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Using firm-level R&D and patent data for 88 countries, we find that country climate vulnerability is negatively related to firms’ R&D investment and innovation. The potential mechanisms include decreased responsiveness of R&D to investment opportunities, reduced incentives to innovate, lower private value of innovations, and stronger managerial career concerns. We further show that climate vulnerability is positively associated with the ratio of climate change mitigation technologies (CCMTs) and global collaborative patents in innovations and promotes international strategic alliances (e.g., research collaboration and licensing). Moreover, climate risk exposure through global supply chains and customer locations also relates to corporate innovation, and firm-level climate risk is negatively associated with innovation. Finally, using a difference-in-differences regression, we find that treated firms’ sensitivity of innovation to climate vulnerability increases after climate disasters. Our findings suggest a potential indirect effect of climate risk on the global economy through the reduction of corporate innovation activities.

This study focuses on this specific dimension of climate sensitive business like the agricultural sector being prone to extreme weather conditions like floods and droughts. It looks closely at the stream of studies that copes with the psychical impacts such as temperature variations and extreme weather patterns of climate change upon crops and food crop production. This study applies the Ricardian framework using a single cross section of national-level data. We were careful to handle some of the estimation problems, namely multicollinearity, that affects the cross-sectional climate impacts. Reducing supply chain risks presented by climate changes is not a long-term thought experiment but an imperative that must be addressed today. The study found climate change and supply chain operations mutually influence each other. The impact of global supply chains on climate change is an unexplored avenue. Holistic understanding of climate change and cascading risks is critical. Robust climate change models can be developed to quantify the impact and propose appropriate adaptation strategies which include sustainable practices for climate change mitigation, Approaches for climate change scenarios and Adaptation and supply chain re-design.

Mitigation of global warming and aggregate consumption are chosen to maximize the product of expected lifetime and population. Constant relative risk aversion (CRRA) utility is parameterized using a panel of annual NASA and World Bank data covering 220 countries from 1990 to 2018. Optimal CO2 taxes are proportional to consumption per capita and, therefore, vary substantially from poor to rich countries. Assuming equilibrium climate sensitivity of 2.5°, base case worldwide social costs start at $10/tCO2 in 2020 and rise to $125/tCO2 in 2100 in a “2° world”, and to $162/tCO2 in 2100 in a “3° world”. The latter rises to $291/tCO2 under high risk aversion and falls to $136/tCO2 under low risk aversion, all in 2020USD.

This paper proposes a model that sheds light on the appropriate discount rate on projects that mitigate climate change. In addition, it helps determine the best time to start implementing climate policy. The model is production-based and features endogenous climate-related disasters. It suggests (1) that the discount rate on climate change mitigation projects is lower than that on the stock market but higher than the risk-free rate and (2) that it is optimal to start investing into climate change mitigation projects as soon as possible.

Nature-based solutions (NbS) are recognised avenues for implementing internationally agreed commitments on climate change mitigation. However, practical implementation of NbS strategies is impeded by, among other things, a lack of understanding of the underlying biophysical, social and political contexts of NbS. In this paper, we used data on potential carbon sink outcomes from implementing eight NbS across 126 developing countries to evaluate how socioeconomic and ecological factors may influence the uptake, allocation and effectiveness of NbS. Brazil (16.5%), China (14.3%), Indonesia (12.2%), India (6.3%) and Mexico (5.1%) hold approximately 54% of 10.25 PgCO2yr−1 potential carbon sink from NbS. NbS’ potential for climate change mitigation decreased with population growth. Moreover, we found a positive association between development aid and NbS potential, albeit attenuated for regions with poor governance structures and higher food insecurity. We highlight the need for careful assessment of complementary food security safeguards for surging populations, and sustainable restoration/afforestation as a socio-ecological implementation of nature-based solutions.

Contrary to the near global consensus among the scientific community, public perceptions of climate change are known to differ between nations and to have fluctuated over time. To study such a stylised fact, this article develops a small-scale agent-based model that allows for feedback effects between sentiments, environmental regulation and macroeconomic outcomes in an open economy set-up. Conditional on the level of interaction between agents, two different basins of attraction emerge: one with the majority of the population supporting climate change mitigation policies, and another with most agents opposing environmental regulation. We demonstrate that complex dynamics might occur via a sequence of period-doubling bifurcations. Employment series are more persistent than sentiments, resulting in relatively high volatility in the latter and smooth long-waves in the labour market. A sufficiently robust response of sentiments to emissions may lead to the disappearance of the Pareto inferior equilibria, allowing for a unique green steady-state.

After years of inactivity, sustainability finance is erupted like the Iceland volcano Eyjafjallajokull. Several regulators have been proposing or are proposing new requirements on sustainability reporting, ESG metrics and standardization of ESG disclosures. The EU taxonomy issues by the EU commission, the task-force on climate-related disclosures, finance (TCFD), The European Banking Authority (EBA) launches consultation on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) risks as well as IFRS Foundation on sustainability reporting and the Non-Financial Reporting Directive also reflecting the European Green Dela (EGD). In order to meet the EU climate and energy targets for 2030 and reach the objectives of the European Green Deal, it is fundamental to direct investments towards sustainable projects and activities. The current COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the need to redirect capital flows towards sustainable projects in order to make our economies, businesses and societies, in particular health systems, more resilient against climate and environmental shocks and risks with clear co-benefits for health. To achieve this, a common language and a clear definition of what is ‘sustainable’ is needed. This is why the action plan on financing sustainable growth called for the creation of a common classification system for sustainable economic activities, or an “EU taxonomy” the EU Commission Non-financial Reporting Update (NFRD) however issues which are material to environmental and social objectives can have financial material impact. The EU Taxonomy Regulation establishes six environmental objectives: Climate change mitigation, Climate change adaptation, the sustainable use and protection of water and marine resources, the transition to a circular economy and the pollution prevention and control. This research note assesses and comments deliverables from the EU commission.

Carbon dioxide emissions are the main cause of anthropogenic climate change and play a central role in discussions on climate change mitigation. Previous research has demonstrated that national carbon dioxide emissions are driven mainly by population size and wealth. However, the variation in per capita emissions of nations with similar standards of living and similar population is huge. This makes investigations on further drivers of emissions important because such research reveals mechanisms that can decrease emission levels. In this chapter we first describe the newest development of global CO2 emissions, both with respect to production-based emissions as well as with respect to consumption-based emissions. Furthermore, we analyze the main drivers of national per capita emissions. Particularly, we extend previous research by taking into account countries’ shares of imports and exports, indicators of political interventions such as energy prices, and the use of renewable energy sources.

