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.
In 2017, we continued to see steady growth of carbon pricing in Asia. Some of the encouraging trends include China’s launching its national emission trading system (ETS) in December 2017, Kazakhstan restarting its ETS in 2018 after a two-year suspension, Korean introducing new design reforms in the ETS, Singapore preparing to implement a carbon tax from 2019 and India declaring its intention to launch a voluntary carbon market in the country.
I was one of the architects behind the CPLC, and have recently moved to a new position to help the International Finance Corporation promote private sector-led development. Departing put me in reflective mode: how did this unique, impactful initiative come to exist? And can a bottom-up, public-private initiative, provide lessons to those seeking new models to tackle other global challenges?
Worldwide, the private sector is increasingly acknowledging the business case for investing in climate business opportunities and climate risk management. However, the question of which management approaches are most appropriate for each company is still being explored.
In a recent webinar on designing and implementing internal carbon pricing hosted by the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition (CPLC), the World Economic Forum (WEF) and Yale University, Unilever - one of the largest consumer goods company in the world - discussed some approaches that businesses can take, and have already taken, to implement such measures.
Our experience illustrates the transformational innovation of this multilevel, multilateral coalition: non-governmental organizations, governments, UN agencies, businesses, banks, and universities, come together around one table, and work as peers to design and to facilitate the deployment of smart carbon pricing, across the world. Such multilevel collaboration is essential to achieving the optimal timeline to full-spectrum inclusive climate prosperity.
People often ask me what the CPLC does and what sets us apart among all those advocating for climate action. My response is that the CPLC is unique because of the myriad backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives of its partners, as well as the ways in which the richness of this diversity is incorporated into its leadership style.
The Indian government has adopted some of the world’s most ambitious renewable energy targets, which are a centerpiece of its strategy to address climate change. Now, 40 Indian companies are joining the national effort by setting a price on their internal carbon emissions, which can facilitate greener decision-making.
While inland transport was included in the 2015 Paris Agreement and international air transport followed suit in 2016, progress in the international shipping sector, which carries 80% of the world’s trade volume, has been more modest. Back in 2011, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) did adopt a set of operational and technical measures to increase the energy efficiency of vessels. Realistically though, it may take about 25-30 years to renew the world’s entire fleet and make all new vessels fully compliant with IMO’s technical requirements.
