Climate discussions like those we’ve just been seeing at the UN summit in Katowice, Poland tend to focus on working together to deliver existing climate commitments and raising ambition—getting countries to reduce more GHG emissions, faster. But there’s an equally important issue that gets far less attention: ensuring climate action is delivered in a way that doesn’t leave anyone behind, particularly the world’s most vulnerable people.
See Helen Mountford and Molly McGregors’ latest blog post on how carbon pricing can benefit the poor and reduce emissions.
The Arab Gulf States – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE –are highly vulnerable to oil price shocks due to their high economic reliance on oil and gas export revenues. Historically, oil price shocks have been a source of pressure on the Arab Gulf States economies. However, only since mid-2014 have oil prices seemed to pressure on political regimes to consider domestic economic reforms and development of alternative sources of income (i.e. economic diversification).
To avoid long-term negative implications – such as increasing total CO2 emissions and deterioration of air quality associated with increasing downstream petrochemical energy intensive industries, fossil fuel subsidy reforms, enhancing energy efficiency and the use of clean energy technologies are indeed instrumental to tackle such issues. In this article, carbon pricing is proposed as a useful instrument to complement the aforementioned tools.
To address the global development risks posed by climate change, a major technological shift leading to a substantial reduction in the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will be necessary. In parallel, the substantial global economic and development distortions - that lead to inequality - do not enable the technological and financial transfers needed for a sustainable and equitable global economy. This brings us to a fundamental question: when climate change only imposes an additional threat of unseen scale, how can we change the economic status-quo?
Statoil has been operating in a market where an external carbon price has existed since the early 1990s. Due to CO2 tax and other regulatory measures the oil and gas industry in Norway has adopted emission-reduction measures corresponding to more than five million tonnes of CO2 per annum since 1996. Consequently, Norwegian oil and gas production is in the global premier division for low GHG emissions and the average amount emitted per unit produced is about half the world average.
This year’s State and Trends of Carbon Pricing report, launched recently in Vietnam, includes the first deep dive analysis of the carbon pricing initiatives of countries’ climate plans submitted in Paris last year and looks specifically at how international trading of carbon assets would affect the cost of carbon mitigation. Of 101 countries considering the use of carbon pricing, the vast majority indicate they will use international approaches to emissions trading per their NDC pledges.
The remarkable pace at which nations of the world have ratified the Paris Agreement on climate change gives us all hope. It signals the world is ready to take the actions we need to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius. We know, however, that delivering on Paris comes with a high price tag, and that we need to help countries not just transition toward renewable energy but unlock the finance needed to get there.
In his latest blog post, Nat Keohane, VP for Global Climate at Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and a member of the CPLC Steering Committee, writes about the International Coalition for Sustainable Aviation's and EDF's efforts to get a market-based measure for carbon emissions from international aviation adopted in ICAO.
The Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, a major international initiative led by 24 former heads of state and finance ministers, heads of international organisations, and business leaders, launches its third major report.
With the highest level of CO2 tax worldwide, Sweden provides strong evidence that decoupling GDP growth from CO2 emissions is possible and that CO2 tax is an efficient way of achieving a decrease in CO2 emission with fossil origin, write Sweden's Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson and Minister for International Development Cooperation Isabella Lövin.