This submission focuses on the Article 15(1) International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (“ICESCR”) “recognition of the right of everyone … (a) To take part in cultural life; (b) To enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its application; [and] (c) To benefit from the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.” It expands the focus of the Report by noting the many ways that the public may be deprived of such rights and progress by intellectual property rights, in regard to: the current COVID-19 pandemic (and likely future pandemics absent significant change to our worldwide health systems and to our continued reliance on market mechanisms to provide for the rights to life and health); climate change (regardless of whether or not one view greenhouse gases – “GHGs” – as “hazardous substances” and regulates them as such under laws like the U.S. Clean Air Act); and other critical social concerns. The submission notes as follows: (1) the need to address in the context of COVID-19 and likely future pandemics nationalist controls over information and scientific health-related products, and the need to alter reliance on market mechanisms and intellectual property rights, so as to assure that all publics – particularly those in developing countries – can benefit from the rights to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications so as to effectuate the rights to life and to health; (2) the similar need to address intellectual property rights in regard to climate change mitigation and adaptation (including carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation management technologies); (3) the need to address rights to genetic sequencing information and data ownership so as to better effectuate rights to life and health, and more broadly the need to mandate open science and open data to effectuate rights to life, health and (particularly) education, as well as to foster scientific progress; (4) the need to assure access to medicines and to address other health care and pricing concerns of reliance on intellectual property rights and private markets, including resurrecting efforts to adopt an international research and development (“RD and (5) the need to better assure benefits sharing with scientists and to address the structure of scientists’ compensation and non-competition restrictions so as to better incentivize innovation and to better effectuate the right to the moral and material interests of the scientists on whom we rely for needed technological developments.

Nearly three billion people continue to use wood fuels for their daily cooking. The global policy discourse increasingly emphasizes clean fuels, notably gas and electricity. Yet, electricity and gas are expensive, and their supply chains are typically interrupted in rural areas. They will hence not reach the global poor soon, especially in Africa. As an alternative, this paper shows that fuel-efficient biomass stoves can contribute climate mitigation potentials in Sub-Saharan Africa that exceed the total CO2-equivalent emissions of a medium-sized European country. Abatement costs of this policy are low at $2 to 10 per ton. Furthermore, we demonstrate that cooking-related emissions will likely double by 2050. We conclude by arguing that a rapid dissemination policy should be based on two crucial steps: First, fuel-efficient stoves should be field-tested region by region and adapted to satisfy local cooking needs. Second, cookstoves that have proven to be adopted by users should be heavily subsidized at scale.

Meat consumption and production cause a significant share of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the food sector. Behavioural food policy suggests the use of defaults – i.e., pre-setting a specific choice option – as an effective demand-side instrument to reduce meat consumption. This preregistered systematic review compiles, critically appraises, and synthesizes existing empirical evidence on such food defaults. Beyond that, potential effect moderators are explored. The systematic search yields twelve individual studies comprising sixteen different default interventions. We find that defaults are generally effective in nudging consumers to eat less meat. The studies’ risk of bias is assessed to be moderate. Yet, the effect size appears to be influenced by a range of moderators. In particular, the invasiveness of the default, the presentation of alternatives to choose from, and consumers’ gender and setting experience appear to moderate the effect. Overall, evidence is still limited, and heterogeneity in the design and implementation of interventions is large. Further research is needed to understand the impact of effect moderators and to assess the long-term and large-scale effectiveness. We conclude that defaults are a promising tool for climate-sensitive food policy, with more knowledge needed to profoundly inform policymakers and implementing actors.

Climate policy is changing fast in the EU, with country leaders raising the bloc's ambition to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and 2050. However, there is uncertainty about the allocation of decarbonisation effort between EU member states. This paper develops a multi-objective optimisation framework to provide insights to decision-makers in this policy context by exploring trade-offs between stronger decarbonisation goals and higher costs. Applying this approach for Cyprus, we find that the maximum achievable abatement for the EU Effort Sharing sectors corresponds to a 35% target. The current 24% ambition can be achieved with net social benefits, but the transition to higher abatement results in positive costs with a gradual rate of increase. The picture changes when decision-making explicitly accounts for external costs of emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants in the optimisation procedure. In this case, the least-cost solution delivers an abatement of about 32% and can yield social benefits of more than one billion Euros'2020. Regarding public expenditures, it requires about 3% of national GDP each year. This indicates that the socially optimal policy mix for attaining decarbonisation of the Cypriot economy is feasible but requires a consistent allocation of public funds to build infrastructure, overcome investment barriers and mobilise capital to enable the uptake of clean technologies across the economy. Although the modelling framework has been developed for a specific country and is tailored to the specific EU policy circumstances, the proposed methodology is entirely suitable for other world regions with a demanding decarbonisation roadmap.

Climate change has reached its “all hands on deck” moment, requiring simultaneous mitigation and adaptation efforts and the participation of all branches of government at all levels—including (and maybe especially) the administrative state. However, while certain agency exercises of climate change discretion have received considerable attention and commentary, less attention has been paid to the ability of federal agencies to promote what this Article terms “climate change plus” (CC+) industries—that is, new, emerging, or expanding industries that can assist climate change mitigation or adaptation (or both) despite having different primary purposes or goals. Unlike renewable energy, these industries often do not have an immediately obvious connection to climate change—and, indeed, different facets or subsets of these industries may have radically different relationships to climate change. These potentially obscure and varying contributions to national climate change policy goals simply underscore why the administrative state needs to carefully evaluate emerging and expanding industries through a climate change lens. This Article focuses on U.S. marine aquaculture (mariculture) as a rapidly expanding industry in need of CC+ administrative evaluation, because certain aspects of this industry deserve selective promotion as part of a national climate change policy. Marine aquaculture is recognized worldwide as an increasingly critical facet of food security. However, many kinds of mariculture also contribute to climate change mitigation, coastal adaptation, and water quality improvement. This Article argues that focusing on marine aquaculture as a potential CC+ industry provides all the federal agencies, coastal states, and tribes involved in its regulation with a mechanism for coordinating, streamlining, and promoting the expansion of this industry’s most multiply beneficial forms.

