The latest round of international negotiations in Copenhagen led to a set of commitments on emission reductions which are unlikely to stabilise global warming below or around 2°C. As a consequence, in the absence of additional ambitious policy measures, adaptation will be needed to address...

It has become commonly accepted that a successful climate strategy should compound mitigation and adaptation. The accurate combination between adaptation and mitigation that can best address climate change is still an open question. This paper proposes a framework that integrates mitigation,...

This paper proposes a new tool to assess sustainability and make the concept of sustainable development operational. It considers its multi-dimensional structure combining the information deriving from a selection of relevant sustainability indicators belonging to economic, social and...

Implementing an effective climate policy is one of the main challenges for our future. Even though ambitious mitigation targets are necessarily costly, curbing GHG emissions can prevent future irreversible impacts of climate change on human kind and the environment. Climate policy is therefore...

The reduction of GHG emissions is one of the most important policy objectives worldwide. Nonetheless, concrete and effective measures to reduce them are hardly implemented. One of the main reasons for this deadlock is the fear that unilateral actions will reduce a country’s competitiveness,...

This paper presents an empirical study of energy demand, in which demand for a series of energy goods (Gas, Oil Products, Coal, Electricity) is expressed as a function of various factors, including temperature. Parameter values are estimated econometrically, using a dynamic panel data approach....

The climate change impacts on sea level rise and coastal disasters, and the possible adaptation responses have been studied using very different approaches, such as very detailed site-specific engineering studies and global macroeconomic assessments of costal zones vulnerability. This paper...

This paper contributes to the normative literature on mitigation and adaptation by framing the question of their optimal policy balance in the context of catastrophic climate risk. The analysis uses the WITCH integrated assessment model with a module that models the endogenous risk of...

Future energy demand will be affected by changes in prices and income, but also by other factors, like temperature levels. This paper draws upon an econometric study, disentangling the contribution of temperature in the determination of the annual regional demand for energy goods. Combining...

This paper analyses the incentives to participate in and the stability of international climate coalitions. Using the integrated assessment model WITCH, the analysis of coalitions’ profitability and stability is performed under alternative assumptions concerning the pure rate of time...