Inclusion of forestry offsets in emission trading schemes:insights from global experts

Emissions trading schemes(ETSs)have been a central component of international climate change policies,as a carbon pricing tool to achieve emissions reduction targets.Forest carbon offset credits have been leveraged in many ETSs to efficiently meet emission reduction targets,yet there is little knowledge about the perceptions,experiences,and challenges associated with the forest carbon offsetting in existing and pilot ETS.Given that the future inclusion of forest carbon offset in ETS management activities and policies will require strong support and acceptability among the institutions and experts involved in ETS,this study explores the experiences and lessons learned with 16 globally engaging experts representing major existing ETSs(North America,Europe,and New Zealand)and Chinese pilot ETSs towards the inclusion of forestry offsets,major concerns and challenges with existing implementation models.Findings revealed that many respondents particularly from North America,New Zealand,and Chinese pilot systems portrayed positive attitudes toward the inclusion of forestry carbon offsets and its role in contributing to a viable ETS,while European experts were not supportive.Respondents cited leakage,permanence,additionality,and monitoring design features as the major challenges and concerns that inhibit the expansion and inclusion of forest carbon offsetting.Respondents from Chinese pilot schemes referenced a unique set of challenges related to implementation,including the increasing cost of afforestation and reforestation projects,the uncertainty in the future supply and demand for their national Certified Emissions Reduction(CER)scheme and landowner engagement.Existing and future ETSs should learn from and address the challenges experienced by global experts and carbon pricing mechanisms to design,evaluate,or enhance their forest carbon offset programs for an effective and viable system that successfully contributes to GHG mitigation practices globally.We recommend inclusion of forest carbon offsets at the early stages of ETS improves the perceptions and experience of policy makers and practitioners toward the success and potential of forestry offsets in ETS ensuring familiarity and confidence in the mechanism.

Inventory models for deteriorating items with fixed lifetime, partial backordering and carbon emissions policies

In this study,a sustainable inventory model is devised to obtain the retailer’s optimal pricing and replenishment policies for degrading items having a certain lifetime incorporating partial back order as a shortage and dynamic demand under two different scenarios(a)carbon cap and trade policy(b)carbon tax policy.The primary objective of this study is to maximize the retailer’s annual total profit.The retailer’s profit function has been optimized with the help of convexity/concavity criteria employing classical optimization techniques.Based on a real case study,two different numerical examples and corresponding optimal solutions have been shown for both models with the help of Lingo 17 software.Moreover,the impact of the major inventory parameters and prominent managerial insights are presented for the robustness of the proposed model that can cooperate with industrial managers/decision-makers for the overall improvement of his/her industry to take effective and qualitative decisions.

Will auctioning promote the renewable energy generation in China?

Renewable energy generation,as part of the global effort to mitigate climate change,will play a central role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and achieving China's goal of carbon emissions peak before 2030 and carbon neutral before 2060.However,the impact of carbon quota auctions on renewable energy generation has not been sufficiently discussed.The main purpose of this study is to investigate whether China can rely on quota auctions to increase renewable energy generation in the short term,and to demonstrate which is more effective in promoting renewable energy development,policy enforcement or auction constraints?The improved neo-trans-log production model,the multiobjective linear programming model and the dispatch heuristic were used to predict additional emission reduction cost,optimized power mix with different auctioning rates,with economic development,technological progress and the unique characteristics of China's power generation industry being taken into consideration.The results show that the auctioning rate will have little influence on the optimized energy production structure,especially on the share of renewable energy resources;when the total on-grid electricity generation ranges from 7625 to 7926 billion kW h and the auctioning rate ranges from 0% to 5%,policy enforcement will influence the generation of renewable energy to a greater extent than auctioning in the near future.