This Article identifies a gap in the securities disclosure regime for climate change and demonstrates how filling the gap can improve financial disclosures while accelerating climate change mitigation. Private climate initiatives have proliferated in the last decade. Often led by advocacy groups, these private climate initiatives have used naming-and-shaming campaigns and other means to induce investors, lenders, insurers, retail customers, corporate supply chain customers, and employees to pressure firms to make and implement climate change mitigation commitments. Based on an empirical assessment of the annual reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) by Fortune 100 firms and the largest firms in several fossil fuel-heavy sectors, the Article concludes that roughly a third of these firms disclose the risks and opportunities posed by private climate initiatives. But the assessment also finds that disclosures vary substantially among similar firms and among similar sectors. The Article argues that this heterogeneity in disclosure is not surprising given that the SEC’s 2010 climate guidance and other disclosure regimes do not call sufficient attention to private climate initiatives, and many lawyers, accountants, business managers, and policymakers were trained to think of environmental risks only in the context of government regulatory measures. The securities disclosure literature focuses principally on whether non-material climate risks should be disclosed, but in so doing it overlooks the importance of the material risks and opportunities posed by private climate initiatives. Revisions to the SEC guidance and other disclosure regimes to account for private initiatives can be adopted more quickly, produce more complete financial disclosures, and yield greater and more durable emissions reductions than many other regulatory approaches.

Climate change risks manifest in the real economy, with grave consequences for welfare of human populations and the biosphere; the economic returns of industrial sectors; and geopolitical stability. Understanding the diffusion of risks in real infrastructure networks is an urgent priority for delivering climate change mitigation, adaptation, and resiliency. The oil, gas, and coal supply chains are the most salient progenitors and inheritors of these environmental risks. We prepare a geospatial arrangement of the global oil, gas, and coal supply chains using open-source asset-level data. The resulting complex network has 6.09mn nodes and 15.70mn edges and is implemented in a graph database. With estimates of annual coal, gas, and oil demand in 13,229 global population centres and 8,165 global power stations, we use a minimum-cost flow method to estimate global asset-level energy flows. We develop a method for cross-validating and tuning our network flow simulation using aggregate country-level import and export statistics. We demonstrate two analyses of asset-level transition risk: a counter-factual demand shock scenario consistent with the IEA Sustainable Development Scenario; and supply shock scenarios developed by interdicting regionally-aggregated coal, oil, and gas supplies. Our contribution lies in the global scope of our asset-level supply chain and the novelty of our minimum-cost flow method. We conclude with a discussion of further research directions and make the graph database and supporting code publicly available.

We know the science of climate change; we know the economics of climate change; we also know the law of climate change. However, we do not know how countries may come together to cooperate on climatechange mitigation. One way of doing so successfully is by putting together the climate regime with the international trading system via the creation of climate clubs, namely the coalition of the willing. This article aims to explain that, by building climate clubs and making use of the international trading system, we can reach a better future for all. Through the lens of international trade, this article explores how smaller coalitions (so-called climate clubs) – unilateral, bilateral, plurilateral, rather than multilateral regimes – of states/non-state actors can catalyze or influence action on climate change. The premise of this article is that global action on climate change has not been effectively implemented, as it relies on consensus from too many actors. Thus, it proposes how international trade mechanisms may be re-oriented to address climate change. The article challenges the assumptions about the existing multilateralagreement regime, and argues that reducing dependence on these multilateral mechanisms may influence greater attainment of sustainability goals (more flexible, not reliant on difficult-to-gain consensus among many actors). The article, therefore, examines the future of international regimes and how they may contribute to climate-change mitigation. Its forwardlooking orientation – how international trade can leverage climate-change mitigation – is an important and novel contribution in examining how environmental concerns can be included into international regimes. What changes will look like and how change is attained (through policy, regulations, law, agreements, incentives) may contribute to developing global- level institutional solutions for how climate-change mitigation is framed in international regimes and discourses. The article also addresses emerging academic research into climate clubs in international climatechange mitigation institutions/regimes. The article contributes to growing discourses in global climate governance for how these arrangements and agreements should look/be designed to create real action on climate-change mitigation. Therefore, it expands on existing scholarship through taking a specific lens (international trade) and how it may contribute to mitigating climate change through coalitions (climate clubs) beyond how the existing international regime is configured. climate clubs, minilateralism, legitimacy, multilateralism, accountability, international trade

No one seriously questions that an improved and decarbonized energy supply system is a key component of climate change mitigation, but the United States’ system of federalism complicates the siting of utility-scale renewable energy facilities. The new Biden Administration presents the United States with an opportunity to reimagine how this country regulates renewable energy siting, allowing for substantial national progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Currently, primary siting authority for renewable energy projects rests with state and local governments, which generally exercise that authority through zoning and land use planning, while the federal government approves most interstate energy delivery systems. This fragmented system of governance can delay and even deter project development, simultaneously thwarting the optimal logic in developing a national renewable energy generation system. Proactive renewable energy project planning offers one potentially effective – and constitutional – solution to this renewable energy federalism dilemma, particularly in conjunction with negotiated siting guidelines and a centralized siting agency. Drawing upon the substantial body of scholarly work that advocates for federal or regional collaboration in renewable energy policymaking and for more balanced and dynamic federalism in the energy sector, this Article further advances those goals while also shifting the focal axis and underscoring renewable energy as the locus for expanding energy federalism and mitigating climate change.

Efforts to reduce emissions to counter climate change are expected to have both costs and benefits, and these effects are likely to be unevenly distributed across the population. We examined the potential distributional impacts on employment in New Zealand from using different mitigation options (“pathways”) designed to achieve net zero emissions of long-lived gases and to reduce biogenic methane emissions by 24-47% by 2050. For the analysis, we developed the Distributional Impacts Microsimulation for Employment (DIM-E). DIM-E uses results from a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, C-PLAN, to estimate which industries, workers and jobs are expected to be most affected by different options to achieve these reductions. Overall, our results are similar to those from previous research in that the net employment effects are predicted to be relatively small, though some industries will be more affected than others. Moreover, the top net negative and top net positive industries ranked fairly consistently across the four time periods and across the different pathways that were analysed. On the net positive side, transport industries tended to dominate the industry rankings, and in later periods, some agriculture industries also tended to rank highly (e.g., Dairy Cattle Farming and Sheep/Beef Farming). On the net negative side, various manufacturing industries tended to dominate the top ranks, though oil and gas extraction was also consistently ranked. We also found that very few groups of workers were negatively affected (in terms of the number of worker-jobs) by any of the proposed pathways especially over the long term.

This chapter examines the climate change mitigation law and policy of five major developing countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (i.e., the BRICS). It will first analyze the case of Brazil, then India, China, Russia, and lastly South Africa. The chapter explores the main causes of Brazil’s contribution to global climate change (namely deforestation, cattle ranching, agricultural expansion, and energy production). It then offers mitigation strategies for the case of India and makes the case for investing in cities, solar energy, hydropower, and electric vehicles. The chapter then explores China’s position in the mitigation of climate change by analyzing key policies such as carbon pricing, energy efficiency, renewable energy, and fossil fuels. It then turns to Russia to examine its domestic policies to reduce carbon emissions. Lastly, it examines South Africa’s climate change mitigation regime.

