Policy Brief
The effort to define rules for international emissions trading faces the strong desire of nation states to develop their own climate policies, which collides with the need for tradable units in one country to be equivalent to tradable units in another country. To overcome this dilemma Georg Zachmann proposes a club of carbon-buying countries that would regulate only imported mitigation outcomes.
Blog Post
One year after the Paris climate conference, Europe struggles to advance its own ratification process of the agreement. However, a fast-track EU ratification procedure could enable the Paris Agreement to enter into force in time for the Marrakesh climate conference.
Blog Post
Speech held at Bruegel event on "How will the Paris agreement impact EU climate and energy policies?", on 8 February 2016.
Blog Post
In the US, electricity producers are switching from coal to less polluting natural gas thanks to lower gas prices. However in the EU, the carbon price has been too low to make natural gas competitive with coal.
Blog Post
The price of carbon emissions has decreased markedly since the first draft of the Paris Agreement has been released. The decrease in the price of futures is the largest observed over the last two months.
Blog Post
The Paris Agreement has been hailed as a turning point and a huge success in the international fight against climate change. Its big achievement is that it brings tackling climate change back into the sphere of the politically possible. But implementation will be by no means easy. I base my optimism on four observations:
Blog Post
A strong political momentum on climate action has arisen worldwide on the way to Paris. However private and public investors will only conduct the necessary long-term investments if COP21 manages to put in place a sustained political commitment of all relevant parties to the 2°C pathway. Such a commitment requires a new global architecture for climate action.
Policy Brief
There is a European interest in getting a global climate deal in Paris that entails high mitigation ambitions and involves the EU in shaping the global climate-finance architecture.
Blog Post
On 8 July the European Parliament finally voted to introduce a mechanism to stabilise the European emissions trading system (ETS). What can a detailed analysis of the voting results tell us about European enthusiasm for ETS?
Opinion
As the economic crisis shifted policymakers’ attention from long-term sustainability to short-term recovery, progress has stalled – and the consequences could be dramatic.
Blog Post
Reinhard Quick – Director Brussels Office of the German Chemical Industry Association, as well as a well-known trade specialist in Brussels and Honorary Professor for international economic law, Saarland University – discusses the policy brief “Can border carbon taxes fit into the global trade regime?” authored by Henrik Horn, Non-Resident Scholar at Bruegel, and André Sapir, Senior Fellow at Bruegel.
Blog Post
Climate policy, like all polices, is about making choices. Taking an economic perspective, the report addresses two major choices of European decarbonisation policies. At the highest level, a decision has to be made whether climate change is best dealt with by reducing carbon emissions into the atmosphere (mitigation), or by investing into assets that allow people to better cope with the consequences of global warming (adaptation). Then, the individual policies to curb emissions and incentivize adaptation