Real-time pricing (RTP) of electricity would improve allocative efficiency and limit wholesalers' market power. Conventional wisdom claims that RTP provides additional environmental benefits. This paper argues that RTP will reduce the variance, both within- and across-days, in the quantity of electricity demanded. We estimate the short-run impacts of this reduction on SO2, NOx, and CO2 emissions. Reducing variance decreases emissions in regions where peak demand is met more by oil-fired capacity than by hydropower, such as the Mid-Atlantic. However, reducing variance increases emissions in more U.S. regions, namely those with more hydropower like the West. The effects are relatively small.

An advantage of cap-and-trade programs over more prescriptive environmental regulation is that compliance flexibility and cost effectiveness can make more stringent emissions reductions politically feasible. However, when markets (versus regulators) determine where emissions occur, it becomes more difficult to assure that mandated emissions reductions are equitably achieved. We investigate these issues in the context of Southern California's RECLAIM program by matching facilities in RECLAIM with similar California facilities also in nonattainment areas. Our results indicate that average emissions fell 20 percent at RECLAIM facilities relative to our counterfactual. Furthermore, observed changes in emissions do not vary significantly with neighborhood demographic characteristics.

Climate policy has favored costly measures that implicitly or explicitly subsidize lowcarbon fuels.We simulate four transportation sector policies: cap and trade (CAT), ethanol subsidies, a renewable fuel standard (RFS), and a lowcarbon fuel standard. Our simulations confirm that alternatives to CAT are 2.5 to 4 times more costly but are amenable to adoption due to right-skewed distributions of gains. We analyze voting on the Waxman-Markey (WM) CAT bill. Conditional on a district’s CAT gains, a district’s RFS gains are negatively correlated with the likelihood of voting for WM. Our analysis supports campaign contributions as a partial mechanism.

We combine a theoretical discrete-choice model of vehicle purchases, an econometric analysis of electricity emissions, and the AP2 air pollution model to estimate the geographic variation in the environmental benefits from driving electric vehicles. The second-best electric vehicle purchase subsidy ranges from $2,785 in California to −$4,964 in North Dakota, with a mean of −$1,095. Ninety percent of local environmental externalities from driving electric vehicles in one state are exported to others, implying they may be subsidized locally, even when the environmental benefits are negative overall. Geographically differentiated subsidies can reduce deadweight loss, but only modestly.