Climate change and global warming are undeniably undermining global development with developing or emerging economies being the worse hit despite their minimal contribution to this unfortunate development. In recent times, it is now therefore extremely necessary to adopt effective adaptation measures to mitigate the impact of climate change on social, political and economic environment. A global shift to low-carbon energy technologies through the gradual integration of renewable energy resources in the global energy mix has been generally proposed. Whilst legal and regulatory initiatives are indeed crucial in driving this global energy transition, it is equally imperative that the necessary capital is unlocked to finance the construction, development and expansion of renewable energy projects in Africa. This paper is thus focused on examining the impact of renewable energy technologies on climate change mitigation whilst analysing the role of Development Financial Institutions (DFIs) in unlocking the vast opportunities associated with renewable energy technologies/projects with a view to driving the clean energy transition in Africa.

Celebrating the Paris Agreement’s fifth anniversary, the United Nations and other parties hosted the Climate Ambition Summit on December 12, 2020. The summit heard announcements from 75 leaders, including 45 relating to new and enhanced NDCs, 24 net-zero emissions commitments, and 20 new adaptation and resilience plans. Pledging climate ambitions for a low carbon economy and carbon neutrality do not guarantee their achievement. More challenges and hurdles are ahead considering those challenges require all stakeholders involved within and across countries, not a matter of developed or developing countries. What we need is action rather than words to induce more investment and innovation for climate neutrality

The development of the carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) supply chain will require the establishment of a regulatory and legal regime, both at the international and domestic level, to manage risks at various parts of the supply chain and to support technology investment. Within this regulatory and legal framework, the regional and domestic regime has been identified as a crucial factor that could facilitate or inhibit the creation of a CCUS supply chain at a larger scale. According to the relevant literature, policy backing for CCUS has been supported in several countries and jurisdictions which represent both the source and sink of carbon dioxide. To evaluate the legal and regulatory developments which underpin the global matching of CO2 sources and sinks, this article reviews and critically analyzes the legal and regulatory systems to address various challenges facing the CCUS development in Europe, China and the Middle East, because these jurisdictions have good representations, as sinks and sources of CO2, in developing the CCUS supply chain. These challenges include ensuring regulatory clarity to support CCUS development, integration of CCUS in the portfolio of climate change mitigation to create an enabling environment to improve the financial viability of CCUS, and ensuring consistency with international law. The findings of this article suggest that the regulatory systems in the three regions face various challenges and this article proposes some regulatory changes that are necessary for facilitating the CCUS supply chain at the domestic and regional level.

Tropical forests are essential for climate change mitigation. As awareness grows over the use of credits from reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) and other nature-based climate solutions within both voluntary and compliance carbon markets, key concerns about the long-term durability of the reductions, or their permanence, arise for countries, corporations, regulators and policy makers. The paper seeks to analyze an efficient means of distribution and application of different policy pathways to slow down and stop deforestation and explore the longevity of reductions via modeling. The impact of policies like REDD+ most likely will have a time limitation. At some point tropical nations will take more responsibility to protect forests. REDD+ should constitute an initial intervention that will help tropical nations shock to a zero-deforestation trajectory. To establish conditions of permanence, we conduct numerical analyses using a model based on a cellular automata algorithm that learns from historical deforestation patterns and other spatial features in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso. The model simulates future deforestation, first applying policy to reduce deforestation and then relaxing the policy intervention. Our simulations show that policies that are successful in reducing deforestation and related emissions from business as usual may have long-term positive consequences on an avoided deforestation trajectory even after potential policy reversals. Some accumulated gains could be lost but sizable benefits will remain, assuring permanence of emissions reduction during the policy implementation and potentially even after policies are relaxed. Hence, permanence depends both on the probability of policy reversals and the risk of emissions rebounding. Our results are important for advancing the understanding around the unsettled debate on the permanence of avoided emissions. Further, this paper argues that as policies to prevent deforestation or reduce emissions otherwise are reversible, permanence should be understood and discussed in a probabilistic and time-dependent framework.

It is common understanding that a reduction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions is undispensible. Furthermore, already emitted CO2 has to be removed from the atmosphere. To meet these objectives, novel processes must be developed and applied. Besides the utilization of renewable energy sources and a reduction of energy intensity, the application of carbon capture and storage/utilization (CCS/U) technologies is required. In a waste-to-energy (WtE) plant, the carbon contained in the waste is largely converted to CO2 and released to the environment. Thereby, heat and power are produced as valuable by-products of waste treatment. The carbon is partly of biogenic origin (e.g. wood and food waste) and of fossil origin (e.g. plastics derived from mineral oil). By separation, storage or utilization of the CO2 contained in the WtE plant flue gas, municipal solid waste (MSW) is utilized as a resource for clean energy and net negative CO2 emissions. The carbonate looping (CaL) process represents an efficient option for post-combustion CO2 capture from WtE plants. In this process, the heat for sorbent regeneration can be supplied by solid recovered fuels (SRF), which are sourced of pretreated MSW. Based on the results of experimental investigations in an SRF-fueled CaL pilot plant at 1 MWth scale, this study focuses on the techno-economic assessment and comparison of two valorization pathways for captured CO2, namely i) long term storage and ii) utilization to produce methanol. Key performance indicators (KPI) of the process chain, such as production costs of methanol and levelized costs of electricity (LCOE) are calculated and compared. Based on a steady-state process model for the CaL process, investment costs are determined according to a bottom-up approach for each component. Operational costs are derived from relevant material and product streams. The economic analysis takes various investment and operation scenarios into account to assess techno-economic characteristics in light of the future energy market. Factors such as negative emissions credits, low electricity cost, increased gate fees or plant size are considered.

The ClimMIT project was funded by Estonian Research Council from National Programme for Addressing Socio-Economic Challenges through R&D (RITA), which is supported by the Estonian Government and European Regional Development Fund from April 2019 to April 2021. ClimMIT (https://www.taltech.ee/climmit) aims to assess the feasibility of investing in carbon capture infrastructure to minimise greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from oil shale industry in Estonia. The main technological deliverables of the project include analysis and recommendations on measures for potential implementation of carbon capture technologies and utilisation of carbon dioxide in Estonia’s public and private sectors. Estonia’s economy has, per capita, one of the highest GHG emission rates and carbon-intensity levels in the European Union. To decrease GHG emissions, the best options for implementing carbon capture and utilization (CCU) technologies must be worked out. The main goal of the project is to assess the suitability of existing CCU technologies and to develop scenarios for adopting these technologies in Estonia’s oil shale sector. The project results in a multifaceted overview of the feasibility of investing in carbon capture infrastructure to help to minimize GHG emissions from the oil shale industry in Estonia.

