Carmen Bunzl - Universidad Pontificia Comillas

Chapter 4. Case Study: Spain 218
average. The Ability to pay approach would lead to a huge amount of excess
emission allowance for the new entry European countries, with low GDP per
capita, which have to be compensated by relatively high reductions for the EU-
15 countries, such as Spain. The Equal costs approach, which set targets so that
the costs are equally distributed over all participating countries (e.g. a
percentage of the GDP), seems to be a fair option, at least from a theoretical
point of view. However, the outcome depends quite a lot on the model and
costs definition assumptions used, forming a major barrier to the
implementation of this method. Given the assumptions made for the
parameters, the results of the Triptych approach are relatively beneficial for
Spain compared to the other regimes. It has proven to be helpful in arriving at
past EU burden-sharing agreements, supporting a negotiation outcome based
on compromises by all Parties, also accounting for sectoral differences and
national circumstances.
For Spain, if the present system were to continue, the most demanding
approaches would be the Grandfathering and the Ability to pay, given the
assumptions made here. The least demanding approaches, and therefore the
most beneficial, would be the Equal costs approach followed by the Tryptich
approach.
For the second option for EU burden-sharing and ETS (EU burden-sharing
with ETS allocation at EU level) the same pattern of differences in reductions
for the various burden-sharing regimes, as discussed above for option 1, is
observed. More specifically, the Grandfathering approach leads to high
reductions for Spain, which at present has emission growth targets under the
Kyoto Protocol. The Marginal abatement costs cases lead to the lowest reductions,
compared to the regimes considered, for Spain. The reductions under the
Triptych cases are more-or-less in the middle compared to the reduction of all
cases.
It should be acknowledged that the quantitative results for the emission
allowances are particularly dependent on the policy parameter settings, the
Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería ICAI Carmen Bunzl Boulet Junio 2008