Of 1500 climate policies that have been implemented over the past 25 years, the 63 most successful ones are in this article (that I don’t have access to, but a good summary is here). The 63 policies reduced between 0.6 billion and 1.8 billion metric tonnes CO2 emissions. The typical effects that the 63 most effective policies had, could close the emissions gap by 26%-41%. Pricing is most effective in developed countries, while regulations are the most effective policies in developing countries. The climate policy explorer shows the best policies for different countries and sectors. I just wanted to write this if EA:s who are interested in climate change and policy have missed this.
I haven’t read the linked article or summary in detail, but clearly any measure of “success” must measure the costs of these policies as well? At least a quick skim seems to suggest the article didn’t account for costs at all, which I feel like makes this abstraction kind of meaningless (since it basically means that the “most successful” ones will simply be the ones that were the ones that covered the largest countries/industries, but that doesn’t tell us much, since that’s also where the potential costs were located).
It still seems good to do these calculations, but I would feel very hesitant to call these policies “successful” without having measured their costs.
A much better measure of “success” would be something like “Co2 averted”/”economic costs” * “size of intervention”.
This is good raw data, but I don’t think one can learn very much from this for what actions to prioritize for a couple of reasons:
(1) The focus is on national targets, while the most transformative policies in the past have had massive global impacts long-term with minimal local effects in the short-term (cf. early solar and wind policies, many of which were not even motivated as climate policies). Indeed, there is often a negative correlation between short-term domestic and long-term global impacts (I explore this a bit here).
(2) What matters for taking action is decarbonization returns on additional effort (activism, philanthropy, policy momentum), which could be quite different from absolute emissions reductions if implemented (similar to what Habryka is commenting on).
(3) In particular, this biases against relatively modest looking interventions that can be transformative (often have been in the past) such as innovation-support for nascent and early-stage technologies, where carbon pricing does ~nothing, but R&D expenditure, creating market demand, public co-financing of demonstration projects etc. make a large difference.
(4) Somewhat less importantly, the authors have a well-known focus on advancing carbon pricing, so this is something to keep in mind.
Thank you all for your comments! I agree that these policies may not have a massive global impact in the same way as clean energy policies, but 26 to 41 % in reductions is still a lot. I believe that additional effort and innovation-support is important as well. But carbon pricing and things like innovation-support can be combined. The Swiss CO2 Levy uses carbon pricing to give money to innovation, for example (see text below). As you see in the text below and in this graph by OECD, the cost for raising prices for carbon emissions can increase revenues as well. But I agree that it would be more interesting with an article with pure focus on cost-effectiveness.
I have addressed some of these issues in a previous forum post. I copy and paste a part from it here:
”In Canada, they have a fuel charge of 80 $ per tonne of gasoline and an output-based pricing system for emissions from industries. The Canada Carbon Rebate gives 90 % of this money back to individuals while the rest goes to small- and medium-enterprises, farmers and Indigenous governments. A family of four can get $ 1 800 annually through the carbon rebate, a single adult could get 900 $ (more if the person lives in a rural area). Without their carbon pricing systems, Canada would have approximately 19 million tonnes of more emissions. The Swiss CO2 Levy is imposed on all thermal fossil fuels (142 USD per tonne) and then the 1.42 billion USD it generates is redistributed to the population and it is also going to innovation, renewable heating energy and energy efficient renovations of buildings.”
I hope that I have answered to everything, otherwise I am happy to discuss this further!
I agree that policies can be combined but that doesn’t really change the fundamental problem that evaluating policies for their certain local short-term impact will move us away from more impactful policies.
Thank you Jackva, you have very wise input. I would also want the most impactful long-term policies as well. I think that the climate change already have gone so far that we need quite much focus on the short-term. For example, UNEP estimates that 25 to 50 % of all coral reefs are already destroyed, mostly because of global warming, and 70 to 90 % will be gone if we reach 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Many of your suggestions are good for both short-term and long-term impact so I agree that it could be better than the policies in the article. Policies like regulations and pricing may have long-term consequences as well since they have been reducing the amount of CO2 for many years, but policies like these may not be stable over time because of political decisions. But e.g. innovation-support, as you mentioned, probably have more stability.
I think if we optimize for short-term impact we would want a list that focuses on short-lived pollutants (e.g. methane) or short-term adaptation measures.
I think the weakness of the article for EA prioritization is that it optimizes for something—domestic certain reductions within countries—that is not related to any globally relevant target metric.
E.g. irrespective of whether one optimizes for the short-term or long-term in neither scenario will the focus on national target achievement be relevant directly (it might matter somewhat indirectly via signaling). Obviously, it is a good article for national policy makers that want to achieve national targets.
Thank you for your wise reply, again! Yes, that is true. Even if we stopped all CO2-emissions now, almost none of the existing would go away because it will be up there for such a long time. But methane vanishes more quickly.
Yes, you are correct here as well. Organizations like Future Matters, that is founded by EA people, are doing research and strategy consulting services in policy, politics, coalitions and movements. So they could use this kind of article, since they give advice to politicians and national policy makers. But I still think that taxes is an underestimated tool in the EA community, because even if e.g. innovation support probably is more effective when it comes to climate change, taxes can be used for reducing poverty, health problems and so on.
