Abstract: This is the first academic paper that reviews the economic, policy, and technology history of shale gas development in the United States. The primary objective of the paper is to answer the question of what led to the shale gas boom in the United States to help inform stakeholders in those countries that are attempting to develop their own shale gas resources. This paper is also a case study of the incentive, process, and impact of technology innovations and the role of government in promoting technology innovations in the energy industry. Our review finds that government policy, private entrepreneurship, technology innovations, private land and mineral rights ownership, high natural gas prices in the 2000s, and a number of other factors all made important contributions to the shale gas boom.

Abstract: Several recent studies have used simulation models to quantify the potential effects of recent environmental regulations on power plants, including the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), one of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s most expensive regulations. These studies have produced inconsistent results about the effects on the industry, making general conclusions difficult. We attempt to reconcile these differences by representing the variety of assumptions in these studies within a common modeling platform. We find that the assumptions, and their differences from the way MATS will be implemented, make a substantial impact on projected retirement of coal-fired capacity and generation, investments that are required, and emissions reductions. Almost uniformly, the actual regulation, when examined in its final form and in isolation, provides more flexibility than is represented in most models. We find this leads to a smaller impact on the composition of the electricity generating fleet than most studies have predicted.

Abstract: A variety of renewable electricity policies to promote investment in wind, solar, and other types of renewable generators exist across the United States. The federal renewable energy investment tax credit, the federal renewable energy production tax credit, and state renewable portfolio standards are among the most notable. Whether the benefits of promoting new technology and reducing pollution emissions from the power sector justify these policies’ costs has been the subject of considerable debate. We argue in this paper that the debate is misguided because it does not consider two important interactions between renewable electricity generators and the rest of the power system. First, the value of electricity from a renewable generators depends on the generation and investment it displaces. Second, a large increase in renewable generation can reduce electricity prices, increasing consumption and emissions from fossil generators, and offsetting some of the environmental benefits of the policies. Two policy conclusions follow. First, existing renewable electricity policies can be redesigned to promote investment in the highest-value generators, which can greatly reduce the cost of achieving a given emissions reduction. Second, subsidies financed out of general tax revenue reduce emissions less than subsidies financed by charges to electricity consumers.

Abstract: Carbon markets are substantial and they are expanding. There are many lessons from experiences over the past eight years: fewer free allowances, better management of market-sensitive information, and a recognition that trading systems require adjustments that have consequences for market participants and market confidence. Moreover, the emerging international architecture features separate emissions trading systems serving distinct jurisdictions. These programs are complemented by a variety of other types of policies alongside the carbon markets. This sits in sharp contrast to the integrated global trading architecture envisioned 15 years ago by the designers of the Kyoto Protocol and raises a suite of new questions. In this new architecture, jurisdictions with emissions trading have to decide how, whether, and when to link with one another, and policymakers overseeing carbon markets must confront how to measure the comparability of efforts among markets and relative to a variety of other policy approaches.

Abstract: Residential buildings are responsible for approximately 20 percent of U.S. energy consumption, and single-family homes alone account for about 16 percent. Older homes are less energy efficient than newer ones, and although many experts have identified upgrades and improvements that can yield significant energy savings at relatively low, or even negative, cost, it has proved difficult to spur most homeowners to make these investments. In this study, I analyze the energy and carbon dioxide (CO2) impacts from three policies aimed at improving home energy efficiency: a subsidy for the purchase of efficient space heating, cooling, and water heating equipment; a loan for the same purchases; and efficiency standards for such equipment. I use a version of the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s National Energy Modeling System, NEMS-RFF, to compute the energy and CO2 effects and standard formulas in economics to calculate the welfare costs of the policies. I find that the loan is quite cost-effective but provides only a very small reduction in emissions and energy use. The subsidy and the standard are both more costly but generate emissions reductions seven times larger than the loan. The subsidy promotes consumer adoption of very high-efficiency equipment, whereas the standard leads to purchases of equipment that just reach the standard. The discount rate used to discount energy savings from the policies has a large effect on the welfare cost estimates.

Abstract: Transferable development rights (TDRs) are a market-based approach to land conservation. They allow the development rights from one property to be transferred to another, with the first “sending” property placed under a development restriction or conservation easement and the “receiving” property permitted more dense development than would otherwise be allowed by baseline zoning regulations. This paper summarizes the economics literature on TDRs and describes a long-running program in a county in Maryland, one of the few programs with an active TDR market. It updates previously published results from the program and describes some problems that have arisen in recent years as the program has matured. The paper offers some observations as to why these problems have occurred and suggestions for other communities considering TDR programs.

Abstract: The illegal exploitation of wild abalone in South Africa has been escalating since 1994, despite increased enforcement, leading to collapse in some sections of its range. South Africa banned all wild abalone fishing in 2008 but controversially reopened it in 2010. This paper formulates a poacher’s model, taking into account the realities of the abalone terrain in South Africa—the prevalence of bribery, corruption, use of recreational drugs, and the high value of abalone—to explore why poaching has not subsided. The paper suggests two additional measures that might help ameliorate the situation: eliminating the demand side through enforcement targeted on organized crime, and ceding the resource to the local coastal communities. However, local communities need to be empowered to deal with organised crime groups. Complementary measures to bring back community patriotism will also be needed given the tattered social fabric of the local coastal communities.

