Tag: distributional equity

Martin Weitzman’s Contributions to Environmental Economics

Many of the world’s most eminent economists and climate scientists gathered on October 11th, 2018, at Harvard Kennedy School to celebrate and honor the career of Martin L. Weitzman, professor of economics at Harvard University, who is “retiring” following four decades of research and writing which have illuminated thought and policy across a broad range of important realms. During his “retirement,” Marty will serve as a Research Professor in Harvard’s Department of Economics.

The October 11th event, “Frontiers in Environmental Economics and Policy: A Symposium in Honor of Martin L. Weitzman,” which drew about 250 people, was organized and hosted by the Harvard Environmental Economics Program (HEEP), with additional support from the Harvard University Center for the Environment and the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Kennedy School.

A video of the entire event is available here.

Having learned so much from Marty Weitzman, including during the 26 years that he and I have been co-hosting the Harvard Seminar in Environmental Economics and Policy, I was delighted to moderate the symposium.  From the earliest days of planning the event until the day of the symposium, my team – Rob Stowe, HEEP Executive Director, Jason Chapman, HEEP Program Manager, and Casey Billings, HEEP Program Coordinator – and I were inspired by the breathtaking contributions Marty has made to the once-emerging and now mature global discipline of environmental economics.

In my blog essay today, I want to provide for those who could not attend a sense of what it was like to be there, and remind those who did attend what transpired.

Introducing Professor William Nordhaus

I began the symposium by introducing our keynote speaker, William D. Nordhaus, who just a few days earlier had been announced as a recipient of this year’s Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on modeling the economics of climate change and related public policies.

The cliche that “our speaker needs no introduction” certainly applied here, and so I was very brief, noting first that for nearly four decades, Bill Nordhaus has written about the economics of the environment.  Building on his background as a macro-economist concerned about economic growth, Bill began to give particular attention to the role of energy generation and use in the 1970s, not long after beginning his academic career.  What is truly remarkable is that it was in the early 1980s that he began working on the economics of global climate change, long before most other economists were even aware of the problem, let alone analyzed it.

Bill has been on the faculty at Yale University since 1967, where he is the Sterling Professor of Economics, and Professor in Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.  He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association, and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.  In addition to his many scholarly achievements, he served as a Member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers in the Carter administration.

What is particularly striking about Bill Nordhaus’s contributions is that — as long as I can remember — he has made his path-breaking DICE model of global climate change economics accessible to and usable by other researchers around the world.

Keynote Address by Bill Nordhaus

Bill launched his presentation, “The Intellectual Footprint of Martin Weitzman in Environmental Economics,” by stating that Marty “has changed the way we think about economics and the environment.”  He then went on to itemize Weitzman’s impressive body of work, including his series of studies on the share economy; his research on the Soviet Union and central planning; his seminal 1974 paper, “Prices vs. Quantities,” which provided fresh insight on how regulatory policy can best be leveraged to maximize public good; and his work on so-called “fat tails” and the “dismal theorem,” which questioned the value of a standard benefit-cost analysis when conditions could result in catastrophic events, even if the probability of such events is very low.

But Nordhaus devoted much of his talk to highlighting Weitzman’s extraordinary contributions to the field of environmental economics, in particular, the economics of climate change and climate change policy. It was Weitzman’s “revolutionary” series of papers on the ideal measures of national income, Nordhaus stated, that focused early attention on the need to take the harmful impacts of pollution into account when tabulating the gross domestic product (GDP), a concept referred to as “Green GDP.”

“Our output measures do not include pollution,” said Nordhaus. “They include goods like cars and services like concerts and education, but they do not include CO2 that is pumped into the atmosphere.”  He explained that pollution abatement measures are often blamed for causing a drag on the economy, but aren’t credited for the health and welfare benefits they create.

“If our incomes stay the same but we are healthier, and live a year longer or ten years longer, that will not show up in the way we measure things,” Nordhaus remarked. “But we can apply these Weitzman techniques to value improvements in health and happiness.”

“Those who claim that environmental regulations hurt growth are completely wrong, because they are using the wrong yardstick,” Bill continued. “Pollution should be in our measures of national output, but with a negative sign, and if we use green national output as our standard, then environmental and safety regulations have increased true economic growth substantially in recent years…For this important insight we applaud Martin Weitzman, a radically innovative spirit in economics.”

