Speaker: Yishu Zhou (Missouri University of Science and Technology)
Commentators: Shujing Yue, Yanyan Gao (Southeast University)
Time: 10:00-11:30am, Beijing Time
Date: March 24th (Thursday), 2022
Tencent Meeting ID: 599-269-995
Abstract:
There are many concerns that regional carbon programs reduce emissions through emission leakage instead of through fuel switching. We use individual firm-level data to investigate the mechanisms of how the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) reduces CO2 emissions and quantify emission leakage. We find that the RGGI program reduced CO2 emissions by 13.43% of the total emissions from 2009 to 2017 in the RGGI area, among which only 14.35% of the emissions reduction is due to fuel switching from coal to natural gas. From 43.11% (the lower bound) to 85.65% (the upper bound) of the emissions reduction in the RGGI-regulated states are leaked into unregulated areas. We also find that policy-induced fuel switching and fuel price-induced fuel switching increase natural gas heat percentage (natural gas heat input relative to natural gas and coal heat input) in the regulated area by 2.98% and 5.17%, respectively.
About Speaker:
Yishu Zhou is a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Connecticut and an assistant professor at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. His research area is environmental and energy economics, with a focus on environmental policy analysis in electricity markets. Yishu Zhou published academic papers in journals such as Energy Economics, Environmental and Resource Economics and Sustainability. He is also the reviewer of Energy Economics, Growth and Change, Journal of Cleaner Production, Resource and Energy Economics, Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, and other academic journals.
