The allocation of emission permits at no cost during the establishment of a cap-and-trade program creates opportunities for rent-seeking. I examine the consequences of such rent-seeking by exploiting an unusual feature of the UK’s permit allocation procedure in Phase 1 of the EU’s CO\(_{2}\) Emissions Trading Scheme, whereby it is possible to observe both a firm’s actual permit allocation as well as an earlier, technocratically-based provisional allocation that was never implemented. Firms had the opportunity to appeal their provisional allocation. I find that a firm’s financial connections to members of the House of Commons strongly predict its post-appeal allocation. Even after controlling for the provisional allocation, along with industry and financial characteristics, a connection to an additional member is associated with a significant increase in a firm’s actual permit allocation. Using results from a contest-theoretic framework, I estimate the welfare loss from rent-seeking to be over 100 million euros—a significant amount relative to the abatement costs firms incurred to reduce emissions.

在建立总量管制和交易计划期间免费分配排放许可证为寻租创造了机会。我通过利用欧盟CO \（_ {2} \）第一阶段英国许可证分配程序的一个不寻常特征来研究这种寻租的后果排放权交易计划，通过它既可以观察企业的实际许可证分配，也可以观察到从未实施过的基于技术官僚主义的早期临时分配。企业有机会对临时分配提出上诉。我发现一家公司与下议院成员的财务往来强烈预测了其上诉后的分配。即使在控制了临时分配以及行业和财务特征之后，与其他成员的联系也使企业的实际许可分配显着增加。根据竞争理论框架的结果，我估计寻租导致的福利损失将超过1亿欧元，相对于企业减少排放的减排成本而言，这是一笔可观的数额。