Speaker:  Prof. Dr. Andreas Löschel

Title: The real demand for global and local environmental protection – experimental evidence from climate change mitigation in Beijing

Abstract: In this study, the real demand for global and local environmental protection in Beijing/China is investigated. Participants from Beijing were offered the opportunity to contribute to voluntary climate change mitigation by purchasing permits from Chinese CO2 emissions trading schemes (ETS). Purchased permits were withdrawn from the ETS. Since CO2 emissions are inevitably linked to emissions of local pollutants the objective of our study is to disentangle the real demand for global and for local environmental protection. For this purpose, Beijing and Shenzhen ETS permits were offered. The result is that for low prices the demand for Beijing ETS permits is higher than for Shenzhen ETS permits indicating real demand for local environmental protection. Our research identifies the important role of private benefits, with climate change mitigation as an impure public good, in the voluntary provision of public goods and provides first evidence for China.

Bio: Andreas Löschel holds a chair for Energy and Resource Economics at the University of Münster and is Director of the Centre of Applied Economic Research Münster (CAWM) since 2014. Since 2011, he chairs the Energy Expert Commission of the German Government to monitor the energy transformation, and since 2017 he directs the Virtual Institute Smart Energy North Rhine-Westphalia. He has served as Lead Author in the Working Group III contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (2010-2014). He is a member of the German National Academy of Science and Technology (acatech). His research interests are in applied microeconomics, energy economics and the economics of climate change.