This BEEP explains the mechanism of the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) for the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and explore into its likely sustainability impact on European industry. In doing so, it focuses on energy-intensive industries like cement, steel and aluminium production as well as on...

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations provide normative orientation for many national and regional governments as well as actors from industry and other parts of the civil society. There is growing consensus that the corresponding transformation processes needed...

Countries have pledged to stabilize global warming at a 1.5 to 2°C increase. Either target requires reaching net zero emissions before the end of the century, which implies a major transformation of the economic system. This paper reviews the literature on how policymakers can design climate...

The Republic of Korea fully launched its green finance scheme in 2009 and then introduced the environmental information disclosure system and the emission trading scheme in 2013 and 2015, respectively. However, their use has not increased dramatically, as the public sector has taken the major...

Linking of two or more cap-and-trade systems promises gains in cost effectiveness and signals a strong commitment to carbon policy. Linking is also seen as one possible way of converging from regional climate policy initiatives toward a global climate policy architecture. Moreover, linking may...

This report aims to help environmental and other competent authorities in OECD countries to promote green business practices among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It analyses different ways to establish environmental regulatory requirements for facilities with low environmental risk...

In this short paper, I reflect on the way in which digitalisation can foster more sustainable procurement in the EU context. I stress the sine qua non importance of building an enabling data architecture and point at areas for further research

Recently Acemolgu, Aghion, Bursztyn and Hemous (AER 2012) formulated a model in which a high macroeconomic elasticity of substitution between clean and dirty production represents a crucial condition for green growth. Until now it has never been systematically estimated. Using a novel panel of...

Circular economy (CE) is a sustainable development strategy that is being proposed to tackle urgent problems of environmental degradation and resource scarcity. CE's 3R principles are to reduce, reuse and recycle materials. The principles account for a circular system where all materials are...

This paper evaluates green stimulus packages that were introduced in response to the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2007-08 and draws lessons relevant for greening the recovery from the Coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis. The paper underscores the importance of building in policy evaluation...