A Panel of Leading Environmental Economists

Following the keynote address by Nordhaus, I welcomed to the stage fellow economists Maureen Cropper, Lawrence Goulder, Michael Greenstone, Charles Kolstad, Richard Newell, Robert Pindyck, and James Stock for a lively panel discussion.  Each of these economists have themselves made important contributions to scholarship and policy in the environmental realm.

To each panelist, I posed a question about a different aspect of Marty Weitzman’s key contributions – ranging from climate change policy to biodiversity and fisheries management.

First, Richard Newell, the President and CEO of Resources for the Future (RFF) and a former student of Weitzman when he studied for his Ph.D. in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, described Weitzman’s seminal paper, “Prices vs. Quantities”, as a “gift that keeps on giving” for economists and policy makers invested in improving regulatory policy.

Next, Charlie Kolstad, a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, focused on Marty Weitzman’s research on biodiversity, and cited it for its “significance and importance.”

Third up was Larry Goulder, the Shuzo Nishihara Professor of Environmental and Resource Economics at Stanford University and a former colleague of Weitzman in the Harvard Department of Economics.  Larry described the importance of Marty’s work on long-term discounting, and commended his 1998 paper on declining discount rate profiles, noting that it has affected public policies in Denmark, France, and Norway, as well as public discussion in the Netherlands, Sweden, and elsewhere. Larry noted that “it’s very important, because it affects decisions as to how much we should invest in infrastructure, in mitigation, and in other realms.”

Fourth on the panel was Bob Pindyck, the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Professor of Economics and Finance at the Sloan School of Management at MIT, who is very familiar with Marty Weitzman’s work on fat-tailed distributions, and has contributed to that literature himself.  Bob cited Weitzman’s prescient 2007 paper “Subjective Expectations and Asset-Return Puzzles” for its significant influence upon the later modeling of the economics of catastrophic climate change.

Next was Jim Stock, the Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University.  I asked Jim to comment on the effect of Marty’s work on the policy world.  Jim started by crediting Weitzman for the “tremendous influence” his ideas have had upon the formation of public policy in the United States and around the world, citing the nine-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), and the Clean Power Plan introduced by President Obama in 2015.

Sixth on the panel was Maureen Cropper, Distinguished University Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics at the University of Maryland.  Maureen had kindly agreed to talk about Marty Weitzman’s research and outreach in the realm of fisheries management.  Maureen explained that his modeling work in Iceland and elsewhere had affected thinking and discussion around the world regarding the use of taxes and quotas to regulate fishing industries. “This is another example of the use of a simple model and treatment of uncertainly that really did start a conversation among fisheries economists when it came out,” she said.

Finally Michael Greenstone, the Milton Friedman Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago, agreed to reflect on how Weitzman’s theoretical insights were fundamental as the foundation for sound empirical analysis.  Greenstone noted that Marty’s work “takes something you are kind of confused about, and then after you read it, you can’t understand how in the world you were confused beforehand. It just clarifies things in a way that is really beautiful.”

A Book of Testimonials

Many of those who attended the symposium — and many who were not able to join us — wanted to tell Marty directly how they feel about him and his work.  And so we assembled and presented to Marty a book in which we had compiled 60 testimonial letters, including from some of his admirers who could not be with us at the symposium, such as:  Orley Ashenfelter, Greg Mankiw, Kerry Smith, Bob Solow, Nick Stern, Cass Sunstein, and others.  As I presented Marty with the book of letters, I took a moment to read aloud from just one of the letters from another person who could not be with us:

When I was an undergraduate in the economics department at MIT, you were a bright and rising young star.  Later, as a faculty member, I routinely assigned your papers to my environmental economics students.  Your scholarship and your leadership enriched their experiences — and mine — tremendously.

I will never forget when you announced that you were moving on to Harvard — what a blow! —but the universe has seen fit to bring us together once again.  It is an honor to acknowledge your extraordinary contributions to the field, and to thank you for shining a light for all of us.

