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.
The OECD report Investing in Climate, Investing in Growth released today shows that there need not be a trade-off: combining climate change and pro-growth measures, and in some countries a judicious recycling of carbon tax revenues, can lead to long-term inclusive growth as part of a “decisive transition” to decarbonisation
Over the last year, students have been organizing and lobbying across the country around carbon pricing. While the climate crisis can seem intimidating to the generation that will face its most significant impacts, young leaders are uniting to pass strong policies through the Put A Price On It campaign.
As the co-chairs of the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition (CPLC), we want to accelerate climate action and reaffirm our commitment to carbon pricing. The discussions in Germany are a great opportunity to keep the momentum going.
I4CE has published a series of three Climate Briefs on the management of climate-related risks by financial actors, focusing specifically on three questions:
This blogpost rapidly summarizes these three Climate Brief presents an overview of the topics covered and the main conclusions. The three briefs are available on the I4CE website.
As the leading business association dealing with climate change in Australia, the Carbon Market Institute has been at the centre of policy discussions to ensure a business voice is represented in the design and implementation of effective and stable climate policy. This article describes how the inevitability of reformed energy and climate policy in Australia, and new low-carbon developments in the Region, have reignited the debate about the country’s low-emissions future.
The Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition (CPLC) launched a new initiative to progress the use of carbon pricing as a tool to enable the shipping industry’s decarbonisation and switch away from fossil fuels. The initiative will be co-chaired by Johannah Christensen (Director, Global Maritime Forum) and Tristan Smith (UCL/UMAS), supported by CPLC Partners including the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund.
What do HSBC, China, LafargeHolcim and California have in common? Despite the continuing debate in some corners about the ways and means of climate change, they are getting down to business — assigning a price to carbon pollution and then letting the market uncover profitable emissions reductions opportunities.
