Collaborative Procurement for Competing Power Producers Under a Carbon Tax With Emission Abatement Decisions
研究了碳税政策下竞争性电力生产商选择联合采购还是单独采购更有利，以及采购策略如何影响减排决策和碳排放总量。
Power producers increasingly adopt collaborative procurement (CP) and emission abatement to lower procurement costs and comply with carbon regulations. However, under carbon tax regulation, it remains unclear whether CP is more profitable than individual procurement (IP), and how procurement strategy influences producers' emission abatement decisions and overall environmental outcomes. We develop a game-theoretical model to examine the strategic CP decisions of competing power producers under a carbon tax, incorporating their emission abatement decisions. We find that CP is more profitable when the initial emission intensity asymmetry between powerproducers is low. Otherwise, IP is more profitable when initial emission intensity asymmetry is high. Interestingly, under low carbon tax and moderate abatement costs, the carbon-inefficient producer's abatement level increases with the abatement cost under CP and IP with a low discount, whereas IP with a high discount reverses this pattern. Furthermore, we find that when the carbon tax is high or abatement costs are low, the carbon-inefficient producer gains higher profits than the carbon-efficient producer by engaging more aggressively in procurement and abatement. Finally, we find that even when CP yields higher profits than IP, it may result in higher carbon emissions. Our main insights remain qualitatively robust when the model is extended to incorporate inelastic demand, endogenous and nonlinear discount scale, asymmetric abatement efficiencies, capacity constraints, and quantity discount allocation bargaining.