Of 1500 climate policies that have been implemented over the past 25 years, the 63 most successful ones are in this article (that I don’t have access to, but a good summary is here). The 63 policies reduced between 0.6 billion and 1.8 billion metric tonnes CO2 emissions. The typical effects that the 63 most effective policies had, could close the emissions gap by 26%-41%. Pricing is most effective in developed countries, while regulations are the most effective policies in developing countries. The climate policy explorer shows the best policies for different countries and sectors. I just wanted to write this if EA:s who are interested in climate change and policy have missed this.
Kind regards,
Ulf Graf
I haven’t read the linked article or summary in detail, but clearly any measure of “success” must measure the costs of these policies as well? At least a quick skim seems to suggest the article didn’t account for costs at all, which I feel like makes this abstraction kind of meaningless (since it basically means that the “most successful” ones will simply be the ones that were the ones that covered the largest countries/industries, but that doesn’t tell us much, since that’s also where the potential costs were located).
It still seems good to do these calculations, but I would feel very hesitant to call these policies “successful” without having measured their costs.
A much better measure of “success” would be something like “Co2 averted”/”economic costs” * “size of intervention”.
I think you probably want:
Your equation will give an infinite score to a policy which could avert 1 gram of CO2 for zero cost, even if it was totally non-scalable.
Oops, yep, that sure is the better functional representation.
This is good raw data, but I don’t think one can learn very much from this for what actions to prioritize for a couple of reasons:
(1) The focus is on national targets, while the most transformative policies in the past have had massive global impacts long-term with minimal local effects in the short-term (cf. early solar and wind policies, many of which were not even motivated as climate policies). Indeed, there is often a negative correlation between short-term domestic and long-term global impacts (I explore this a bit here).
(2) What matters for taking action is decarbonization returns on additional effort (activism, philanthropy, policy momentum), which could be quite different from absolute emissions reductions if implemented (similar to what Habryka is commenting on).
(3) In particular, this biases against relatively modest looking interventions that can be transformative (often have been in the past) such as innovation-support for nascent and early-stage technologies, where carbon pricing does ~nothing, but R&D expenditure, creating market demand, public co-financing of demonstration projects etc. make a large difference.
(4) Somewhat less importantly, the authors have a well-known focus on advancing carbon pricing, so this is something to keep in mind.
Thank you all for your comments! I agree that these policies may not have a massive global impact in the same way as clean energy policies, but 26 to 41 % in reductions is still a lot. I believe that additional effort and innovation-support is important as well. But carbon pricing and things like innovation-support can be combined. The Swiss CO2 Levy uses carbon pricing to give money to innovation, for example (see text below). As you see in the text below and in this graph by OECD, the cost for raising prices for carbon emissions can increase revenues as well. But I agree that it would be more interesting with an article with pure focus on cost-effectiveness.
I have addressed some of these issues in a previous forum post. I copy and paste a part from it here:
”In Canada, they have a fuel charge of 80 $ per tonne of gasoline and an output-based pricing system for emissions from industries. The Canada Carbon Rebate gives 90 % of this money back to individuals while the rest goes to small- and medium-enterprises, farmers and Indigenous governments. A family of four can get $ 1 800 annually through the carbon rebate, a single adult could get 900 $ (more if the person lives in a rural area). Without their carbon pricing systems, Canada would have approximately 19 million tonnes of more emissions. The Swiss CO2 Levy is imposed on all thermal fossil fuels (142 USD per tonne) and then the 1.42 billion USD it generates is redistributed to the population and it is also going to innovation, renewable heating energy and energy efficient renovations of buildings.”
I hope that I have answered to everything, otherwise I am happy to discuss this further!
Thanks!
I agree that policies can be combined but that doesn’t really change the fundamental problem that evaluating policies for their certain local short-term impact will move us away from more impactful policies.
Thank you Jackva, you have very wise input. I would also want the most impactful long-term policies as well. I think that the climate change already have gone so far that we need quite much focus on the short-term. For example, UNEP estimates that 25 to 50 % of all coral reefs are already destroyed, mostly because of global warming, and 70 to 90 % will be gone if we reach 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Many of your suggestions are good for both short-term and long-term impact so I agree that it could be better than the policies in the article. Policies like regulations and pricing may have long-term consequences as well since they have been reducing the amount of CO2 for many years, but policies like these may not be stable over time because of political decisions. But e.g. innovation-support, as you mentioned, probably have more stability.
Thanks!
I think if we optimize for short-term impact we would want a list that focuses on short-lived pollutants (e.g. methane) or short-term adaptation measures.
I think the weakness of the article for EA prioritization is that it optimizes for something—domestic certain reductions within countries—that is not related to any globally relevant target metric.
E.g. irrespective of whether one optimizes for the short-term or long-term in neither scenario will the focus on national target achievement be relevant directly (it might matter somewhat indirectly via signaling). Obviously, it is a good article for national policy makers that want to achieve national targets.
Thank you for your wise reply, again! Yes, that is true. Even if we stopped all CO2-emissions now, almost none of the existing would go away because it will be up there for such a long time. But methane vanishes more quickly.
Yes, you are correct here as well. Organizations like Future Matters, that is founded by EA people, are doing research and strategy consulting services in policy, politics, coalitions and movements. So they could use this kind of article, since they give advice to politicians and national policy makers. But I still think that taxes is an underestimated tool in the EA community, because even if e.g. innovation support probably is more effective when it comes to climate change, taxes can be used for reducing poverty, health problems and so on.
Outstanding, thanks for sharing! Effective Environmentalism, take note!
Thank you very much! I am happy that you liked it! I hope that Effective Environmentalism will have use for it! :)