                                                      All the best,

                                                             Larry

                                                      Lawrence Bacow, President, Harvard University

More Memories

The book did not end with the testimonial letters.  On a personal note, it has been 26 years since Marty Weitzman and I launched the Harvard Seminar in Environmental Economics and Policy.  Over those 52 semesters, we have hosted a total of 398 seminars!  In the very first semester — the fall of 1992 — the seminar presenters included, among others, in alphabetical order: Bill Nordhaus, Kerry Smith, Bob Solow, Rob Stavins, Kip Viscusi, and Marty Weitzman.

In virtually every one of these 400 seminars, everyone in the seminar room – including me — learned not only from each seminar’s presenter, but from Marty’s concise and relevant questions which would inevitably go directly to the heart of the matter.  So, I was pleased to include in the book copies of all 52 seminar schedules, beginning with the fall of 1992 and culminating with the fall of 2018.  I will not say “concluding” with the fall of 2018, because I trust that my collaboration with Marty, which I have valued highly, will continue.

Marty Weitzman has been a treasure for Harvard and for the global scholarly community.  All of us are confident that his contributions will continue to be forthcoming.

Marty Weitzman Responds

Following the Symposium, Weitzman took several minutes to reflect on his remarkable career, recognizing that while he has pursued projects across multiple disciplines, his research would often hit dead ends.

“I’m drawn to things that are conceptually unclear, where it’s not clear how you want to make your way through this maze,” he said. “It’s difficult to describe a creative process, but I get some sort of an inspiration…Most of the time it’s a waste of time because I can’t formalize it, so I try and try and just nothing comes of it. But occasionally it clicks and since it’s typically in an area that’s been understudied, that’s why it’s so dispersed across different fields.”

Weitzman spoke proudly of his work in environmental economics, stating that he “took a decisive step in that direction a few decades ago…getting into the forefront rather than…following everything that went on.” Yet he admitted that he is not very optimistic about the current pace of efforts to combat the harmful mid- and long-term impacts of global climate change.

“It’s not merely sufficient to cut back on carbon emissions or to stabilize carbon emissions. We’ve more or less done that in the last few years, although it could go either way,” he said. “The stuff that does the damage is the stock of carbon dioxide. To get the stock of carbon dioxide to go down, it has almost nothing to do with stabilizing the flow. You have to get the flow down to net zero. That’s what’s so difficult. And the public does not realize that. Victory on the flow front doesn’t translate into victory on the stock front, and that’s what counts.”

As is typical of his style, Marty did not reveal his future plans, saying only that they remain to be determined.  But certainly all those in attendance at the symposium hope that he will continue contributing to the academic and policy discussions surrounding climate change and other critically important environmental economic issues.

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Will the Paris Agreement Help or Hinder Cooperation among Nations?

I just returned from Florence, Italy, where I participated in the Second Carbon Market Workshop, organized by the European Commission, and hosted by the European University Institute.  This workshop, which brought together government representatives from around the world (with a sprinkling of academics and NGO representatives to add some spice to the discussion), was convened to examine how regional, national, and sub-national jurisdictions can cooperate in ways that could increase the effectiveness and/or reduce the costs of their respective climate change policies.  One of my tasks at the workshop was to make a brief dinner speech.  Jos Delbeke, the long-time,  legendary Director-General of Climate Action for the Commission, asked me to talk about how the Paris Agreement might help or hinder practical climate policy cooperation around the world.  I drew extensively upon my research with Michael Mehling and Gilbert Metcalf.  Here is the gist of what I said in my dinner speech.

Some Paris Agreement Fundamentals

The hybrid design of the Paris Agreement was key to its successful enactment in 2015 and its coming into force in November, 2016.  The hybrid design to which I refer is the combination of top-down (centralized) and bottom-up (decentralized) elements.  The top-down elements include, for example, the requirement that countries state their national contributions every five years, a schedule which is binding under international law for those jurisdictions that have ratified the Agreement.  The key bottom-up element is the set of individual Nationally Determined Contributions (or NDCs) themselves, which are not part of the Paris Agreement itself, but rather are listed in a separate Registry.  These are not binding under international law, but rather are left to the domestic authority of the respective countries.

This dual structure led to the achievement of one of two necessary conditions for ultimate success of the Paris Agreement, namely adequate scope of participation, which now includes countries accounting for 97% of global emissions, compared with the 14% that are covered by the current, second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.

