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COMPETITIVENESS AND CLIMATE POLICIES: IS THERE A CASE FOR RESTRICTIVE UNILATERAL TRADE MEASURES? Published by ICTSD, December 2009. Further climate change seems inevitable. However, the damage can be limited if concrete, substantive action is taken to significantly reduce carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions. Although the optimal solution would be a global deal resulting in the necessary emissions cuts, it is by no means certain that world leaders will be able to achieve it. In view of the distortions that would result from only some countries taking action and in order to leverage participation of developing countries in a global deal, the idea of measures at the border has been proposed. This informational note provides a short overview of some of the proposals related to border carbon adjustments (BCAs) and discusses them from an economic and legal perspective. It also takes a preliminary look at potential consequences for developing countries’ production and trade should BCAs be introduced in major markets. This publication can be accessed at: http://ictsd.org/i/publications/65459/.
GLOBAL TRADE AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF THE EU BIOFUELS MANDATE. By Perrihan Al-Riffai, Betina Dimaranan and David Laborde. International Food Policy Research Institute, March 2010. This report is one of four studies commissioned by the European Commission in response to the Council and Parliament’s request to examine the indirect land use change effects of biofuels. The report finds a positive result from the emission reduction effects of biofuels and the environmental benefits of trade opening in biofuels. It concludes that indirect land use change effects do indeed offset part of the emission benefits, but they are not a threat at the currently estimated volume of 5.6 percent of road transport fuels required to meet the 10 percent renewable energy mandate by 2020. The full report can be downloaded from the website of the Chief Economist of the Commission’s Director General of Trade: http://ec.europa.eu/trade/analysis/chief-economist/.
PROJECTED COSTS OF GENERATING ELECTRICITY: 2010 EDITION. International Energy Agency and OECD Nuclear Energy Agency, March 2010. This joint report is the seventh in a series of studies on electricity generating costs. It presents the latest data available for a wide variety of fuels and technologies, including coal and gas (with and without carbon capture), nuclear, hydro, onshore and offshore wind, biomass, solar, wave and tidal as well as combined heat and power. It provides levelised costs of electricity for almost 200 plants and several industrial companies and organisations, based on data covering 21 countries - including four major non-OECD countries. The report contains an extensive sensitivity analysis of the impact of variations in key parameters such as discount rates, fuel prices and carbon costs on levelised costs of electricy. Additional issues affecting power generation choices are also examined. The study shows that the cost competitiveness of electricity generating technologies depends on a number of factors which may vary nationally and regionally. This publication can be accessed at: http://www.iea.org/publications/free_new_Desc.asp?PUBS_ID=2207.
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