Sharing R&D investments in cleaner technologies to mitigate climate change

Abstract

This paper examines international cooperation on technological development as an alternative to international cooperation on GHG emission reductions. It is assumed that when countries cooperate they coordinate their investments so as to minimize the agreement costs of controlling emissions and that they also pool their R&D e¤orts so as to fully internalize the spillover e¤ects of their investments in R&D. In order to analyze the scope of cooperation, an agreement formation game is solved in three stages. First, countries decide whether or not to sign the agreement. Then, in the second stage, signatories (playing together) and non-signatories (playing individually) select their investment in R&D.Finally, in the third stage, each country decides its level of emissions non-cooperatively.For linear environmental damages and quadratic investment costs, our …ndings show that the maximum participation in a R&D agreement consists of six countries and that participation decreases as the coalition information exchange decreases until that a minimum participation consisting of three countries is reached. We also …nd that the grand coalition is stable if the countries sign an international research joint venture but in this case the e¤ectiveness of the agreement is very low.

Reducing global CO 2 emissions with the technologies we have

“…Knowledge of those hotspots derived from this analysis could support agreements that provide selected sectors in developing countries with tailor-made access to efficient technologies, particularly when firstbest, globally targeted climate policy (e.g., global carbon pricing) is not available. In addition, the provision of technology and cooperated technology development constitute alternative and potentially cheap tools to reducing global GHG emissions (El-Sayed and Rubio, 2014;Fraunhofer ISI, 2015;Kriegler et al, 2014). In this sense, due to efficiency consideration such knowledge would also allow to identify the sectors to be given priority in the distribution of funding in international climate finance.…”

An Adaptation-Mitigation Game: Does Adaptation Promote Participation in International Environmental Agreements?

“…which is the same constraint we obtain for the complete agreement. 18 But this lower bound must be lower than the upper bound for d, αN/(2N − 1) we have defined above and ensures no over adaptation, that requires that…”

“…One of the issues examined by this literature is to know whether a technology agreement could be a good alternative to an emission agreement. From this list, we would like to highlight the paper by El-Sayed and Rubio (2014). In their analysis, it is assumed that signatories not only coordinate their levels of investment but also pool them so as to fully internalize the spillover effects of their investments, i.e.…”

International R&D formations and strategic environmental policy

“…El-Sayed and Rubio (2014) and Rubio (2017) analyzed cooperative R&D from the perspective of international environmental agreements but disregarded interaction between firms and governments.…”