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The Economic Effects of Legislation to Reduce Greenhouse-Gas Emissions

Congressional Budget Office / Testimony before the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, U. S. Senate : Statement of  Douglas W. Elmendorf, Director http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=10561 [From Director's Blog] Today I testified about the economic effects of legislation aimed at reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, drawing on a report that CBO released a few weeks ago. Reducing [...]

Market Oversight for Cap-and-Trade : Efficiently Regulating the Carbon Derivatives Market

Brookings Institution / by Craig Pirrong http://tinyurl.com/yk4b3ef [From introduction] The original concept of cap-and-trade envisioned that the total amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions would be capped and rights to emit would be traded. But it is inevitable that there will be demand to trade instruments other than emissions rights themselves. Specifically, there will be [...]

Cost Containment for Cap-and-Trade : Designing Effective Compliance Flexibility Mechanisms

Brookings Institution / by Bryan K. Mignone http://tinyurl.com/yfmn2s9 [From introduction]…Here we imagine that an appropriate US emissions reduction blueprint has already been selected from the space of available alternatives and focus…on the set of design considerations that could enhance the overall performance of the resulting regulatory program. We start from the premise that cap-and-trade will [...]

Emissions Targets in Cap-and-Trade : Choosing Reduction Goals Compatible with Global Climate Stabilization

Brookings Institution / by Bryan K. Mignone http://tinyurl.com/yzsyznb [From introduction] …a consensus climate stabilization target will ultimately emerge as a result of ongoing political discussions. This target will most likely take the form of a number that expresses the maximum acceptable deviation of the global average surface temperature from its preindustrial value. For example, at [...]

Nanotechnology Records Now a Part of NLM’s Toxicology Data Network, TOXNET

National Library of Medicine http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/htmlgen?HSDB The National Library of Medicine (NLM) Hazardous Substances Data Bank (HSDB) has added its first set of nanomaterial records.  Nanotechnology is the study of matter on an atomic and molecular scale– structures 100 nanometers or smaller. A nanometer (nm) is one billionth of a meter. Like other HSDB records, the [...]

U.S. Industry and Cap-and-Trade : Designing Provisions to Maintain Domestic Competitiveness and Mitigate Emissions Leakage

Brookings Institution/ by Carolyn Fischer and Richard Morgenstern http://tinyurl.com/yksauet [From summary] This paper reviews the evidence on the competitiveness burdens imposed on domestic energy-consuming industries as a result of a unilateral or near-unilateral carbon pricing policy. We also examine the nature and magnitude of emissions leakage that could undermine the environmental effectiveness of such a [...]

Equity and Efficiency in Cap-And-Trade : Effectively Managing the Emissions Allowance Supply

Brookings Institution / by Adele Morris http://tinyurl.com/ykezgbk (summary) / http://tinyurl.com/ylmbb5t (pdf) As the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hosts a series of hearings this week on climate change legislation, Adele Morris discusses the likely distributional implications of a U.S. cap-and-trade system. She explains how policy-makers could manage these implications by altering the way in [...]

Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use

National Academy Press http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12794 [Press release]  A report just released by the National Academies of Science estimates the “hidden” costs of energy production and use. These costs, which include human health effects, physical damages to buildings and other structures, and reduction in grain crop harvests caused by air pollution are not reflected in market prices [...]

Expert Elicitation of Cost, Performance, and RD&D Budgets for Greenhouse Gas Reducing Strategies

Belfer Center, Kennedy School, Harvard University / by Melissa Chan and Laura Diaz Anadon http://tinyurl.com/yhckc5y This is PDF of a presentation without accompanying text.