National governments and development agencies have invested considerable effort in recent years to develop methodologies and tools to screen their projects for the risks posed by climate change. However, these tools have largely been developed by the climate change community and their...

Korea’s greenhouse gas emissions almost doubled between 1990 and 2005, the highest growth rate in the OECD area. Korea recently set a target of reducing emissions by 30% by 2020 relative to a “business as usual” baseline, implying a 4% cut from the 2005 level. Achieving this objective in a...

In this paper, we aim to examine how voluntary carbon markets can provide a valuable contribution to strengthening domestic and international climate policies. Voluntary markets are defined as small and unregulated segments of an established carbon market that are driven by voluntary offsetting...

Financing for adaptation is a core element in the ongoing international negotiations on climate change. This has motivated a number of recent global estimates of adaptation costs. While important from an agenda setting perspective, many of these estimates nevertheless have a number of...

Tackling the problem of global climate change requires a high level of international cooperation. Many countries have pledged targets or actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the Appendices to the Copenhagen Accord. This analysis examines the costs and effectiveness of these pledges,...

In recent years, businesses, local governments and individuals have set goals for reducing their emissions of greenhouse gases. In addition to directly reducing their own emissions, many of these entities have purchased carbon offsets to help achieve their mitigation goals. Yet establishing...

This document describes economic baseline projections to 2050 for several world regions. It describes how socio-economic drivers are used to create a consistent projection of economic activity for the coming decades, applying the general framework of “conditional convergence”. This economic...

This report looks specifically at the full array of public policies promoting investment in the renewable energy sector, and discusses their impact on plant entry into the market, with the support of case studies focusing on Germany, the U.S.A. and Australia. It examines differing risk/return...

The New Growth Strategy aims to create demand and jobs through regulatory reform and fiscal measures. The Strategy focuses on key challenges, notably climate change and population ageing, which can be turned into sources of growth. Given Japan’s precarious fiscal position, it is essential to...

New Zealand, as a resource-based economy anxious to protect and promote its clean-and-green image, appropriately sees green growth as a natural direction for future development. The country’s environment is of high quality, and depletion of its abundant natural resources is for the most part...