Climate change mitigation efforts are taking place around the world, including efforts to decarbonize the electricity grid with renewable energy generation. In addition to small-scale rooftop and large-scale utility-scale solar, intermediate commercial-scale solar projects are gaining traction through an innovative business model known as community solar, in which residential customers pay a local solar project developer (via either an ongoing subscription fee or an upfront investment) for a share of solar capacity. The participating customers are compensated for the solar energy generated from their share of capacity by the utility, at a bill credit rate set by the regulator. The total cost of energy can be reduced if the bill credits are less than what the utility would otherwise pay for the conventional energy. In this paper, we study how the community solar business model generates value and how this value is distributed among all the players, using a model that endogenizes the adoption decisions of heterogeneous customers and the solar developer's pricing decisions in response to the bill credit rate. Our model captures the fundamental tradeoffs between the direct benefits of community solar participation and the indirect benefits from overall energy cost reduction, as well as between the solar developer's profit and the welfare improvement of the customers. Our analysis provides guidance to the policy makers on regulating community solar programs to achieve both high value generation and equitable value distribution.

The failure of conventional climate change mitigation to reduce climate-related risks to tolerable levels has spurred interest in more unconventional – and riskier – climate interventions. In the not-so-distant future, ideas that currently sound like science fiction could become reality: planes blasting particles into the sky to block the sun, vast deserts covered with mirrors, algae sucking carbon into the depths of the ocean. Scholars tend to lump these together in a fuzzy category called “geoengineering,” setting them apart from conventional climate change mitigation. But the characteristics of climate interventions vary across three distinct dimensions, which the mitigation-geoengineering dichotomy fails to capture. First, interventions operate via different mechanisms, such as altering the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases or changing the fraction of incoming solar radiation absorbed by the earth. Second, the characteristic duration of interventions varies from days to millennia. Third, interventions differ in terms of leverage — the scale of climate impact achievable with a fixed investment of resources. This article argues that global climate governance would be best served by a unified approach that addresses all climate interventions based on these three dimensions. In such a unified framework, influence over multilateral decisions to deploy risky, high-leverage interventions could be used as an incentive to induce greater national investment in safer, more expensive decarbonization efforts. Scientific uncertainty should not deter early action on geoengineering governance; it should be viewed as an opportunity to lock in agreement on neutral principles while national governments remain behind a partial veil of ignorance regarding their interests.

Human activity has been continuously harming our planet’s eco-system, and we have reached an unprecedented level of urgency. According to the International Panel on Climate Change, we have caused virtually 100% of the global warming of the past century. Undeniably, finance plays a vital role in decreasing the devastating effects of our own behaviour. As the green bond market expands, it is undoubtedly becoming essential for green finance and the transition to a resource efficient, low-carbon, and socially inclusive economy. Still, the green bond market remains mostly unregulated. On this, the EU Green Bond Standard is a step forward, establishing the first framework encompassing regulatory supervision, the result of years of international cooperation on climate change mitigation. However, progress in any field entails both advantages and challenges. Striking the right balance of strictness will prove to be critical. The success of the benchmark will be ultimately conditioned by its efficient implementation, contingent upon the effect of regulation on innovation, the alignment with the EU Taxonomy, the proposed voluntary nature, and the extent to which it reduces greenwashing.

Technology can be of both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ in nature. While both kinds of technologies are applicable for climate change mitigation technologies, the latter kind is more appropriate for climate change adaptation. This is because unlike mitigation technologies, most of the adaptation methods involve some form of technology that broadly cannot be considered as mere product or equipment. Instead, these technologies are broadly considered as various forms of ‘knowledge’ or ‘know-how’. While the mostly ‘product’ or ‘tool’ based ‘hard’ kinds of mitigation technologies are protected by intellectual property rights (IPRs) and brings financial benefit to the IPRs holders, typically ‘knowledge’ or ‘information’ based ‘soft’ kinds of adaptation technologies are vastly considered as ‘public good’, which are not protected by IPRs, nor bring any financial profit for the knowledge generators or the original knowledge holders. This paper assesses whether these soft kind of ‘knowledge’ or ‘know-how’ climate change adaptation technologies can be brought under modern IPRs system as such considered as commercially valuable. The study suggests some modification of existing system, where necessary. Finally, the study suggests introducing a ‘sui generis’ protection for community knowledge or traditional knowledge adaptation technologies.

International audience; CO2 Capture and Storage (CCS) is gradually gaining global recognition as a vital technology to complement the climate change mitigation portfolio. Since CCS entered the public arena with the publication of the IPCC Special Report in 2005, most of the international prospective scenarios compatible with keeping the temperature rise below 2°C rely on CCS (e.g. IPCC, IEA). International initiatives gathering many volunteer countries are playing a key role for enabling the development and deployment of CCS, such as IEAGHG since 1991, CSLF since 2003, ISO/TC 265 since 2011, Mission Innovation Challenge 3 since 2015, SET Plan Action 9 since 2016. Quite recently the use (U) of CO2 has entered the value chain to encourage the economic use of part of the captured CO2 as a raw material for the manufacture of new products before permanently storing the rest in the deep subsurface, this is why the technology is now often referred to as CCUS, or CCS and CCU. France has played a key role in the development of global climate policies (e.g. the Paris agreement in 2015), and is involved in the various international initiatives devoted to CCUS mentioned above. It is therefore interesting to take stock of how France is preparing to develop this technology and deploy it on its territory. Are we heading towards the deployment of the CCUS technology in France?

Climate change presents a global commons problem: Emissions reductions on the scale needed to meet global targets do not pass a domestic cost-benefit test in most countries. To give national governments ample incentive to pursue deep decarbonization, mutual interstate coercion will be necessary. Many proposed tools of coercive climate diplomacy would require a one-dimensional metric for comparing the stringency of climate change mitigation policy packages across jurisdictions. This article proposes and defends such a metric: the carbon price equivalent. There is substantial variation in the set of climate change mitigation policy instruments implemented by different countries. Nonetheless, the consequences of any combination of these policies can be summarized in terms of aggregate emissions during a specified period. Given differences in geography, resource endowments, levels of development, demographics, and other boundary conditions, aggregate emissions do not lend themselves to meaningful direct comparisons of climate change mitigation efforts. However, there will always be some carbon price that, if implemented in an otherwise neutral policy environment, would have produced this observed level of aggregate emissions during a specified period. This is the carbon price equivalent of the package of policies that produced that level of aggregate emissions. The carbon price equivalent can also be thought of as the weighted average emissions allowance trading price that would have prevailed under a cap and trade system implemented in an otherwise neutral policy environment, with the cap set to match observed aggregate emissions over some period. The carbon price equivalent metric has several applications, including strategic emissions policies, strong trade linkage, and border adjustment of domestic emissions taxes and regulations. This article sets forth procedures for estimating national carbon price equivalents, including a specification of the otherwise neutral policy environment. Design issues and challenges involving currency conversions, production versus consumption emissions, spillover effects of domestic climate policies, use of a social cost of carbon to set regulatory policy, and greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide are analyzed and resolved. A normative case for the carbon price equivalent metric is advanced in terms of both justice and efficiency. Alternative metrics are considered and found inadequate.

