Policies for a climate-neutral industry

Climate Neutral Cities

Climate Change Policies

Federal action addressing climate change is likely to emerge either through new legislation or via the U.S. EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act. The prospect of federal action raises important questions regarding the interconnections between federal efforts and state-level climate policy developments. In the presence of federal policies, to what extent will state efforts be costeffective? H...

Evidence-based Forecasting for Climate Change Policies

In order to meet policy makers’ need for climate forecasts, this paper extends the application of evidence-based forecasting of global mean temperatures. The extensions utilize more years of global mean temperature data and 34 years of better data. Forecasts from the no-trend model were compared with forecasts from six moresophisticated methods that take account of more than the most recent dat...

Environmental and Technology Policies for Climate Mitigation

We assess different policies for reducing carbon dioxide emissions and promoting the innovation and diffusion of renewable energy. We evaluate the relative performance of policies according to incentives provided for emissions reduction, efficiency, and other outcomes. We also assess how the nature of technological progress—whether it occurs through learning by doing or R&D investment, and the ...

Climate policies deserve a negative discount rate

Introduction Since the Stern Review (Stern 2007) and the debate it has sparked off, the discount rate has been at the center of heated discussions about climate policies. In the very long run, the discount rate makes a huge difference in the evaluation of policies. The following table (Table 1) shows the minimum return that a $1 investment for the future should have to be considered better than...