Vehicle fuel economy standards as global climate policy: How much can they deliver and at what cost?
Monday, October 12, 2015 - 04:30
in Earth & Climate
Over the past decade, many countries and regions seeking to reduce climate-warming carbon dioxide emissions have adopted more aggressive fuel economy standards designed to boost the efficiency of new, light-duty cars and trucks. Economists, however, generally argue that a more cost-effective way to reduce CO2 emissions is to price carbon through a system such as cap-and-trade, in which emitters across all sectors of the economy pay for each ton of CO2 they put into the atmosphere. Impacts of these two approaches have been previously compared on a national and regional level, but until now, have not been evaluated on a global scale.