We investigate the real effects of mandatory climate-related disclosure by financial institutions on the funding of carbon-intensive industries. Our impact metric is the amount invested into securities, bonds and stocks, issued by fossil fuel companies. A French law, which came into force in January 2016 in the aftermath of the Paris Agreement on climate change, provides us with a quasi-natural experiment. The new regulation, unique in Europe at that time, requires institutional investors (i.e., insurers, pension funds and asset management firms), but not banks, to report annually on both their climate-related exposure and climate change mitigation policy. Using a unique dataset of security-level portfolio holdings by each institutional sector in each euro area country, we compare the portfolio choices of French institutional investors with those of French banks and all financial institutions located in other EA countries. We find that investors subject to the new disclosure requirements curtailed their financing of fossil energy companies by some 40% compared to investors in the control group.

Following the Paris Agreement and pursuant to its objective of reordering financial flows to ensure climate change mitigation and adaptation, green finance has become a legislative priority for the European Union. This was illustrated by a unique, albeit limited, change in the mandate of the European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs). This article takes this amendment as a starting point to discuss the responsibility of supervisory authorities in facing climate change. Despite clear limits stemming from Union law, a sweeping legal analysis sheds light on obligations for supervisory authorities across Europe to consider climate change as part of their mandate. This finding is supported by the growing recognition of climate change as a source of systemic risk. Consequently, the mandate of European financial supervision is turning green, regardless of a legislative intervention. NB: This paper is a non-edited version of the article published in the Common Market Law Review.

Building on an article by this author five years ago that casts energy policy as a complex system of global dimensions, the present work focuses in on the governance challenges for a new polycentric approach and seeks to sketch the basic parameters that might enable a successful effort to reform governance of the global energy system in order to achieve far more rapid climate change mitigation than may appear possible today. That which may terrify about complexity – its tipping points, cliffs, and inherent unpredictability – could prove to be humanity’s greatest asset in the fight against climate change . . . if we can harness it through governance innovation.

I will be discussing the crisis of the Amazon rainforest, and the extent to which the region can successfully stifle deforestation and limit climate change damage. I will turn to TWAIL (Third World Approaches to International Law) to see if there are any gaps that can be filled when looking for solutions for more effective climate change mitigation. I will conclude that when attempting to tackle a global issue, there has to be global cooperation, but this should not necessarily come in the form of extraterritorial enforcement of international agreements; there should be a focus on regional cooperation and localised progress. This means that all countries can not be held to the exact same standard when it comes to climate change, and TWAIL helps to contextualise climate change under a more historical and socioeconomic backdrop. TWAIL cannot solely save the Amazon, but it is worth a consideration in the grand scheme of IEL dialogue.

Governments worldwide have formulated visions of a transition toward a bio-based economy (bioeconomy). These visions to move beyond the exploitation of fossil resources complement the United Nation’s sustainability goals such as climate change mitigation. Different factors will shape and foster the successful transition to a knowledge-based bioeconomy; among those factors, entrepreneurial activity is especially promising. Therefore, this study examines the enabling and transformational role of entrepreneurship by conducting a structured literature review and thematic analysis to elicit the implicit views on entrepreneurs and their ventures found in the bioeconomy literature. The review identifies three major entrepreneurial themes addressed in the literature that are included in a holistic framework comprising entrepreneurial activity on the micro level, entrepreneurial ecosystems (or clusters and innovation systems) on the meso level, and governmental vision and support on the macro level. Suggestions for further research on the interface of entrepreneurship and the bioeconomy are also provided.

We examined whether India's stock market is sensitive to climate change risk and opportunity. We have used the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and Government of India's climate action plans as a proxy for climate change risk and opportunity. Our findings suggest that climate-friendly stock returns fared poorly after the significant events (The Government's announcement on climate action plans and Paris agreement). On the contrary, the carbon-intensive stocks performed reasonably. These results suggest the capital market is either indifferent to the Government's climate change mitigation plan or does not consider climate change in its investment decision making.

Climate change is complex during the best of times. It is commonly conceptualized as the quintessential global collective action problem: it affects those who do not contribute to it while the benefits of climate change mitigation measures are not restricted to those who pursue such measures. This conceptualization illustrates the high transaction costs involved in domestic policies as well as in international agreements addressing climate change, and it is of academic and practical interest. As such, this article discusses the current challenges that climate change policies face, focusing on the linkages between the climate change policies of the Trump administration and the COVID-19 pandemic and on the effects of those linkages, both in the United States and globally. Specifically, this article addresses the Trump administration’s attacks on climate science and its deregulatory climate agenda as well as the United States withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. In addition, it discusses principles of international law and the challenges related to state liability for environmental harms in the context of the COVID-19 crisis. This article also assesses how the United States’ climate policies are likely to aggravate inequalities domestically as well as globally in the aftermath of the pandemic. This article offers several original contributions. First, it provides an unique assessment of how the deregulatory climate policies implemented nationally and internationally by the Trump administration have magnified the COVID-19 crisis. Second, the law and economics methodology used in this article validates the claim that improving environmental quality is connected to optimizing early regulatory action. Third, this article discusses the challenges of state liability for climate harms in the aftermath of the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and concurrent COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, this article offers relevant insights for the literature on climate change that are likely to be applicable to critical future situations, whether they are health-related, global economic crisis, or climate-related emergencies. Ultimately, this article concludes that, in aggregate, all such climate change policies have contributed to increased pollution, including elevated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that have aggravated pre-pandemic inequalities embedded within the United States and among countries. Consequently, the domestic and international policy choices of the Trump administration are worsening the impact of the pandemic, particularly for those in more vulnerable positions, as well as indelibly poisoning the global commons.

