The international economics of resources and resource ... - Index of

344 C. Lutz
1 Introduction
This chapter presents results of the petrE (“Resource productivity, environmental tax
reform and sustainable growth in Europe”) project that has been finished in June 2009
(Ekins and Speck 2010). PetrE is a three-year project, one of four funded by the Anglo-
German Foundation as part of its “Creating sustainable growth in Europe” research
initiative. The analysis is based on the extensive and disaggregated global GINFORS
model that contains 50 countries and two regions and their bilateral trade relations, energy
balances, macro-economic and structural data. The GINFORS model integrates material
input models in nine aggregated material categories, which are based on a global material
extraction dataset (www.materialflows.net). GINFORS is closed on the global level.
In the petrE project, the GINFORS model is applied to analyze the impacts of
major environmental tax reforms (ETR) and the EU Emissions Trading System
(ETS) to reach the EU GHG reduction targets until 2020. The ETR includes a carbon
tax for all non-ETS sectors and a material tax. Scenarios look at unilateral EU action
and at international cooperation by all OECD countries and the major emerging
economies. While the baseline scenario illustrates developments in the absence of
policy measures, scenario S1H assumes certain policy measures in the EU (a
tightened EU ETS cap, the introduction of a carbon tax on the non-ETS sector, and
introduction of materials taxes), and scenario S3H also includes measures in the
major OECD countries as well as a carbon tax in the five major emerging economies
of China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico (G5).
The chapter builds on two detailed working papers, which present the results on
the EU and national level (Lutz and Meyer 2009a) and on the global level (Giljum et
al. 2010). The concept of ETR is discussed in Ekins and Speck (2010). Section 2
shortly presents the GINFORS model. The model is documented in Meyer et al.
(2007), Meyer and Lutz (2007) and Lutz et al. (2010). Six scenarios that are outlined
in Section 3 have been implemented in the course of the petrE project. The baseline
is adjusted to the latest EU energy forecast (DG TREN 2008) and on the global level
to the IEA (2008) world energy outlook. Other scenarios build on the GHG emission
reduction targets of the EU until 2020. Section 5 contains an overview of the
baseline development.
In Section 6 simulation results are discussed: A major ETR in Europe could
significantly reduce environmental pressures in Europe while creating additional
jobs. Small negative GDP impacts are within the range of results of other studies.
The results clearly demonstrate that only global action will be able to reach the 2°
target. But even if a far-reaching global climate agreement is reached in 2010, global
resource extraction will continue to increase without additional international
measures. The necessary debate about limits of resource extraction on a global
level will raise similar questions about international competitiveness and leakage,
GDP effects and the need of international action as the climate change debate.
2 The GINFORS model
The simulation instrument-the global model GINFORS (Global INterindustry
FORecasting System)-describes the economic development, energy demand, CO 2