On the margins of the annual Carbon Expo, the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition (CPLC) held a Partners’ strategy session in Cologne. The Coalition was launched in Paris at COP21 with the goal of bringing together government and business leaders to accelerate the uptake of successful carbon pricing systems around the world. The Coalition now includes 26 governments and over 90 businesses, with more than 30 strategic partners providing insight and support to the agenda.
Some highlights from the strategy session include:
Communications is key
There is a substantial amount of analysis and evidence available supporting the rationale for well-designed carbon pricing solutions. These messages need to be synthesized and communicated in a targeted way to leaders and decision makers. The CPLC can play a key role here. We should use real-life examples that demonstrate where carbon pricing has effectively changed investment decisions in companies and in national economies.
Highlight key messages with CPLC issue briefs
'Building and Sharing the Evidence Base' Working Group will lead the development of CPLC Issue Briefs, including:
- Competitiveness and Carbon Pricing – as this is typically the #1 concern raised about carbon pricing, this brief will summarize existing research (e.g. in last year’s State and Trends of Carbon Pricing report) with key messages and findings for businesses and policy makers. This will be released to inform the Business & Climate Summit on 28-29 June in London.
The Effectiveness of Carbon Pricing – showcasing carbon pricing success stories, building from the existing FASTER Principles for Successful Carbon Pricing.
Options for Using Carbon Pricing Revenues – Partner I4CE is preparing a research paper on this topic that will be presented in Paris at a CPLC Dialogue on 10 June and the Climate Markets & Investment Association will also share a paper they have done. This analysis and thinking can be consolidated to help finance ministers and policy makers to understand the options and pros/cons of different uses of carbon pricing revenue.
Policy alignment – As countries prepare to implement their national strategies for climate action submitted in Paris, they need help determining how to align carbon pricing with other climate and investment policies. The World Bank Group plans to focus on this topic—working closely with the OECD’s existing research in the next State and Trends of Carbon Pricing report to be released in the fall, this will then be synthesized by CPLC.
The Benefits of Networking Carbon Markets – As more governments begin to explore how to link and network markets post-Paris (particularly under Article 6), this topic is important; also as a means to combat concerns about competitiveness. The World Bank Group’s Networked Carbon Markets Initiative will help lead the drafting of this brief, which will summarize why this is an important strategy. The paper is targeted for fall release.
Engage youth in the conversation
This topic was discussed also as it is important to engage the next generation on carbon pricing and climate. The video produced for the 2014 Climate Summit was mentioned as an excellent tool and should be used again. A more detailed strategy will be developed this summer.
Companies want to share experiences with internal carbon pricing
The 'Mobilizing Business Support' Working Group will organize a series of webinars, working with the World Economic Forum’s CEO Climate Leadership effort will join forces with Yale University and partners World Business Council on Sustainable Development and CDP to organize these CPLC information-exchange sessions for both executives and technical experts. The first webinar is tentatively planned for July.
Investors are supporting carbon pricing and want to engage more with companies
The Breakfast benefited from the attendance of Philippe Desfossés, CEO of French Pension Fund ERAFP , who explained his interest in learning more about how companies were using internal carbon pricing to manage their climate risk and scale up their climate friendly investments. CPLC Partner Ceres is organizing a brainstorming call on 6 June with all interested Partners to develop a strategy here.
Planned leadership dialogues
The 'Convening Leadership Dialogues' Working Group is helping to shape a number of CPLC Leadership Dialogues in the coming months, and Partners are invited to contact the Secretariat if they are interested in participating. These include national Dialogues in South Africa, Colombia, Mexico, India and China; regional dialogues in Latin America and North America, and international events at the New York Climate Week in September and COP22 in Morocco.
In all, it was a very successful and active exchange of information and ideas; many thanks to the CPLC Partners who joined us in Cologne - and who received their new CPLC Put a #PriceOnCarbon t-shirts!
