Cap and trade mechanisms enjoy increasing importance in environmental legislations worldwide. One of the important aspects of designing cap and trade mechanisms is the possibility of authorities to grant emission permits for free. Unlike analyzed in the seminal contributions on cap and trade systems, in reality free allocations are not made lump sum, but are updated contingent on firms’ actions, i.e., contingent on production decisions and contingent on facilities entering the market or retiring (see IEA, https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/content/publication/b7d0842b-en, 2020). As it has already been shown in the literature, such updating yields distorted production decisions of firms (see e.g., Böhringer and Lange in Eur Econ Rev 49(8):2041–2055, 2005, Mackenzie et al. in Environ Resour Econ 39(3):265–282, 2008, or Damon et al. in Rev Environ Econ Policy 13(1):23–42, 2019). The impact of updating on firms’ investment and retiring decisions and the resulting technology mix has received much less attention up to now, however. It is the purpose of the present article to shed light on this aspect and to study the impact of a cap and trade mechanism not only on firms’ output decisions, but also on their investment incentives in different technologies and to analyze the optimal design of emission trading systems in such an environment.

总量控制和交易机制在全球环境立法中的重要性日益提高。设计限额和交易机制的重要方面之一是当局有可能免费发放排放许可证。与上限和交易系统的开创性贡献中所分析的不同，实际上，免费分配不是一次性付清，而是根据公司的行动进行更新，即取决于生产决策，取决于设施进入市场或退出市场（请参阅IEA， https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/content/publication/b7d0842b-zh，2020）。正如文献所表明的那样，这种更新的收益扭曲了企业的生产决策（例如，参见Böhringer和Lange在Eur Econ Rev 49（8）：2041-2055，2005，Mackenzie等人在Environ Resour Econ 39（2005）中）。 3）：265–282，2008年，或Damon等。在Rev Environ Econ Policy 13（1）：23-42，2019）中。但是，到目前为止，更新对企业投资和退休决策以及由此产生的技术组合的影响所受到的关注要少得多。本文的目的是阐明这一方面，并​​研究上限和交易机制不仅对企业的产出决策产生影响，而且还对企业在不同技术上的投资动机产生影响，并分析排放的最优设计。在这样的环境下交易系统。