Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
所有权结构决定发电领域气候政策的有效性
Ownership structures shape climate-policy effectiveness in electricity generation
摘要
Governments have adopted various climate policies to decarbonize their electricity sectors, and several cross-national studies find that pricing, regulatory, and subsidy measures are associated with emissions reductions. However, such aggregate estimates implicitly assume that power plants' emissions are equally responsive to climate instruments. We examine whether ownership structures condition associations between national climate policies and plants' CO2 emissions. Using a global dataset covering 13,661 fossil-fueled power plants across 134 countries, linked to harmonized measures of policy adoption, stringency, duration, and policy mixes, we find that climate policies are significantly more strongly associated with lower CO2 emissions among investor-owned plants than among state-owned plants across these four dimensions of policy exposure. This is especially true of carbon taxes, emissions trading schemes, fossil-fuel subsidy reform, air-pollution standards, coal bans and phase-outs, renewable planning, and renewable auctions. State-owned plants’ emissions are negatively related to a much narrower set of policies, most notably renewable portfolio standards, while several policies are either unrelated to or positively associated with their emissions. These results suggest that evaluating climate policy solely at the sectoral level can overlook important institutional differences in how policies are implemented. In particular, future policies must account for how state-owned enterprises interpret and translate policy signals into actual emissions outcomes.
中文摘要
各国政府已采取多种气候政策以实现电力部门脱碳，若干跨国研究发现，定价、监管和补贴措施与减排相关。然而，此类总体估计隐含地假定发电厂的排放对气候工具具有同等响应性。我们考察所有权结构是否调节国家气候政策与发电厂二氧化碳排放之间的关联。利用一个覆盖134个国家13661座化石燃料发电厂的全球数据集，并将其与政策采纳、严格程度、持续时间和政策组合的协调化测度相链接，我们发现，在这四个政策暴露维度上，气候政策与投资者所有发电厂较低二氧化碳排放的关联显著强于国有发电厂。碳税、排放交易体系、化石燃料补贴改革、空气污染标准、煤炭禁令与逐步淘汰、可再生能源规划以及可再生能源拍卖尤其如此。国有发电厂的排放与范围窄得多的政策呈负相关，其中最突出的是可再生能源组合标准，而若干政策与其排放要么不相关，要么呈正相关。这些结果表明，仅在部门层面评估气候政策，可能会忽视政策实施方式上的重要制度差异。特别是，未来政策必须考虑国有企业如何解读政策信号并将其转化为实际排放结果。