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Pollution Emissions, Environmental Policy, and Marginal Abatement Costs

Pollution emissions impose serious social negative externalities, especially in terms of public health. To reduce pollution emissions cost-effectively, the marginal abatement costs (MACs) of pollution emissions must be determined. Since the industrial sectors are the essential pillars of China’s eco...

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Autores principales: He, Ling-Yun, Ou, Jia-Jia
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5750927/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29206170
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14121509
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author He, Ling-Yun
Ou, Jia-Jia
author_facet He, Ling-Yun
Ou, Jia-Jia
author_sort He, Ling-Yun
collection PubMed
description Pollution emissions impose serious social negative externalities, especially in terms of public health. To reduce pollution emissions cost-effectively, the marginal abatement costs (MACs) of pollution emissions must be determined. Since the industrial sectors are the essential pillars of China’s economic growth, as well as leading energy consumers and sulfur dioxide (SO(2)) emitters, estimating MACs of SO(2) emissions at the industrial level can provide valuable information for all abatement efforts. This paper tries to address the critical and essential issue in pollution abatement: How do we determine the MACs of pollution emissions in China? This paper first quantifies the SO(2) emission contribution of different industrial sectors in the Chinese economy by an Input-Output method and then estimates MACs of SO(2) for industrial sectors at the national level, provincial level, and sectoral level by the shadow price theory. Our results show that six sectors (e.g., the Mining and Washing of Coal sector) should be covered in the Chinese pollution emission trading system. We have also found that the lowest SO(2) shadow price is 2000 Yuan/ton at the national level, and that shadow prices should be set differently at the provincial level. Our empirical study has several important policy implications, e.g., the estimated MACs may be used as a pricing benchmark through emission allowance allocation. In this paper, the MACs of industrial sectors are calculated from the national, provincial and sectoral levels; therefore, we provide an efficient framework to track the complex relationship between sectors and provinces.
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spelling pubmed-57509272018-01-10 Pollution Emissions, Environmental Policy, and Marginal Abatement Costs He, Ling-Yun Ou, Jia-Jia Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Pollution emissions impose serious social negative externalities, especially in terms of public health. To reduce pollution emissions cost-effectively, the marginal abatement costs (MACs) of pollution emissions must be determined. Since the industrial sectors are the essential pillars of China’s economic growth, as well as leading energy consumers and sulfur dioxide (SO(2)) emitters, estimating MACs of SO(2) emissions at the industrial level can provide valuable information for all abatement efforts. This paper tries to address the critical and essential issue in pollution abatement: How do we determine the MACs of pollution emissions in China? This paper first quantifies the SO(2) emission contribution of different industrial sectors in the Chinese economy by an Input-Output method and then estimates MACs of SO(2) for industrial sectors at the national level, provincial level, and sectoral level by the shadow price theory. Our results show that six sectors (e.g., the Mining and Washing of Coal sector) should be covered in the Chinese pollution emission trading system. We have also found that the lowest SO(2) shadow price is 2000 Yuan/ton at the national level, and that shadow prices should be set differently at the provincial level. Our empirical study has several important policy implications, e.g., the estimated MACs may be used as a pricing benchmark through emission allowance allocation. In this paper, the MACs of industrial sectors are calculated from the national, provincial and sectoral levels; therefore, we provide an efficient framework to track the complex relationship between sectors and provinces. MDPI 2017-12-05 2017-12 /pmc/articles/PMC5750927/ /pubmed/29206170 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14121509 Text en © 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
He, Ling-Yun
Ou, Jia-Jia
Pollution Emissions, Environmental Policy, and Marginal Abatement Costs
title Pollution Emissions, Environmental Policy, and Marginal Abatement Costs
title_full Pollution Emissions, Environmental Policy, and Marginal Abatement Costs
title_fullStr Pollution Emissions, Environmental Policy, and Marginal Abatement Costs
title_full_unstemmed Pollution Emissions, Environmental Policy, and Marginal Abatement Costs
title_short Pollution Emissions, Environmental Policy, and Marginal Abatement Costs
title_sort pollution emissions, environmental policy, and marginal abatement costs
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5750927/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29206170
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14121509
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