The outgoing European Commission has published its Communication on a 2040 climate target as its last major climate policy initiative before the 2024 European elections. By recommending a net emissions reduction target of 90 per cent compared to 1990 levels, it lays the strategic foundations for...

The USA appears increasingly concerned that its security is being threatened by the increasing role of energy suppliers in the Middle East and Russia, and rapidly rising energy consumers such as China. The USA also faces the challenge of its role in reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. In...

In this paper we discuss global climate change mitigation that builds on existing unilateral actions to deliver ever deepening emission cuts over time. A wide array of unilateral environmental measures have been documented. We discuss the rationale for such measures and argue that unilateral...

Project-based mechanisms for emissions reductions credits, like the Clean Development Mechanism, pose important challenges for policy design because of several inherent characteristics. Participation is voluntary, so it will not occur without sufficient credits. Evaluating reductions requires...

We analyse CO2 emissions reduction costs based on project data from the Climate Cent Foundation (CCF), a climate policy instrument in Switzerland. We draw four conclusions. First, for the projects investigated, the CCF on average pays € 63/t. Due to the Kyoto Protocol, the CCF buys reductions...

The issue of the possible adverse effects of a reduction in pollution on the economy is a very real one for China, given its public commitment to substantial cuts in CO2 emissions by 2020. An important part of this issue is the regional dimension ¨C the pollution reduction is likely to have...

In the fall of 2006 the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles announced the Clean Air Action Plan (CAAP). Its intent was to greatly accelerate emissions reductions from port activities. The CAAP was unprecedented in several ways: it was a voluntary agreement between two competing ports; it was...