Abstract: In 2009, President Obama pledged that, by 2020, the United States would achieve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions of 17 percent from 2005 levels. With the failure of Congress to adopt comprehensive climate legislation in 2010, the feasibility of the pledge was put in doubt. However, we find the United States is near to reaching this goal; currently, the country is on course to achieve reductions of 16.3 percent from 2005 levels in 2020. Three factors contribute to this outcome: greenhouse gas regulations under the Clean Air Act, secular trends including changes in relative fuel prices and energy efficiency, and subnational efforts. Nonetheless, global emissions likely will be greater than if comprehensive climate legislation had passed because of the absence of offsets, and at this point the United States is expected to fail to meet its financing commitments under the Copenhagen Accord for 2020.

Abstract: We examine the role that spot markets and physical inventories play in revealing to uninformed traders the expectations of informed traders. Although many papers investigate potential mechanisms by which futures markets may disseminate such information, the role of spot markets has not been examined in comparable detail. Because the incentive for speculative trading in futures contracts stems from the failure of spot markets to eliminate differences in beliefs regarding future market conditions, the scope for speculative trading in the futures market is therefore determined, but also limited, by the extent to which spot market transactions disseminate private information. Using a rational expectations approach, we show that equilibrium differences in beliefs are determined by specific characteristics of the underlying commodity, including storage costs, the amplitude of unexpected demand and supply shocks, the accuracy of information acquired by informed investors, the numbers of informed and uninformed investors, and the elasticity of demand and supply.

Abstract: Two decades have passed since the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 launched a grand experiment in market-based environmental policy: the SO2 cap-and-trade system. That system performed well but created four striking ironies. First, by creating this system to reduce SO2 emissions to curb acid rain, the government did the right thing for the wrong reason. Second, a substantial source of this system’s cost-effectiveness was an unanticipated consequence of earlier railroad deregulation. Third, it is ironic that cap-and-trade has come to be demonized by conservative politicians in recent years, since this market-based, cost-effective policy innovation was initially championed and implemented by Republican administrations. Fourth, court decisions and subsequent regulatory responses have led to the collapse of the SO2 market, demonstrating that what the government gives, the government can take away.

Abstract: The forestry literature has sought to describe competitive equilibria by first solving social planning problems. This "indirect" approach may cease to be useful in determining market equilibrium if the government intervenes. The equilibrium price path of timber is characterized directly here under the assumption that once a site is cleared, the site is used for some other purpose of exogenous value. While extreme, this assumption permits us to show that familiar Herfindahl results from the Hotelling literature extend to forestry economics: if differing in age, older trees are harvested first; if different in site value, trees on more valuable land are harvested first. As trees of the same vintage (or site value) are harvested, the timber price may decline during intervals when wood volume grows faster than the rate of interest. As the concluding section suggests, some of these results reappear in special cases of the model with replanting.

Abstract: Previous analyses assumed that firms must surrender permits as they pollute. If so, then the price of permits may remain constant over measurable intervals if the government injects additional permits at a ceiling price or may even collapse if more permits are injected through an auction. However, no cap-and-trade program actually requires continual compliance. The three federal bills and California's AB-32, for example, instead require that firms surrender permits only periodically to cover their cumulative emissions since the last compliance period. Anticipated injections of additional permits during the compliance period should have different effects than under continual compliance. We develop a methodology for analyzing the effects of such permit injections. Using it, we explain why the sales provisions of one federal bill might generate a speculative attack in the permit market and why one provision of AB-32 may undermine the very existence of an equilibrium.

Abstract: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed greenhouse gas (GHG) performance standards for power plants are an important step forward in regulating GHGs in terms of both their substantive impact and legal precedent. Nevertheless, we have some concerns with the proposal, which we discuss in the following comments submitted to the agency. The majority of our comments are directed to ways that EPA can increase certainty for the industry—reducing costs and, possibly, improving environmental outcomes. We highlight two specific areas of concern. First, the current proposal contributes to the significant uncertainty facing existing sources. Second, EPA’s proposed averaging option for new facilities that will install carbon capture-and-storage (CCS) technology in the future, although intended to create a flexible pathway, unfortunately creates some new regulatory uncertainty. We also comment on EPA’s decision to combine most coal and gas generators into a single source category. We believe this decision is legally valid and practically important, and that EPA should resist pressure to reconsider.

Abstract: The outcome of the December 2011 United Nations climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa, provides an important new opportunity to move toward an international climate policy architecture that is capable of delivering broad international participation and significant global CO2 emissions reductions at reasonable cost. We evaluate one important component of potential climate policy architecture for the post-Durban era: links among independent tradable permit systems for greenhouse gases. Because linkage reduces the cost of achieving given targets, there is tremendous pressure to link existing and planned cap-and-trade systems, and in fact, a number of links already or will soon exist. We draw on recent political and economic experience with linkage to evaluate potential roles that linkage may play in post-Durban international climate policy, both in a near-term, de facto architecture of indirect links between regional, national, and sub-national cap-and-trade systems, and in longer-term, more comprehensive bottom-up architecture of direct links. Although linkage will certainly help to reduce long-term abatement costs, it may also serve as an effective mechanism for building institutional and political structure to support a future climate agreement.