The design of cost effective ambient charges under incomplete information and risk

This contribution discusses a dynamic approach for setting emission charges such that ambient standards at receptors are respected and costs are minimized even if the environmental agency has no information about the costs of emission control. The proof, which is based on non monotonic optimization procedure demonstrates that starting from an arbitrarily chosen set of ambient charges the adjustment process converges to the cost effective vectors of charges and induced emissions. After presenting a basic deterministic case, the adjustment process is extended to a model where costs and transport coefficients are stochastic. Next to that penalties for sources that emit more than they have reported are integrated in the model.