Greening Asia's economic development is essential for enhancing environmental quality on a global scale as well as at a local level, since the Asian population, which is more than half the world's population, and its rapid economic growth and development are anticipated to adversely affect the natural environment. Actually, the total amount of CO₂ emissions from Asian countries amounts to nearly half of world emissions, contributing to the global warming. On the other hand, local environmental problems such as air pollution, water contamination, soil degradation, and deforestation in some Asian countries are getting worse (Southerland, 2018).

Burke and Do (2021) try to address these problems from the viewpoint of economics, proposing feasible policies for improving local and global environmental quality, although their main interest is in the low‐carbon emission aspects. In giving an overview of the present circumstances of the environment in Asian countries, Burke and Do point out that Asia faces a challenge in combatting global warming and other environmental problems, since the size of their population, their rapid economic growth and development, their carbon‐intensive energy use as well as their energy‐intensive economic style are making the situation worse.

Based on the traditional economic theory of the internalization of externalities, Burke and Do propose the adjustment of prices following incentive‐based polices such as carbon pricing. They argue that emission pricing or carbon pricing is a powerful tool for cutting CO₂ emissions, although it has been adopted only in a small number of countries in Asia so far. This appears to be ironical since fossil fuels are considered to become stranded assets soon and, instead, zero‐emission technologies such as solar and wind power generation are expected to be promising alternatives.

As Burke and Do suggest, there is great potential for establishing facilities for renewable power generation in Asia. If these facilities are constructed in the right place and efficiently operated, zero‐emission would become a reality in Asia. Furthermore, thanks to recent technical progress, batteries for storage and grid management can overcome the weakness of the intermittent nature of solar and wind power generation. Demand‐side management is also helpful for adjusting the unstable supply of electricity generated by those facilities.

In order to promote the shift of energy sources from fossil fuels to zero‐emission sources, what sort of policies should Asian countries adopt? Clearly there are multiple policy options for encouraging the use of zero‐emission energies. As feasible policies for this purpose, Burke and Do examine (i) emission pricing, (ii) reverse auctions, and (iii) renewable portfolio standards in order to check the merits and demerits of those options.

Burke and Do's stance of policy evaluation is clear: carbon pricing or emission pricing is preferred to emission‐permit trading. They say “From an economic point of view, a carbon tax is preferable to an ETS in many ways.” They also point out the merits of reverse auctions, saying “The advantage of reverse auctions over standard feed‐in tariffs is that competitive forces in an auction can help to drive prices down” (Burke & Do, 2021). From these statements, it is clear that Burke and Do evaluate pricing incentive policies more than other policies.

Let me mention three considerations which should be taken into account when one tries to justify pricing‐incentive policies for inducing the use of zero‐emission energy sources. First, a low carbon society needs the infrastructure represented, for example, by a smart community in which zero‐emission tools such as photo‐voltaic (PV) panels, electric vehicles (EVs), and lithium‐ion batteries are interconnected in an organic manner, so that a synergy effect by those tools could be created. This cannot be easily made only by a carbon pricing policy. Second, an incentive‐based policy such as carbon pricing, emission pricing or whatever it may be, affects income distribution. For instance, low income households may be adversely affected by the price increases caused by carbon pricing. Furthermore, they may not be able to buy EVs, PHV and so on. This type of distortion should be corrected from the viewpoint of fairness. Third, the factors which make the implementation of carbon pricing hard should be investigated in the light of socio‐economic circumstances. A choice between carbon pricing and other measures is not a simple matter, apart from Weitzmann's (1974) theoretical concern. Contrary to economists' expectations, in reality pricing‐incentive policies are easier said than done. The barriers which prevent the introduction of those policies should be scrutinized from a socio‐economic viewpoint.

绿化亚洲的经济发展对于在全球范围内和地方一级提高环境质量至关重要，因为亚洲人口占世界人口的一半以上，而且其快速的经济增长和发展预计将对自然环境产生不利影响。环境。实际上，亚洲国家的CO ₂排放总量几乎占世界排放量的一半，从而导致了全球变暖。另一方面，一些亚洲国家的当地环境问题，例如空气污染，水污染，土壤退化和森林砍伐正在加剧（Southerland，2018年）。

Burke和Do（2021）试图从经济学的角度解决这些问题，尽管他们的主要兴趣是在低碳排放方面，但提出了改善当地和全球环境质量的可行政策。在概述亚洲国家环境现状时，伯克和杜指出，亚洲面临着应对全球变暖和其他环境问题的挑战，因为其人口规模，经济的快速增长和发展，碳能源密集型使用及其能源密集型经济样式使情况变得更糟。

根据外部性内部化的传统经济学理论，伯克和杜建议采用碳定价等基于激励的政策来调整价格。他们认为，排放定价或碳定价是减少CO ₂排放的有力工具，尽管迄今为止它仅在亚洲的少数几个国家中被采用。这似乎具有讽刺意味，因为人们认为化石燃料将很快成为搁浅的资产，相反，诸如太阳能和风力发电等零排放技术有望成为有前途的替代方案。

正如Burke和Do所暗示的那样，在亚洲建立可再生能源发电设施的潜力很大。如果这些设施在正确的位置建造并有效运行，则零排放将在亚洲成为现实。此外，由于最近的技术进步，用于存储和电网管理的电池可以克服太阳能和风力发电间歇性的缺点。需求侧管理还有助于调整这些设施产生的不稳定电力供应。

为了促进能源从化石燃料向零排放的转变，亚洲国家应采取什么样的政策？显然，有多种政策选择可以鼓励使用零排放能源。作为为此目的可行的政策，Burke and Do检查（i）排放价格，（ii）反向拍卖和（iii）可再生能源投资组合标准，以检查这些方案的优缺点。

Burke and Do的政策评估立场很明确：碳定价或排放定价优于排放许可交易。他们说：“从经济角度来看，碳税在许多方面都比碳排放交易体系更可取。” 他们还指出了反向拍卖的优点，他说：“反向拍卖优于标准上网电价的优势在于，拍卖中的竞争力量可以帮助压低价格”（Burke＆Do，2021年）。从这些陈述中可以明显看出，伯克和杜对定价激励政策的评价要高于其他政策。

让我提及在试图证明诱导零排放能源使用的价格激励政策合理性时应考虑的三个考虑因素。首先，低碳社会需要以智能社区为代表的基础设施，在该社区中，零排放工具（例如光伏（PV）面板，电动汽车（EV）和锂离子电池）以有机方式互连方式，以便可以通过这些工具创建协同效应。仅通过碳定价政策很难做到这一点。其次，基于激励的政策（例如碳定价，排放定价或可能的定价）会影响收入分配。例如，低收入家庭可能会受到碳定价导致价格上涨的不利影响。此外，他们可能无法购买EV，PHV等。这种变形应从公平的角度进行纠正。第三，应根据社会经济环境，调查难以实施碳定价的因素。除了魏茨曼的方法（在碳定价和其他措施之间进行选择）不是一件容易的事。1974）理论上的关注。与经济学家的预期相反，实际上，定价激励政策说起来容易做起来难。应该从社会经济的角度仔细审查阻碍这些政策出台的障碍。