the Kyoto Protocol, only nine countries emitted higher levels of GHGs than committed and therefore had to resort to flexibility mechanisms. On the international level – i.e. after the use of flexibility mechanisms – all Annex B Parties are in compliance. Countries implemented different compliance strategies: purchasing carbon units abroad, stimulating the domestic use of carbon credits by the private sector and incentivizing domestic emission reductions through climate policies.Overall, the countries party to the Protocol surpassed their aggregate commitment by an average 2.4 GtCO2e yr–1. Of the possible explanations for this overachievement, ‘hot-air’ was estimated at 2.2 GtCO2e yr–1, while accounting rules for land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) further removed 0.4 GtCO2e yr–1 from the net result excluding LULUCF. The hypothetical participation of the US and Canada would have reduced this overachievement by a net 1 GtCO2e yr–1. None of these factors – some of which may be deemed illegitimate – would therefore on its own have led to global non-compliance, even without use of the 0.3 GtCO2e of annual emissions reductions generated by the Clean Development Mechanism. The impact of domestic policies and ‘carbon leakage’ – neither of which is quantitatively assessed here – should not be neglected either.Policy relevanceGiven the ongoing evolution of the international climate regime and the adoption of the Paris Agreement in December 2015, we believe that there is a need to evaluate the results of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol. To our knowledge there has been no overarching quantitative ex post assessment of the Kyoto Protocol based on the final emissions data for 2008–2012, which became available in late 2015. This article attempts to fill this gap, focusing on the domestic and international compliance of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol in the first commitment period.

Evaluating Renewable Portfolio Standards for In-State Renewable Deployment: Accounting for Policy Heterogeneity

Renewable portfolio standards (RPS) are the most common state-level policies for promoting renewable electricity in the United States. State RPS policies are heterogeneously designed, particularly with respect to their use of flexibility mechanisms that allow obligations to be met with renewable energy generated in other states. However, the renewable energy that is produced within an RPS-enacting state itself is of high political importance, making in-state renewable energy deployment an important evaluation metric for RPS policies. In this paper, we develop a novel dataset of state-level RPS policies and renewable energy deployment. We show that failing to effectively limit comparisons to similarly designed RPS policies may lead to the misperception that more stringent RPS policies do not necessarily lead to higher renewable deployment. We then show that after controlling for specific policy design features, states with more stringent RPS policies tend to have greater in-state renewable energy deployment. Specifically, we find that a 1 percentage point increase in the stringency of an RPS policy is associated with a 0.28-0.29 percentage point increase in the share of in-state renewable electricity capacity. Articulate modeling of policy variety has been largely lacking from past studies and is essential for accurate econometric analysis of heterogeneous energy policies.

International and European market mechanisms in the climate change agenda—An assessment of their potential to trigger investments in the Mediterranean solar plan

The idea to use the sun of the Sahara for European energy needs is simple to conceive, but not so simple to implement. This article reviews one tool in the arsenal of methods to come nearer to that goal—virtual trading using flexibility mechanisms. Flexibility mechanisms are established under the Kyoto Protocol and available in EU legislation. But restrictions exist and market forces, mostly generated by national emissions reduction obligations under climate policy, do not necessarily act in favor of renewable energy imports into Europe. The paper assesses the current situation, in view of EU member states' recently published positions on the use of flexibility mechanisms for cross-border trade.

Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions at Home or Abroad? The Implications of Kyoto's Supplementarity Requirement for the Present and Future Climate Change Regime

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions at home or abroad has become one of the dilemmas within contemporary climate change policy, touching upon various concepts such as cost effectiveness, environmental effectiveness, equity and sustainable development, and challenging the North–South relationship in itself. Although Annex I parties to the Kyoto Protocol are legally obligated, through the supplementarity requirement, to meet their Kyoto Protocol emission reduction targets to a certain extent through ‘domestic actions’, various Annex I parties favour the use of flexibility mechanisms, arguing that actions to reduce emissions should be taken where it is cheapest, given the fact that the effect on the atmosphere will be the same. This article explores the limits to flexibility under the Kyoto regime and elucidates the implications of the supplementarity requirement in Articles 6, 12 and 17 of the Protocol. The article aims to provide an effective and justifiable interpretation of the supplementarity requirement that would be acceptable to both industrialized and developing countries, taking into account cost and environmental effectiveness, as well as equity considerations.

