Market Forces

Empowering Chile’s Climate Action: A Citizen’s Guide to Article 6

By / Bio / Twitter profile / Published: April 18, 2024

This blog was authored by Francisco Pinto and Rodrigo Bórquez, economists of the Climate Action Teams (CAT) initiative, and by Environmental Defense Fund economist Luis Fernández Intriago.

Source: Climate Action Teams

Reducing emissions is imperative to address climate change. The mechanisms established in Article 6 of the Paris Agreement can serve as vital tools in our quest to stop the impacts of climate change and safeguard the future of our planet—but navigating its complexities can be tricky.

To tackle this challenge, between June and August 2023, the Climate Action Teams (CAT-Chile) initiative, co-founded by EDF, and the Consensus Building Institute (CBI) conducted a dialogue process in Chile. We aimed to convene key players in a discussion to better understand Article 6’s potential to boost Chile’s climate ambition.

This fruitful dialogue, called “Climate Dialogue: Strengthening Chile’s Ambition through Article 6 of the Paris Agreement“, explored three specific areas:

  1. The feasibility of implementing Article 6 in Chile,
  2. The application of safeguards, and
  3. The short-term actions and tasks to progress in this field.

The dialogue’s outcomes were delivered to Chile’s Ministry of the Environment to consider as they prepared to host their own public-private sector dialogue on ideas around the development of a Chilean Article 6 policy. Read More »

Also posted in Economics, Energy Transition, Uncategorized / Leave a comment

“Nothing about us without us: The case of JREDD+ in Colombia.” The importance of including all stakeholders, especially affected communities, at the decision-making table.

By / Bio / Twitter profile / Published: March 16, 2023

This blog was authored by Environmental Defense Fund economist Luis Fernández Intriago and Universidad de Los Andes professors Jorge García López and Julián Gómez Gil.

The saying “Nothing about us without us” is widely used among Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities to emphasize the importance of involving them in policies that govern their territories and communities. The expression serves as a call to action, highlighting that those affected by specific issues should be included in making policy decisions around them.

However, policymakers and researchers consistently decide on policy design and construct models without consulting and considering the opinion of the affected communities and key stakeholders. Efforts to stop deforestation are a clear example of this: new policies go into place without any input from communities that rely on forests for their livelihoods, cultures, or basic survival. These local and Indigenous communities are an untapped source of wisdom, leadership, and capacity to support efforts to conserve rainforests.

To remediate this, Environmental Defense Fund, Universidad de Los Andes, and the Centro de Estudios Manuel Ramírez, right since the beginning of the project, started an engagement process in Colombia to demonstrate how engaging key local and Indigenous stakeholders could lead to better policy design to protect forests in the country.

Why Colombia?

Colombia faces enormous challenges with deforestation: 184,000 hectares per year of natural forests were destroyed between 2017 and 2021. Deforestation accounts for 33% of the country’s total climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, halting deforestation is critical for achieving the country’s Paris Agreement commitments (called “Nationally Determined Contribution” or NDC).

As in many other countries, the AFOLU (Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land-use) sector is not subject to regulations in Colombia. However, this presents an excellent opportunity for the Colombian government to leverage private finance from national sources—such as through the upcoming Colombian Emissions Trading System[1] , which must be implemented by 2030—and international sources —such as the LEAF Coalition— using jurisdictional REDD+ (JREDD+) crediting. JREDD+ programs extend the REDD+ framework for sustainable forest management and conservation by addressing deforestation at the regional or ‘jurisdictional’ level—protecting forests across wide regions instead of plot-by-plot and even resources.

Climate mitigation is now a top priority for many individuals, governments, and corporations, creating strong demand for ways to stop deforestation in tropical forest countries in high-integrity ways rapidly. Our research finds that government funding required to reduce deforestation levels consistent with Colombia’s NDC could drop from $900 to $75 million when national and international private finance is harnessed.

The Study

Our study aimed to identify inclusive, equitable ways to include JREDD+ in Colombia’s climate mitigation policies. We established three parallel and interconnected pillars: first, we focused on engagement with primary stakeholders. Second, we constructed a model to illustrate how JREDD+ may help Colombia meet its NDC target cost-effectively while benefiting local communities. Third, we prepared a policy design that government can use as a guideline to integrate these approaches.

Engagement

At the beginning of the project, we knew we had to start by engaging with stakeholders to explain JREDD+. Our ultimate goal was to include the feedback and reflect relevant stakeholders’ needs—including the national government and public institutions, Indigenous groups, smallholder’s associations, NGOs, and educational institutions—in our results. We knew that communication between our research group and people who could be interested or potentially affected by the research project was crucial if we were to produce and share credible and legitimate knowledge. The knowledge acquired through these interactions can set the stage for an effective and equitable JREDD+ program in Colombia.

Source: Photos by Julián Gómez Gil.