But adequate scope of participation is only one of two necessary conditions; the other is adequate collective ambition.  Unfortunately, the fundamentally voluntary nature of the NDCs – which is precisely what facilitated the exceptionally broad scope of participation – works against adequate ambition to address this global commons phenomenon, which is plagued by free rider problems.

The Challenge for Climate Negotiators

This raises the key overall challenge that faced the negotiators in Bonn in May and will face them in Katowice, Poland, in December (at the Twenty-Fourth Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change):  What can they do, when writing rules to put flesh onto the skeletal Paris Agreement, to encourage countries to increase their ambition over time?  That’s where carbon markets and cooperation among jurisdictions potentially come in.

International Cooperation under the Paris Agreement

Largely because cooperation among jurisdictions — including through carbon markets — can lower abatement costs, such cooperation may be essential for the ultimate success of the Agreement.  This cooperation might take the form of international linkage, where by “linkage,” I mean connections among policy systems that allow emissions reduction efforts to be redistributed among those systems.

Such linkage is typically framed as between cap-and-trade systems, but regional, national, and sub-national policies are and will be highly heterogeneous, including not only cap-and-trade, but offset systems, carbon taxes, performance standards, and technology standards.  Note that we already see this sort of heterogeneity within the European Union’s own set of climate change policies, as well as within California’s suite of climate initiatives.

The good news is that linkage among highly heterogeneous policies is eminently feasible, as I have written about previously in this blog, drawing on my research with Michael Mehling (MIT) and Gib Metcalf (Tufts University).  The even better news is that one part of the Paris Agreement provides a potential home for such international cooperation, linkage, and carbon markets – Article 6.  (If you are interested in the details, I recommend a recent report from the Asian Development Bank, “Decoding Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.”)

The Promise and Problems of Article 6

In the negotiations that led up to the 2015 Paris climate talks, it was by no means clear what role — if any — market mechanisms would play in the Paris Agreement.  In the negotiations, the European Union, Brazil, and other countries played crucial roles in generating the compromise that became Article 6 of the Agreement.

That compromise resulted in text that — to put it kindly — is very much subject to interpretation.  Now, as Benito Müller, Kelley Kizzier, and their colleagues have observed, intentional vagueness and ambiguity of text can be quite helpful in achieving a negotiated compromise, but such vagueness is decidedly not helpful when it comes to making an agreement operational.

This compromised home for markets emerged in Article 6 despite the entrenched opposition of a small set of vocal countries — including some Latin American socialist economies (the so-called ALBA coalition) — who wanted nothing of the kind to appear in the Paris Agreement.  They succeeded in keeping the word “market” out the Paris Agreement, but the concept and the potential reality is very much there!  (Ironically, at their insistence, the phrase “non-market” does appear in the Agreement.)

In any event, provision for markets and international cooperation is implicit in Article 6.2, which allows for cooperative approaches involving Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes (or ITMOs), which are vague and without definition, but can function as an international accounting mechanism for international trades, exchanges, and cooperation.  And Article 6.4 establishes a more centralized mechanism to contribute to emissions mitigation and support sustainable development, essentially as a successor to the Clean Development Mechanism (and may soon come to be called the “Sustainable Development Mechanism” or SDM).

Advantages and Concerns about Cooperation and Linkage

Despite the opposition I mentioned, most parties to the Paris Agreement are supportive of cooperative approaches (and more than half explicitly mentioned carbon markets in their respective NDCs).

This may be because of six important advantages of such cooperation:  first, cost savings by allowing firms to take advantage of lower cost abatement opportunities in other jurisdictions; second, reducing market power of individual firms by enlarging the market’s scope, and reducing total price volatility by thickening markets; third, political benefits to Parties, by providing a sign of “momentum” as jurisdictions band together, possibly influencing other parties to participate; fourth, administrative economies of scale through knowledge sharing in design and operations, as well as shared administrative and oversight costs; fifth reducing leakage and competitiveness impacts by harmonizing the shadow price of carbon across jurisdictions; and sixth, allowing for the achievement of the UNFCCC’s critical principle of “Common but Differentiated Responsibilities” without sacrificing cost-effectiveness.

