Economic prospect on carbon emissions in Commonwealth of Independent States

This paper measures the ecological performance and reference carbon taxes of 12 Commonwealth of Independent States between 1993 and 2008. I adapted an ecologist's model into widely used non-parametric directional distance functions approach. On average, countries perform fairly well: eco-efficiency is around 87 %. Enhancing energy consumption would lead to further reductions in CO2 emissions. I find that there was a relative decoupling of GDP from emissions growth. The estimated shadow price of carbon (mean of US$74.37/tCO(2)) is reasonable and falls into a range proposed by climate scientists. The richer countries had lower shadow prices with smaller range compared to less affluent ones. Overall, given decoupling, the introduction of revenue-neutral carbon tax could have certain merits.