Challenges of Democratic Oversight of EU Security Policies

EU security policies have four key characteristics that distinguish them from other EU policies. First, there is a contradiction between their legal and political form that has been accentuated by the ‘widening of the security’ agenda; second, they are not regional but rather global in nature; third, they are characterised by extensive use of flexibility mechanisms and finally there is a very restricted role for parliaments, citizens and for judicial review. In this policy domain there are acute challenges of democratic accountability, which are described through the concepts of vertical (national parliaments and citizens vis-à-vis EU institutions) and horizontal (through the separation of powers of EU institutions) accountability. The democratic challenges are made acute by the extensive use of ‘flexibility mechanisms’, by the use of secrecy and urgency procedures, by the ambiguous nature of laws and norms that govern this domain and by the lack of international oversight over EU involvement in new ‘state-building’ practices.

Estimating the size of the potential market for the Kyoto flexibility mechanisms

Estimating the Size of the Potential Market for the Kyoto Flexibility Mechanisms. — The Kyoto Protocol incorporates three flexibility mechanisms to help Annex I countries to meet their Kyoto targets at a lower overall cost. This paper aims to estimate the size of the potential market for all three mechanisms over the first commitment period. Based on the national communications from 35 Annex I countries, it first estimates the potential demand in the greenhouse gas offset market. Then, it assesses the implications of the EU proposal for ceilings on the use of flexibility mechanisms. Finally, using the model based on the marginal abatement costs of 12 regions, the paper estimates the contributions of flexibility mechanisms to meet the total emissions reductions required of Annex I countries under the four trading scenarios.

Estimating the Size of the Potential Market for the Kyoto Flexibility Mechanisms

The Kyoto Protocol incorporates emissions trading, joint implementation and the clean development mechanism to help Annex I countries to meet their Kyoto targets at a lower overall cost. This paper aims to estimate the size of the potential market for all three flexibility mechanisms under the Kyoto Protocol over the first commitment period 2008-2012, both on the demand side and on the supply side. Based on the national communications from 35 Annex I countries, the paper first estimates the potential demand in the greenhouse gas offset market. Then, the paper provides a quantitative assessment of the implications of the EU proposal for concrete ceilings on the use of flexibility mechanisms for the division of abatement actions at home and abroad. Finally, using the 12-region's marginal abatement cost-based model, the paper estimates the contributions of three flexibility mechanisms to meet the total emissions reductions required of Annex I countries under the four trading scenarios respectively. Our results clearly demonstrate that the fewer the restrictions on trading the gains from trading are greater. The gains are unevenly distributed, however, with Annex I countries that have the highest autarkic marginal abatement costs tending to benefit the most. With respect to developing countries, their net gains are highest when trading in hot air is not allowed, and China and India account for about three-quarters of the total developing countries' exported permits to the Annex I regions. To our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive study to estimate the size of the potential market for Kyoto mechanisms and quantify the implications of the EU proposal on the basis of the individual national communications to the UNFCCC.

Costs of a ceiling on Kyoto flexibility

This paper examines the potential costs of a ceiling on the use of flexibility mechanisms in the Kyoto Protocol using POLES, a partial equilibrium model of the world energy system. The results suggest that if emission trading were restricted to Annex I countries, halving the traded volume would increase costs by 11 billion $/year. If emission trading were to operate at a global level, reducing the trade to half the perfect market volume would increase annual costs by 12 billion $/year. Global carbon emissions might however be 1% lower. The sensitivity of the results is discussed.