Linking emissions trading schemes is the bottom-up approach to creating a global carbon market. It entails political compromise and a careful assessment of the trade-off between its advantages and disadvantage.
This article points out that the main benefits of linking are the reduction of the aggregate compliance and transactions costs, the reduction of the competitive distortions and the increase of market liquidity. On the other hand, the article identifies also drawbacks in this process: differences in certain design elements can challenge the environmental policy objectives through free-riding and emissions leakage. For all these reasons, a linking project requires solutions to harmonize those design elements which pose barriers to an effective linkage.
Cities are large emitters of greenhouse gasses, but are also extremely vulnerable to climate change impacts. This unique position makes cities networks relevant in international discussions on mitigation, where they have over the past few months effectively created a new initiative to cut emissions, along with a credible emissions accounting and reporting protocol, a data repository, and a portal to share progress. At the same time that cities groups are advocating mitigation at the international level, groups within cities are proposing innovative adaptation ideas to address local level climate change impacts, including creative solutions to adapt the urban landscape to sea level rise.
In 2016, the European Council approved the new climate and energy targets that would lead the EU action through to 2030. While these policies mark progress towards the EU’s long-term decarbonization objective, there are some contradictions to consider. Most notably, although the 20-20-20 package was in place, in the last few years the energy mix of some EU countries showed an increased reliance on fossil fuels. In addition, total emissions in Europe declined, but mainly because the economic crisis reduced energy demand in many EU Member States. The new European framework therefore comes at a critical time particularly because the 2030 policy commitments should be able to cope with this contradictions and actually promote investment into low-carbon sources. The article will explore these issues by discussing what would be the consequences of these targets into the energy market.
Green infrastructure and integrated transportation are the two dominant green best practices that cities around the world are implementing and that research related to the climate change impacts of extreme temperatures and air pollution advocate for. Are these policies enough to address climate change and its impacts on human health, now and in the future? The answer to this question depends on whether cities choose to continue with the same status quo policies or develop new policies in the light of climate change.
Given the broad (economic, social and environmental) objectives of a green economy, and the limitations associated with mainstream measures of economic performance (such as gross domestic product), an alternative or expanded set of indicators is required for measuring progress toward a green economy. This article develops a composite index for measuring green economic performance, based on 26 indicators across the economic, social and environmental dimensions. The index will enable comparison of a country's green economic performance both over time and relative to other countries. Furthermore, the index is constructed in such a way as to allow for disaggregation (i.e. for scores on individual components to be seen at a glance), such that areas of specific concern can be easily identified and addressed, and progress in each area monitored over time. The index was tested on data from 193 countries, and the resulting country rankings were assessed.