Climate Change and Emissions Rights: Teaching Experience Using Artificial Intelligence Tools

This chapter draws upon the practical experience gained in the “Introduction to Economics” course within the Marketing Degree during the 2023–24 academic year, specifically in the chapter on Market Failures. This educational endeavor is part of an effort to emphasize the significance of the Sustainable Development Goals 2015–2030 to students. The application focuses on Goal No. 13, “Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts”. In response to this challenge, countries agreed upon a course of action to address climate change in the 2015 Paris Agreement, which includes maintaining greenhouse gas emission trading markets. Despite the significance of emission rights markets, traditional introductory economics textbooks have not sufficiently addressed their treatment, as they rely on vague and difficult-to-understand verbal statements. On the other hand, typical intermediate-advanced level Microeconomics manuals tend to depend on complex concepts and analytical tools that are challenging for a first-year student. In this sense, this chapter attempts to fill the gap between both approaches by offering an accessible presentation for first-year students. The primary objective of this teaching initiative is to help students comprehend the operation of emission rights markets and the rationale behind their use as an efficient strategy for reducing emissions. With this purpose, various scenarios are examined: unrestricted emissions, non-transferable rights, transferable rights, different rights initial distributions, non-free emissions rights and emission taxes. This educational proposal is grounded in the following principles: simplicity, collaborative learning and learning by teaching. It is important to highlight that this teaching experience addresses real issues that affect the lives of students, following an approach far removed from the traditional lecture format. This increases the degree of attendance, satisfaction, and enthusiasm of students in our course.