There are also real concerns about linkage:  first, distributional impacts within and across linked jurisdictions; second, automatic propagation of certain design elements, in particular, cost-containment elements (banking, borrowing, and price collars); and third, decreased national autonomy.

Back to the Article 6 Negotiations and International Policy Linkage

Article 6 can be a home both to linkage of the sort we usually talk about, as well as “soft linkage,” such as an agreement — explicit or implicit — to harmonize carbon prices either at some level or within overlapping bands.

Thinking about the UNFCCC negotiations taking place now, most types of heterogeneity – of policy instruments, level of political jurisdiction, and nature of NDC targets – do not present insurmountable obstacles to linkage, but some do present real challenges, and indicate the need for specific guidance as the rulebook of the Paris Agreement is written.

Unfortunately, some countries want the Article 6 guidance to go beyond fundamental issues of accounting and environmental integrity to broader matters of environmental ambition, which properly belong in other parts of the Paris Agreement.  Whereas, accounting provisions to avoid double-counting of NDC actions through ITMOs surely belong in the Article 6 rulebook, some countries have proposed, for example, that all ITMO exchanges themselves must actually reduce net emissions.

This sounds very much like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s 20% rule in its 1970’s Emissions Trading Program, which required that net emissions fall by 20% with each trade.  This was a tax and an inhibition on trading, and the result was that virtually no trading occurred.  This reminds me of a corrupted version of George Santayana’s admonition that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.  Instead we have, “I’ve learned from my mistakes, and I can repeat them exactly the same again.”

The general problem is that if the guidance extends much beyond basic accounting rules, then restrictive requirements could actually impede effective cooperation.  True to the nature and spirit of the Paris Agreement, less can be more!

UNFCCC Update from Bonn

I closed my dinner comments in Florence with a brief update on the negotiations that concluded the previous week in Bonn.  The two weeks of meetings of the Article 6 group were reported to be much tougher than they had been previously, yet the progress on the Article 6 work is actually ahead of that of groups focused on other parts of the Paris Agreement.  Although positions on Article 6 are hardening, there is no clear blocking party or coalition (unlike in the work on some of the other parts of the Agreement).  There may be less resistance to agreement simply because participation in Article 6 instruments would ultimately be voluntary.

The Path Ahead

So, as the negotiations proceed, a combination of common accounting rules and an absence of restrictive conditions can accelerate linkage, allow for broader and deeper climate policy cooperation, facilitate the emergence of a robust global carbon market, and – most important – increase the latitude of the Parties to the Paris Agreement to scale up the ambition of their long-term contributions to global greenhouse gas emission reductions.

Whether that will come to pass, we simply do not know as of now.  As usual, only time will tell.

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Linking Heterogeneous Climate Policies (and Activities at COP-23 in Bonn)

It’s well known that the Paris Agreement has achieved broad participation by countries accounting for some 97% of global GHG emissions (in contrast to the 14% of global emissions associated with countries taking on responsibilities under the current commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol).  That is a very important accomplishment, but as negotiations begin to elaborate key details of the Agreement (as they will in Bonn in November), a critical question is how to create incentives for countries to increase ambition over time. The ability to link different climate policies, such that emission reductions undertaken in one jurisdiction can be counted toward the mitigation commitments of another jurisdiction, may help Parties increase ambition over time.  A new paper from the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements by Michael Mehling of MIT, Gilbert Metcalf of Tufts University, and myself explores options and challenges for facilitating such linkages in light of the considerable heterogeneity that is likely to characterize regional, national, and sub-national efforts to address climate change.  The full paper is available for downloading, as is a two-page summary.

We will be presenting our results on November 13th and 14th in Bonn at the Twenty-Third Conference of the Parties (COP-23) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.  At the end of this blog essay, I offer some details about these and other forthcoming activities of the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements at COP-23 in Bonn.

Background

Linkage is important, in part, because it can reduce the costs of achieving a given emissions-reduction objective. Lower costs, in turn, may make it politically feasible to embrace more ambitious objectives. In a world where the marginal cost of abatement – that is, the cost to reduce an additional ton of emissions – varies widely, linkage improves overall cost-effectiveness by allowing jurisdictions with relatively higher abatement costs to finance reductions from jurisdictions with relatively lower costs. In effect, linkage drives participating jurisdictions toward a common cost of carbon, equalizing the marginal cost of abatement and producing a more efficient distribution of abatement activities. These benefits are potentially significant: The World Bank has estimated that international linkage could reduce the cost of achieving the emissions reductions specified in the initial set of NDCs submitted under the Paris Agreement 32% by 2030 and 54% by 2050.

