CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 73Climate Change Policy and EconomicsEnergy, Environment, Economic GrowthEnergy, Environment, and Transportation Policies

Leakage from Sub-national Climate Policy: The Case of California’s Cap-and-Trade Program

Caron, Justin, Rausch, Sebastian, Winchester, Niven·2015·The Energy Journal
DOI 10.5547/01956574.36.2.8
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

With federal policies to curb carbon emissions stagnating in the U.S., California is taking action alone. Sub-national policies can lead to high rates of emissions leakage to other regions as state-level economies are closely connected, including integration of electricity markets. Using a calibrated general equilibrium model, we estimate that California’s cap-and-trade program without restrictions on imported electricity increases out-of-state emissions by 45% of the domestic reduction. When imported electricity is included in the cap and “resource shuffling” is banned, as set out in California’s legislation, emissions reductions in electricity exporting states partially offset leakage elsewhere and overall leakage is 9%.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.5547/01956574.36.2.8

Cites

34 of 34 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

We couldn’t retrieve this paper’s full text, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • The phenomenon of positive emission spillover has also occurred in the RGGI and California ETS but has not yet been observed in the Tokyo ETS.

    “This phenomenon of positive emission spillover has also occurred in the RGGI63,64 and California ETS65 but has not yet been observed in the Tokyo ETS.60”

    From Carbon Abatement and Leakage in China's Regional Carbon Emission Trading (2024) · cites this paper as [65]

  • Our findings are consistent with several other studies on China's regional ETSs and those on the RGGI and California ETS.

    “However, our findings are consistent with several other studies on China’s regional ETSs34,40 and those on the RGGI63,73 and California ETS.65”

    From Carbon Abatement and Leakage in China's Regional Carbon Emission Trading (2024) · cites this paper as [65]

  • The 'super-rich' have carbon footprints estimated at well over 100 tCO2 per capita.

    “The 'super-rich' have carbon footprints estimated at well over 100 tCO2 per capita (28).”

    From Carbon Leakage, Consumption, and Trade (2022) · cites this paper as [28]

  • In electricity, the risk of carbon leakage through import substitution is generally low except in jurisdictions with significant cross-border interconnection capacity and trade, such as California.

    “In electricity, only tradeable through wires, the risk of leakage through import substitution is generally low except in jurisdictions with significant cross-border interconnection capacity and trade such as California (28, 40).”

    From Carbon Leakage, Consumption, and Trade (2022) · cites this paper as [28]

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

2 of the 36 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Caron, J., Rausch, S., & Winchester, N.
Affiliations
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
  • ETH Zurich (CH)
ORCID
Venue
The Energy Journal
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
2015-04
Volume
36
Issue
2
Pages
167-190
ISSN
  • 0195-6574 (ISSN-L)
  • 1944-9089
DOI
10.5547/01956574.36.2.8
OpenAlex
W1963542759
Cited by
71
References
36
Citations by year
2026: 3 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 13 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 1
FWCI
9.94
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license (tdm)
Locations
  • The Energy Journal (publishedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Climate Change Policy and Economics
  • Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Energy, Environment, Economic Growth
  • Physical Sciences › Energy › Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment › Energy, Environment, and Transportation Policies
Keywords
emissions leakage, subnational climate policy, California cap-and-trade, carbon pricing, electricity market integration, electricity exports, carbon emission reduction, general equilibrium model

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review