Escape from Third-Best: Rating Emissions for Intensity Standards
| dc.creator | Lemoine, Derek M. | |
| dc.date | 2017-04-01T19:26:14Z | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-07-09T07:38:19Z | |
| dc.description | An increasingly common type of environmental policy instrument limits the carbon intensity of transportation and electricity markets. In order to extend the policy's scope beyond point-of-use emissions, regulators assign each competing fuel an emission intensity rating for use in calculating compliance. I show that welfare-maximizing ratings do not generally coincide with the best estimates of actual emissions. In fact, the regulator can achieve a higher level of welfare by manipulating the emission ratings than by manipulating the level of the standard. Moreover, a fuel's optimal rating can actually decrease when its estimated emission intensity increases. Numerical simulations of the California Low-Carbon Fuel Standard suggest that when recent scientific information suggested greater emissions from conventional ethanol, regulators should have lowered ethanol's rating (making it appear less emission-intensive) so that the fuel market would clear with a lower quantity. | |
| dc.identifier | doi:10.22004/ag.econ.161656 | |
| dc.identifier | https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/161656/files/lemoine_ratings_lcfs_2013-09-30.pdf | |
| dc.identifier | http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/161656 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/590505 | |
| dc.language | eng | |
| dc.publisher | ||
| dc.source | http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/161656 | |
| dc.title | Escape from Third-Best: Rating Emissions for Intensity Standards | |
| dc.type | Text |