Article 6 of the Paris Agreement provides a foundation for linkage by recognizing that Parties to the Agreement may “choose to pursue voluntary cooperation in the implementation of their” NDCs through “the use of internationally transferred mitigation outcomes” (ITMOs). In contrast to the Kyoto Protocol (which likewise included provisions for international cooperation), the voluntary and flexible architecture of the Paris Agreement allows for wide variation, not only in the types of climate policies countries choose to implement, but in the form and stringency of the abatement targets they adopt.

Heterogeneous Linkage

Linkage is relatively straightforward when the policies involved are similar. However, linkage is possible even when this is not the case: for example, when one jurisdiction is using a cap-and-trade system to reduce emissions while another jurisdiction is relying on carbon taxes. There are several potential sources of heterogeneity: type of policy instrument used (for example, taxes vs. cap-and-trade vs. performance or technology standard); level of government jurisdiction involved (for example, regional, national, or sub-national); status under the Paris Agreement (that is, whether or not the jurisdiction is a Party to the Agreement – or within a Party); nature of the policy target (for examle, absolute mass-based emissions vs. emissions intensity vs. change relative to business-as-usual); and operational details of the country’s NDC, including type of mitigation target, choice of target and reference years, and sectors and greenhouse gases covered.

Analyzing Potential Linkages (Consistent with the Paris Agreement)

The full paper examines five specific cases of linkage, with various combinations of features, to identify which types of linkage are feasible, which are most promising, and what accounting mechanisms are needed to make their operation consistent with the Paris Agreement.  Each of the cases maps to a real-world example.

Most forms of heterogeneity – including with respect to policy instruments, jurisdictions, and targets – do not present insurmountable obstacles to linkage. However, some of these characteristics present challenges and call for specific accounting guidance if linkage is to include the use of ITMOs under the Paris Agreement. In particular, robust accounting methods will be needed to prevent double-counting of GHG reductions, to ensure that the timing (vintage) of claimed reductions and of respective ITMO transfers is correctly accounted for, and to ensure that participating countries make appropriate adjustments for emissions or reductions covered by their NDCs when using ITMOs. Additional issues under Article 6 include how to quantify ITMOs and how to account for heterogeneous base years, as well as different vintages of targets and outcomes.

Issues for the Climate Negotiators

Broader questions that bear on the opportunities for linkage under Article 6.2 include the nature of NDC targets and whether these are to be treated as strict numerical targets that need to be precisely achieved; the nature and scope of ITMOs, which have yet to be defined, let alone fully described, under the Paris Agreement; and finally, whether transfers to or from non-Parties to the Agreement (or sub-national jurisdictions within non-Parties) are possible, and if so, how they should be accounted for. Parties have differing views, however, on whether the guidance on Article 6.2 should extend to such issues.

Clear and consistent guidance for accounting of emissions transfers under Article 6 can contribute to greater certainty and predictability for Parties engaged in voluntary cooperation, thereby facilitating expanded use of linkage. At the same time, too much guidance, particularly if it includes restrictive quality or ambition requirements, might impede linkage and dampen incentives for cooperation. Given their limited mandate, Parties should exercise caution when developing guidance under Article 6.2 that goes beyond key accounting issues. This does not mean that concerns about ambition and environmental integrity should be neglected. However, if the combination of a set of common accounting rules and an absence of restrictive criteria and conditions can accelerate linkage and allow for broader and deeper policy cooperation, it can also increase the potential for Parties to scale up the ambition of their NDCs. And that may ultimately foster stronger engagement between Parties (and non-Parties), as well as with regional and sub-national jurisdictions.

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The Harvard Project on Climate Agreements at COP-23 in Bonn

We will conduct three panel events at the Twenty-Third Conference of the Parties (COP-23) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Bonn, Germany, during the week of November 13, 2017.  If you have credentials to access the secure area of the COP, you are most welcome to attend any or all of these.  Also, COP-23 attendees who wish to meet with the Harvard Project during the conference should email: Jason Chapman (Jason_Chapman@hks.harvard.edu).