The availability of bio-ethanol, a promising renewable alternative to fossil fuels depends on the supply of biomass produced from agricultural resources. The study attempts a system dynamics modelling approach to explore the implications of greenhouse gas concentration trajectories associated with climate change on bio-ethanol supply chains. Eight different climate change scenarios are simulated spanning over a 40-year horizon to predict biomass yield and bio-ethanol availability, by considering first generation (corn) and second generation (switch-grass) ethanol feed-stocks. The developed model is used to assess the extent of potential disruptions resulting from global warming. Cascading effect of climate change risk is evident through decreased yield and production, and increased shortages at end customer in the bio-ethanol supply network. The results indicate that, if climate change risk is not adequately mitigated and current used source of ethanol (corn) continues to be leveraged, the bio-ethanol availability may decrease by one-fourth by the year 2060. The comparative study encourages exploring the increased use of switch-grass as a sustainable feed-stock for renewable energy. Developed insights support identifying effective climate change mitigation policies and sustainable investment decisions for the reduction in carbon emissions.

While many people are concerned about climate change, active public support for ambitious policy action is still lagging behind. How can this gap be closed? Recent work has theorized that perceived urgency of climate change drives public support for climate policy, but we lack empirical evidence. Using advanced sparse regressions and comparative survey-embedded framing experiments with 9’911 eligible voters in Germany and the US, we study the role of perceived urgency empirically. Our study entails two findings: First, although perceived urgency is key in driving policy support for ‘low-cost’ climate change mitigation, it does not lead to more support for policy measures that make the behavioral implications and costs of mitigation visible. Second, simple temporal reframing does not increase feelings of dread and policy support. The results are particularly relevant for democracies, where ambitious climate policies require the support of citizens. We call for further inter- and transdisciplinary research on the effects of perceived urgency, especially in contexts where citizens can credibly match temporal frames with their perceived personal experiences and emotions.

To achieve global climate change mitigation and adaptation goals under the Paris Agreement, international investment law should enable and expedite the transition away from high-emission investment toward low-emission investment. Existing international investment agreements (IIAs) providing for investor–state dispute settlement (ISDS) fail to advance climate goals and can effectively hinder states’ climate action. In this chapter, I discuss the implementation of two main policy options for climate-oriented reform of international investment law – termination of climate-unfriendly IIAs and negotiation of climate-friendly ones – at various governance levels, ranging from unilateral to multilateral action. Given the mounting risks and impacts of IIAs and ISDS, as well as the lack of evidence that they encourage foreign investment flows, terminating IIAs or withdrawing from them appears to be the most effective reform option. States seeking to conclude new climate-friendly treaties or to amend existing IIAs must ensure that the treaties legally distinguish between low-emission and high-emission investments. Climate-friendly IIAs must not hinder climate action (‘do no harm’), by denying treaty protections to high-emission investments, limiting their establishment and expansion, removing incentives such as fossil fuel subsidies, and requiring investments to be made responsibly. In addition, IIAs should leverage the potential contribution of foreign investment to climate goals (‘do good’), by incentivising, promoting, facilitating, and protecting low-emission investments only, and by supporting a just transition to a low-emission world. In line with broader efforts to reform international investment law, climate-aligned IIAs should also exclude or circumscribe controversial provisions (fair and equitable treatment [FET], legitimate expectations, indirect expropriation, and most-favoured-nation [MFN], to name a few), prohibit treaty-based challenges to climate policy measures, and deny substantive rights and access to treaty-based dispute settlement mechanisms to high-emission investments. Climate-unfriendly investors would instead need to rely on substantive rights and procedural avenues based on domestic laws.

This paper suggests that some of the common policies and decrees made by many countries to curb the spread of the Coronavirus (a global pandemic) may also be adoptable to mitigate climate change or reduce greenhouse gas emissions and invariably contribute to the world’s ozone layer repair, considering that both issues are global in nature. However, the article pinpoints some adjustments that may have to be made to some of these rules for them to be transposable for climate change mitigation. Distinctively the paper encourages that although some of these changes imposed by the law may seem extraneous, however, they are vital sacrifices that must be made if the projected climate change effects shall not overcome the human race. According to Antonio Guterres (UN general Secretary): the challenge is a global one and the world must remain resilient in resolving it.

This chapter considers how to effectively integrate the consideration of GHG emissions of proposed projects and other undertakings into the new federal impact assessment process in Canada. The focus of the chapter is on the consideration of the impacts of a proposed project on GHG emissions and carbon sinks at five critical stages of IA: triggering, information gathering, analysis, the project decision, and post-approval follow-up. For each, the treatment of climate mitigation in each project IA stage under the IAA is first considered. This is followed with recommendations on how the effectiveness of efforts to integrate climate mitigation into the process can be improved through implementation, including ultimately through the development of a combination of regulations, policies, and guidance in line with the framework, principles, and issues explored.

The EU is considering taking unilateral action to achieve higher carbon pricing for international aviation. It has been proposed that the EU could start a club mechanism whereby participating countries would have to tax (or include in an emissions trading scheme) the emissions of all outgoing flights as well as all flights coming in from non-participants at a fixed rate. They would then have to allocate a certain proportion of the tax revenue to some agreed-upon global institution for climate change mitigation. I propose an alternative club mechanism in which participating countries could allocate their tax revenue to Global Public Good Institutions (GPGIs) of their choice from a set of GPGIs recognized as eligible in the treaty establishing the mechanism. Of the tax revenue that participants decide to not allocate, they could retain a fixed proportion. The remaining revenue would be added to the GPGIs, in proportion to the aggregate allocations made to them. I consider an example where the set of eligible GPGIs consists of 2 GPGIs for global health and 4 for climate change mitigation. I estimate the payoffs that countries would derive from money being added to the different GPGIs, taking into account the heterogeneous benefits generated by each GPGI, the rents that some GPGIs create and the re-distributional effects that some GPGIs induce by changing e.g. the oil price. Using an iterated best response algorithm and assuming that initially only the EU and China participate, I predict that this new mechanism can achieve 22% more welfare gains than the previously proposed one, raising 50% more revenue for GPGIs. I then enrich the mechanism by allowing countries to also give to so-called “Proportional Matching Funds”, which distribute their budget to subsets of GPGIs, in proportion to the direct allocations made to these GPGIs. This enriched mechanism can achieve 67% more welfare gains than the previously proposed one, raising 100% more revenue for GPGIs.

People tend to think of climate change as a distant and remote event that does not affect their livelihoods. This psychological distance can be a barrier against behavior change and support for mitigation policies. Washington State was the first state in the U.S. to put carbon pricing measures on the ballot: Initiative 732 in 2016 and Initiative 1631 in 2018. Both measures were rejected by voters. Prior to both elections, Washingtonians had experienced adverse impacts of climate change across the state: poor air quality due to wildfire smoke in 2018 and an unprecedented widespread drought in 2015. We perform a spatial analysis using voting data on the two carbon pricing measures in Washington to study the effect of experiencing adverse impacts of climate change on support for carbon policies. We find that experiencing poor air quality significantly increases the support for the carbon policy. Moreover, experiencing poor air quality increases the support of Democrats more than Republicans. In case of drought experience, there is no significant relationship at the state level, but there is heterogeneity between voters in Eastern Washington and those in Western Washington: drought experience increases the support of Eastern voters more than Western voters. This might be due to the fact that droughts are more prevalent in Eastern Washington and Eastern residents might see a stronger link between drought and climate change.

