Towards a sustainable and inclusive low-carbon economy: Why carbon taxes, and not schemes of emission trading, are a cost-effective economic instrument to curb greenhouse gas emissions

Abstract

I draw on a substantial body of theoretical and empirical research on carbon taxes as a cost-effective economic instrument to curb greenhouse gas emissions, and to explore this, I inspected, used, and replicated survey data from Columbia SIPA Center on Global Energy Policy, EPA, IMF, Institute for Policy Integrity/NYU, Rhodium Group, and Statista, performing analyses and making estimates regarding range of estimated percent change in energy prices in 2030 due to carbon tax, favor-ability of having a carbon tax among U.S. voters (%, by political views), domestic economic sectors likely to be negatively affected by climate change (%), and the most efficient way to implement the carbon dioxide emission targets set by the U.S. EPA’s “Clean Power Plan” for each individual state’s electricity sector (%). Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data and test the proposed conceptual model.