Events in Brief:

Heterogeneous Linkage and the Evolution of Article 6
Monday, November 13
12:00 – 1:30 pm
Pavilion of the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA)

Implementing and Linking Carbon Pricing Instruments: Theory and Practice
Tuesday, November 14, 2017
11:30 am – 1:00 pm
Side Event Meeting Room 12

Carbon Pricing Policy Design
Tuesday, November 14, 2017
2:00 – 3:30 pm
Pavilion of the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA)

Events in Detail:

Heterogeneous Linkage and the Evolution of Article 6, Monday, November 13, 12:00 – 1:30 pm, Pavilion of the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA)

Participants:

Jos Delbeke, Director General for Climate Action, European Commission

Kelley Kizzier, Co-Chair, Article 6, Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice

Michael Mehling, Deputy Director, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Gilbert Metcalf, Professor of Economics, Tufts University

Robert Stavins, A. J. Meyer Professor of Energy and Economic Development, Harvard Kennedy School

Abstract:

The Paris Agreement has achieved one of two key necessary conditions for ultimate success — a broad base of participation among the countries of the world. But another key necessary condition has yet to be achieved — adequate collective ambition of the individual nationally determined contributions (NDCs). How can climate negotiators provide a structure that provides incentives to increase ambition over time? One part of the answer can be facilitating international linkage of regional, national, and sub-national policies. A central challenge is how to accomplish this in the context of the great heterogeneity that characterizes climate policies, along several dimensions, in the context of Paris-Agreement NDCs. Panelists will review the status of linkage in the world, the evolution of Article 6, and the relationship between the two.

Implementing and Linking Carbon Pricing Instruments: Theory and Practice, Tuesday, November 14, 2017, 11:30 am – 1:00 pm, Side Event Meeting Room 12, Co-Hosts: Harvard Project on Climate Agreements and Enel Foundation

Participants:

Andrei Marcu, Senior Fellow, International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development

Michael Mehling, Deputy Director, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Gilbert Metcalf, Professor of Economics, Tufts University

Simone Mori, Head of European Affairs, Enel

Robert Stavins, A. J. Meyer Professor of Energy and Economic Development, Harvard Kennedy School

Other participant(s) to be determined

Abstract:

The Paris Agreement has achieved one of two key necessary conditions for ultimate success — a broad base of participation among the countries of the world. But another key necessary condition has yet to be achieved — adequate collective ambition of the individual nationally determined contributions. This panel will consider how this issue might be addressed by international linkage of regional, national, and sub-national policies — that is, formal recognition of emission reductions undertaken in another jurisdiction for the purpose of meeting a Party’s own mitigation objectives. A central challenge is how to facilitate such linkage in the context of the very great heterogeneity that characterizes Nationally Determined Contributions along several dimensions. We consider such heterogeneity among policies, and identify which linkages of various combinations of characteristics are feasible; of these, which are most promising; and what accounting mechanisms would make the operation of respective linkages consistent with the Paris Agreement. The panel will draw in part on a paper by Michael Mehling, Gilbert Metcalf, and Robert Stavins, “Linking Heterogeneous Climate Policies (Consistent with the Paris Agreement),” available here

Carbon Pricing Policy Design, Tuesday, November 14, 2017, 2:00 – 3:30 pm, Pavilion of the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), Co-Hosts:  Harvard Project on Climate Agreements and Enel Foundation

Participants:

Daniele Agostini, Head of Low Carbon Policies and Carbon Regulation, Enel

Joseph Aldy [via videoconference], Associate Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School

Gilbert Metcalf, Professor of Economics, Tufts University

Robert Stavins, A. J. Meyer Professor of Energy and Economic Development, Harvard Kennedy School

Other participant(s) to be determined

Abstract:

This panel will review experiences with cap-and-trade and carbon-tax policies, and draw lessons from those experiences. Panelists will also examine the choice between — and design of — such policies, through a political-economy lens, in order to highlight important public policy principles and policy options in carbon-pricing-policy design. The panel will draw in part on a paper by Joseph Aldy, “The Political Economy of Carbon Pricing Policy Design,” available here.

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