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The EU and its member states face the challenge of accelerating the transition to climate neutrality and negative greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in increasingly turbulent times. But the challenge of governing the climate and energy transition goes far beyond phasing out GHG emissions. Given the urgency, dynamism, complexity, contentiousness, and long-term, cross-cutting nature of the “super wicked” climate challenge, the governance of the climate transition requires sustained, comprehensive, and integrated efforts across all relevant policy fields and the whole of society. To this end, the EU needs to devise political processes, structures and institutions that empower democratic political systems in Europe to effectively respond to the climate challenge (hereinafter referred to as the EU’s “climate governance framework”). In this paper, we identify key options for enhancing the EU’s evolving climate governance framework to this end. Building on the latest scientific knowledge of relevant best practice in Europe and elsewhere, as for example reflected and acknowledged in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report (IPCC, 2022b), we review the EU’s existing climate governance framework and identify EU-level policy options for further enhancing it across the Union and its member states, while paying particular attention to key interactions, synergies. and tensions between individual governance elements.

Kirjoitus perustuu Tieteen päivien podcast-ohjelmaan 14.1.2021, jossa aiheena oli, mitä ilmastonmuutos merkitsee metsäsektorilla ja toisaalta mitä metsäsektori voi tehdä ilmastonmuutoksen hillitsemiseksi. Keskustelun puheenjohtaja oli Anneli Pauli, ja keskustelijat olivat eritaustaisia asiantuntijoita.

Few issue areas exemplify the centrifugal forces that prompted the emergence of global law scholarship better than the environment. With its propensity to blur or transcend conventional distinctions between national and international, public and private, and formal and informal, environmental governance offers a consummate case study to test the promise and perils of global law. In this article, we situate global environmental law in the broader debate about lawmaking and application beyond the nation state, tracing the evolution and elusive boundaries of this nascent field. Our survey allows us to identify conceptual ambiguities and missed opportunities in the literature on global environmental law, including challenges to its normativity and legitimacy. From there, however, we proceed to outline a twofold opportunity for the global environmental law project: an opportunity to enrich environmental law with more diverse and inclusive practices; and an opportunity for collaborative self-reflexivity by the scholars and practitioners of environmental law as these not only interpret and apply, but through their work actively shape the content of the law.

When it was launched in 2005, the European Union emissions trading system (EU ETS) was projected to have prices of around €30/ton CO2 and to be a cornerstone of the EU’s climate policy. The reality was a cascade of falling prices, a ballooning privately held emissions bank, and a decade of low prices providing inadequate incentive to drive investment in the technologies and innovation necessary to achieve long-term climate goals. The European Commission responded with administrative measures, including postponing the introduction of allowances (backloading) and using a quantity-based criterion for regulating future allowance sales (the market stability reserve); although prices are beginning to recover, it is far from clear whether these measures will adequately support the price into the future. In the meantime, governments have been turning away from carbon pricing and adopting overlapping regulatory measures that reinforce low prices and further undermine the confidence in market-based approaches to addressing climate change. The solution in other carbon markets has been the introduction of a reserve price that would set a minimum price in allowance auctions. Opponents of an auction reserve price in the EU ETS have expressed concern that a minimum auction price would interfere with economic operations in the market or would be tantamount to a tax, which would trigger a decision rule requiring unanimity among EU Member States. This Article reviews the economic and legal arguments for and against an auction reserve price. Our economic analysis concludes that an auction reserve price is necessary to accommodate overlapping policies and for the allowance market to operate efficiently. Our legal analysis concludes that an auction reserve price is not a “provision primarily of a fiscal nature,” nor would it “significantly affect a Member State’s choice between different energy sources.” We describe pathways through which a reserve price could be introduced.