To find out what really works as countries try to combat climate change, researchers looked at 1,500 ways countries have tried to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Their answer: Not much works. And success often means someone pays a price, whether at the pump or elsewhere.
According to a new study in the journal Science Thursday's (22/8) edition, researchers found only 63 cases since 1998 that showed policies resulting in significant reductions in carbon pollution,
Efforts to phase out fossil fuels and gas-powered engines, for example, have not been successful on their own. But they would be more successful if combined with some sort of energy tax or surcharge system, the study authors concluded in an in-depth analysis of global emissions, climate policy and law.
“The key if you want to reduce emissions is that you have to have a price in policy making,” said study co-author Nicolas Koch, a climate economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.
“If subsidies and regulations are applied alone or in combination, you will not see significant emission reductions. However, if price instruments are applied such as carbon energy taxes, then substantial emission reductions can be achieved.”
The study also found that what works in developed countries does not always work in developing countries.
But it shows the financial muscle of fighting climate change, as economists have long predicted, said several outside policy experts, climate scientists and economists who praised the study.
“We're not going to solve the climate problem in the developed world until polluters pay,” said Rob Jackson, a Stanford University climate scientist and author of Clear Blue Sky. “Other policies help, but only a little.”
“Carbon pricing places responsibility on the owners and products that cause the climate crisis,” Jackson said by email.
Koch says the best example of a successful strategy is in the UK’s electricity sector. The country implemented a combination of 11 different policies starting in 2012, including a coal phase-out and a pricing scheme involving emissions trading. The combination of policies has almost halved UK emissions, Koch says.
“The impact is huge,” he said.
Of the 63 climate success stories, the largest reductions were seen in South Africa’s buildings sector, where a combination of regulation, subsidies and equipment labelling cut emissions by almost 54%.
The only success story in the United States has been in transportation. Emissions fell 8 percent from 2005 to 2011 thanks to a combination of fuel standards — which means regulation — and subsidies.
But even seemingly successful policy tools have not been enough to reduce rising carbon dioxide emissions. In all, the 63 examples of successful climate policies cut between 600 million and 1.8 billion metric tons of the heat-trapping gas, the study found. Last year, the world emitted 36.8 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels and making cement.
If every major country could learn the lessons of that analysis and enact the policies that work best, it would narrow the “emissions gap” by just 26 percent of the 23 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions calculated by the United Nations. That gap is the difference between how much carbon the world will emit into the air by 2030 and the amount that would keep warming at or below internationally agreed levels.
“This basically shows that we have to do a better job,” said Koch, who is also head of the policy evaluation laboratory at the Mercator Research Institute in Berlin.
Niklas Hohne of Germany's New Climate Institute, who was not directly involved in the study, said: “The world really needs to make a big change, go into emergency mode and make the impossible possible.”
Koch and his team looked at emissions and efforts to reduce them in 41 countries between 1998 and 2022, covering 1,500 policy actions. So Koch’s observations do not include the nearly $400 billion climate spending package passed two years ago as a cornerstone of President Joe Biden’s environmental policies.
They group policies into four broad categories: pricing, regulation, subsidies, and information, and analyze four different economic sectors: electricity, transportation, buildings, and industry.
The team created a statistically transparent approach that others can use to update or reproduce the approach, including an interactive website where users can select countries and economic sectors to see what works. And the approach could eventually be applied to Biden’s 2022 climate package, he said. That package relies heavily on subsidies.
John Sterman, a professor of management at the MIT Sloan Sustainability Institute who was not involved in the study, said politicians are finding it easier to pass policies that subsidize and promote low-carbon technologies. He said that’s not enough.
“It is also important to discourage the use of fossil fuels by setting prices that are close to their full cost, including the cost of the climate damage they cause,” he said. (rz/ft)