We live in the time beyond the precautionary principle. A precautionary approach to innovations is taken with respect for the potential for causing harm when extensive scientific knowledge on a matter is lacking. It emphasizes caution before leaping into new endeavors that may prove harmful or disastrous. In the age of climate change, the precautionary approach is currently melting for two trends: First, the incentivization and redistribution of climate change gains and losses. Second, the Green New Deal emphasizing to steer green market action as an economic driver with respect for ecologic potentials. This chapter addresses first climate justice based on climate gains and losses redistribution to then introduce the potential of the Green New Deal to steer positive change and action beyond the precautionary approach. The Mapping Climate Justice proposes a 3-dimensional climate justice approach to share economics benefits and the burden of climate change right, just and fair around the globe. Scientific data is grounded by ethical imperatives that argue for a pre-precautionary principle based on Rawls’ veil of ignorance and Kant’s categorical imperative. Empirically, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) gains and losses of a warming globe are captured to be distributed unequal around the world. The ethical climatorial imperative demands for an equalization of the gains of climate change around the globe in order to offset for losses incurred due to climate change (Kant, 1783/1993; Puaschunder, 2017b, c; Rawls, 1971). First, climate justice within a country should pay tribute to the fact that low- and high-income households carry the same burden proportional to their dispensable income, for instance, enabled through a progressive carbon taxation, consumption tax to curb harmful behavior and/or corporate inheritance tax to reap benefits of past wealth accumulation that may have offset climate change (Puaschunder, 2017c). Secondly, fair climate change burden sharing between countries ensures those countries benefiting more from a warmer environment also bear a higher responsibility regarding climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts (Puaschunder, 2020). Thirdly, climate justice over time is proposed in an innovative bonds climate change burden sharing strategy (Puaschunder, 2016a). All these recommendations are aimed at ensuring to share the burden but also the benefits of climate change within society in an economically efficient, legally equitable and practically feasible way now and also between generations.

Less than 20 years after “the computer” was pronounced “Man of the Year” by Time Magazine, we face another technological revolution: the emergence of blockchain technologies (BCT). Many believe BCT, like the internet, will soon permeate into every inch of our lives. Also like the internet, BCT is here intending to solve many of our problems. In particular, BCT is a powerful tool that can be utilized to help tackle global climate change. Global climate change is caused by both natural (e.g. solar variability and volcanic activity) and anthropogenic outputs and processes. Increases in anthropogenic GHG concentrations—carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and fluorinated gases (HFCs, PFCs and SF6)—account for “more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010.

Urban transportation is viewed as the second leading source of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The growing number of vehicles and road infrastructure-based supply in Indian cities is viewed as the essential driver of climate change and relevant consequences affecting the sustainability of cities. Under the 2015 Paris agreement, India had declared its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) to curtail the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission intensity of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 33-35 % by 2030 from the 2005 level. In this context, sustainable transport measures were analyzed in this study to understand the emission mitigation potential of the transport sector of the Bengaluru Metropolitan Region (BMR) situated in Karnataka, India. Suitable policies were identified under the planning, regulatory, economic and technological instruments that are grouped under four policy bundles. The mitigation potential of the policy bundles is quantitatively evaluated in terms of Vehicle Kilometers Travelled (VKT), exhaust emissions and greenhouse gas emissions. The study also estimated the carbon emission intensity and consumer surplus for different mode users associated with the policy bundles. The findings from sustainable transport scenarios for the design years 2030 and 2050 are compared with business as usual (BAU) scenarios of the respective design years. The policy bundle 4 - a mixture of policies from all the instruments including technological improvements such as electrification of all buses and cars in the city - demonstrated a critical decrease in VKT and emissions when compared with the other policy bundles and thus, provides good scientific decision support for transport policymakers.

MOTIVATION. Policy efforts designed to mitigate the social, economic, and environmental effects of climate change have received substantial attention in the 2020 primary election cycle. While previous ANES time series studies have done an excellent job assessing whether or not the public thinks that the climate is changing -- and whether or not those changes are human caused -- less work has assessed which types of mitigation and adaptation policies are most likely to earn popular support (and why). PROCEDURE. In this methodology report, I explore the distributions, internal consistency, correlates, and predictive validity of two new climate change mitigation policy items added to the 2020 ANES Pilot Study. I also explore the possibility that "speeding," satisficing, non-response, and/or question ordering effects may have influenced data quality. RESULTS. I find that a slight majority of Americans support taking policy action to regulate corporate polluters, and/or to tighten fuel efficiency standards. Survey meta-data suggest that nearly all ANES respondents answered these items (low item non-response), and that the average respondent spent about about ten seconds attempting to answer each question. Middle response selection does not appear to be influenced by time spent engaging with the task. Meta-data also suggest that the order in which these questions were arrayed in a matrix table did not substantively influence response patterns. Additionally, I uncover high levels of internal consistency between the two items; indicating that the two questions can be reliably indexed into a single scale. Critically, I find that these items have strong construct and predictive validity. In multivariate models, I show that -- when treated as an outcome variable -- support for both policies is associated with increased belief in global warming, support for the role that experts play in the policymaking process, positive views toward science, and ideological liberalism; consistent with what previous research might lead us to expect. Moreover, I find that -- when treated as an independent variable -- support for increased fuel efficiency requirements is associated with whether or not respondents self-report owning (or having owned) a fuel efficient car. METHODOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT. The two climate change mitigation policy items included in the 2019 ANES Pilot Study demonstrate high levels of internal consistency, and appear to be well validated. Additionally, levels of item non-response were low, and response patterns appear uninfluenced by survey satisficing or question ordering effects.

Fossil fuel divestment refers to activist-led campaigns aiming to convince large institutional investors to sell their holdings in companies that operate in carbon-intensive sectors and industries. Part of a larger anti-fossil fuel movement, the growing momentum of the fossil fuel divestment movement has put forward a real-world experiment of the interplay between global capital markets and transnational activist discourse in the context of climate policy and climate change mitigation. This chapter analyses divestment of fossil fuel assets as an emerging trend in climate finance and climate governance from two main perspectives. First, the chapter discusses the history, the political and financial logic and the impact of fossil fuel divestment. Second, the chapter focuses on the legal and governance implications of fossil fuel divestment. The chapter concludes by identifying further research opportunities.