Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) that covers emitters from industry and the energy sector representing 40 percent of the EU's total greenhouse gas emissions is the biggest implementation worldwide of a cap-and-trade scheme. The EU ETS has been the core instrument of European climate policy since...

Two major international frameworks provide landmarks for future development paths: the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Climate Agreement. Monitoring the progress towards achieving the individual goals has to consider a multitude of synergies and trade-offs. In this paper we...

Both the UN SDGs and the Paris Agreement imply ambitious long-term targets which only can be met with a fundamental restructuring of economic and social systems. We propose a set of energy and climate policy indicators that allows informed policy making and goes beyond the approaches that mainly...

Economic literature generally favours market-based instruments for regulating environmental externalities since they ensure compliance at the least cost to society. Emission taxes have been increasingly introduced internationally, with the focus shifting to CO2 after the adoption of the Kyoto...

This paper provides an overview of energy and (implicit) CO2 taxation in the EU member countries. Against the background of the EU energy taxation directives, energy and implicit CO2 tax rates in the EU countries are discussed, focussing on taxation in the transport sector as a major non-ETS...

The integration of climate policy concerns in other policy areas, where decisions are taken that determine greenhouse gas emissions, is a prerequisite for effectively mitigating climate change. There are particularly strong interlinkages between energy policy and climate policy as the major part...

Emission trading has been the key instrument in the EU's climate policy since its introduction in 2005. According to economic literature, emissions trading should ensure the achievement of a given reduction target at the lowest possible costs, by equalising marginal abatement costs of the...