바이오인

 

 

 

 

The potential scale of impacts and the range of industries affected by domestic climate
regulation are unprecedented in the history of U.S. environmental regulation. Pricing
carbon emissions, via either a cap-and-trade system or an emissions tax, will affect electricity and primary energy producers, and it will hurt the competitive performance of
certain downstream energy-intensive, import-sensitive users of fossil fuels, such as steel
and chemical producers. This gives rise to two overarching concerns:

 

 

First, a small but prominent subset of domestic companies may be disproportionately harmed if domestic carbon policies affect their operations without corresponding controls on carbon from trading partners around the world.

 

Second, some environmental benefits will be eroded if increases in U.S. manufacturing costs cause production to shift to nations that have weaker greenhouse gas policies or none at all.
Addressing these issues is difficult, and policymakers are working with a paucity of data on specific industry-level impacts of carbon-mitigation policy choices. To help inform the ongoing discussion of competitiveness issues, RFF researchers Mun Ho, Richard Morgenstern, and Jhih-Shyang Shih recently completed a detailed analysis of the impacts of a $10-per-ton price on carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) on domestic industries in more than 50 industrial categories (see the chart on page 6).

 

The most common approach to assessing the impact of carbon-control policies is to focus on the long-run impacts, after firms have adjusted by using new energy-efficient technologies and new import patterns have been established. Such analysis, however, fails to capture an important part of the story- the short-run costs that most firms will experience. A chemical or steel plant suddenly faced with higher energy costs cannot immediately or costlessly be retrofitted to rely on more energy-efficient methods.
A policy that ignores the initial impacts will raise concerns about fairness and invite opposition, while plans suitable for the short term may not serve the economy well as time passes.

 

 

To paint a full picture, Ho, Morgenstern, and Shih employ four different modeling approaches in order to consider outcomes along four different time scales:
∫ The very short run, when firms cannot adjust prices and profits fall accordingly.
∫ The short run, when firms can raise prices to reflect the higher energy costs, with a corresponding decline in sales as a result of product or import substitution.
∫ The medium run, when in addition to the changes in output prices, the mix of inputs may also change, but capital remains in place, and economywide effects are considered.
∫ The long run, when capital may be reallocated and replaced with more energy-efficient technologies.

 

 

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