Book Reviews     

《Climate Policy》2013,13(1):97-103

Abstract

The possibility of using flexibility mechanisms as a way to achieve national commitments under an international agreement to reduce climate gases has been a hot issue throughout the negotiating process of the Kyoto Protocol. A variety of arguments either in favour of or against emissions trading have been put forward by different Parties and by different groups. The purpose of this viewpoint is to look further into the various arguments opposing emissions trading or favouring their restriction (which are really arguments that could be used against all the different flexibility mechanisms) and comment on their validity.  相似文献   

Liability rules for international trading of greenhouse gas emissions quotas     

《Climate Policy》2013,13(1):85-108

Abstract

To reduce the costs of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions in accordance with the Kyoto protocol, international trades of emissions quotas are allowed. The revenue from the sale of quotas may exceed the sanctions for non-compliance if these penalties are weak or poorly enforced. Under these circumstances emissions trading enables a country to benefit financially through non-compliance. To counter non-compliance due to trading a range of liability proposals have been suggested. Using a simple global model, we analyze the economic and environmental performance of these proposals for the first commitment period. In addition, the proposals are tested for their sensitivity to national circumstances and to market power. We find that penalties are sufficient to deter non-compliance if they are high enough and are effectively enforced. If the non-compliance penalties are weak or poorly enforced, the permanent reserve proposal is best able to ensure compliance by sellers at a cost similar to the competitive market equilibrium. While not sufficient to ensure compliance on their own, eligibility requirements and annual retirement of AAUs equal to actual emissions contribute to compliance at little or no cost. Hence, such provisions could complement other liability proposals.  相似文献   

Reverse flood and pollution routing with the lag-and-route model     

Antonis D. Koussis  Katerina Mazi 《水文科学杂志》2013,58(10):1952-1966

ABSTRACT

Reverse routing can be used to transfer flood- or pollution-related information monitored at a downstream gauging station to an ungauged upstream cross-section. This signal identification problem is ill-posed and, as such, is sensitive to perturbations in the data to be inverted; therefore, the amplification of errors, e.g., those befalling measurements, must be controlled. Storage routing models are parsimonious diffusion wave substitutes and well suited for conversion to direct reverse routers. We present efficient inversion frameworks based on the lag-and-route (single reservoir plus exact reverse lag-step) and the reservoirs-in-series models. In both cases we invert a centred finite difference scheme of the reservoir storage balance equation that involves only one value of the unknown signal; signal values identified in previous reverse time steps, which would carry perturbations, are absent. This simple structure endows the reverse scheme with robustness. Procedures are verified with perfect and with error-seeded data; solution oscillations caused by the latter are damped by low-pass filtering. Both inverse routing models regain the upstream signals with high fidelity. Reverse storage routing is exemplified in a demonstration of reservoir control and in a field case of solute transport in a stream.