文档介绍：原文:
Toward a Low Carbon Economy ---economic analysis and evidence for a low carbon industrial strategy
Executive summary
The imperative of strong and early action on climate change was clearly set out in the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, and recent research highlights business opportunities, as well as challenges, from a transition to a low carbon economy.
Going forward, a high carbon economy is not an option and the UK is in the early stages of an essential but challenging transformation. The aim of this paper is to set out the economic rationale and review supporting literature for the UK Government’s Low Carbon Industrial Strategy to help transform the UK to a more energy and resource efficient, low carbon economy.
The policy environment
The government’s response to the challenge of removing carbon from economic activity is to create a regulatory framework that facilitates open petitive markets and provides long term regulatory certainty for economic agents in the economy. ‘Building Britain’s future: New Industry, New Jobs’ underlined the importance of open markets to future economic prosperity but recognised that markets alone may not automatically deliver es that promote long-term public interest.
Key market failures that may distort price signals and incentives or erect barriers to the creation of a low carbon economy include both negative and positive externalities, information asymmetries and significant uncertainty. The UK’s approach to encouraging low carbon economic growth needs to address these in a balanced and appropriate way. It needs to take account of relevant drivers of change such as consumer behaviour, the cost of carbon, innovation and regulations. Government’s principal method of signalling a long-mitment to reduce carbon is the statutory target to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80% from their 1990 baseline by 2050. This is supported by the pricing of carbon via the UK’s participation in the EU Emissions Trading S