In 2022, we hosted four engagement sessions in Tena (April 23 & 24, Cundinamarca), Florencia (May 5 & 6, Caquetá), Bogotá (October 14), and Mocoa (October 26 & 27, Putumayo). These sessions focused on the participation of representatives of the Amazon Indigenous peoples (OPIAC, OZIP, ACILAPP, etc.[2]),  other local communities and land users (farmers, cattle ranchers, and smallholders associations), NGOs (Amazon Conservation Team, WWF, Natura Foundation, Fondo Patrimonio Natural, etc.), private organizations (Emergent, Amazon Global, Permin Global, ALLCOT, Asocarbono, etc.) and national and subnational government institutions (Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, Sinchi Institute, Corpoamazonía, etc.). During these community meetings, we worked hard to improve participation but also set realistic expectations, and engaged in open-ended discussions where training was provided to the attendees regarding the formulation of projects of conservation, carbon markets, REDD+ projects, JREDD+ programs, guidelines of the ART-TREES standard and the operation of the LEAF call for proposals, through technical presentations and educational activities, and promoting the constant participation of the actors to create scenarios for debate and resolution of doubts.

In the same way, these spaces were used to formulate questions to the different actors, which were resolved both through open debate dynamics and through collaborative work activities, taking advantage of a closer and more direct dialogue with each one of them and a greater availability of time to delve into topics of interest. This form of participation was very well received by the Indigenous Peoples, who invited the work team to implement similar activities more frequently and in the most remote territories so that capacity building can be held and the local context is better perceived.

Given the scale of a JREDD+ program, the interaction and negotiation between local actors, institutions, intermediaries, and current individual REDD+ projects are essential. According to the discussion with stakeholders, a common problem associated with the participation of key actors and interested parties in individual REDD+ projects is that these actors tend to be treated as beneficiaries rather than partners. As a result, local communities and interested parties perceive that the design of incentives, local capacity, delivery mechanisms, transparency provisions, and distribution are only partially fair. This led us to consider fairness, representation, and transparency as critical components of policy design.

Modeling

We modeled a mechanism to integrate the potential funds generated with a JREDD+ and a national emissions trading system (ETS) to accelerate the reduction of emissions from deforestation. Mainly, we considered a scenario under which Colombia applies the LEAF coalition model on a national scale of a JREDD+ at the national level. At the same time, to ensure representativeness, bargaining power, effective resource administration, and a fair distribution of benefits, we proposed an internal administrative division of Colombia into five jurisdictions: 1. Caribbean region; 2. Andean region; 3. Pacific region; 4, Orinoquía region; and 5. Amazon region.

Our modeling revealed that integrating a JREDD+ program with a National ETS could be a cost-efficient mechanism to reduce the externality costs and disincentivize the overall GHG emissions of Colombia following the country’s regulatory framework, the emissions trajectory, and the mitigation objectives. These mechanisms could be used to generate and allocate economic resources to ensure efficient emissions mitigation, the incorporation of safeguards (such as environmental education), and the minimization and/or compensation of adverse socio-environmental interventions. In addition, the modeling results imply the generation of co-benefits (economic, social, and environmental) that contribute to the development of ethnic communities, local communities, and other private land users.

Policy Design (Results)

After receiving input from stakeholders and results from our model, we prepared a policy design that the government can use as a guideline to integrate JREDD+ inclusively and equitably. Here are our results:

  • Inclusive negotiating for benefits-sharing: To build a JREDD+ in Colombia, stakeholders demand a significant role in negotiating the benefit-sharing system. In this regard, national and subnational agreements should be established to achieve at least the following three main objectives: 1) provide effective monetary and non-monetary incentives; 2) contribute towards building legitimacy through a fair and equitable distribution of resources, responsibilities, and bargaining power; 3) include local actors in the decision-making process and recognize them as partners rather than beneficiaries.
  • Use vertical and horizontal benefit-sharing to equitably distribute benefits and negotiating power: A vertical benefit-sharing approach uses national voluntary and regulated market funds (ETS) to distribute benefits among national and subnational governments, non-governmental actors, intermediaries, NGOs, and facilitators. These transactions are carried out to ensure the operability of the program. On the other hand, horizontal benefit-sharing seeks to distribute the remaining benefits as incentive payments among and within communities, households, and local stakeholders. A fair design of benefit sharing must be vertical and horizontal to guarantee the bargaining power of the actors involved in deforestation and conservation activities.
  • Centralize decision-making, but include regional representation: Our main policy proposal is to centralize the decision-making with a single National Board of Directors. This board would be responsible for making central decisions and directly managing the resource flow. On the other hand, a Jurisdictional Board of Directors composed of representatives from each of the six jurisdictions must be created to guarantee the representativity and bargaining power of the different actors. This board will function as a participatory body overseeing operational decisions that a respective Jurisdictional Operating Unit should execute. With this management structure, it is possible to use the three sources of funding (JREDD+ results-based payments, the ETS, and the carbon tax) and to effectively distribute the benefits among implementing partners (NGOs, private sector, etc.) and land users (Indigenous Peoples, local communities, farmers & ranchers, etc.)
  • Leverage allowances from emissions trading system to support efforts to conserve forests: In our study, we assumed that much-needed finance for forest protection may come from two different sources: a nationally managed fund constructed using resources from the international voluntary market and from a locally regulated market (a national ETS), where regional and local public and private institutions intermediate implementation with local communities; and a project-based fund where national or international funding goes directly to projects, with resources from both the national general budget and payment by results or other international cooperation (JREDD+). To integrate both mechanisms and be consistent with Colombia’s climate law, we propose that 20% of the cap established by the ETS can be offset with forestry emissions reductions using a jurisdictional approach. In that way, the allowances allocated by the ETS to the forestry sector will generate an additional source of income to reduce deforestation.

You can read more about our study and policy design here. In general, our recommendations in this project were derived and enriched from the participatory processes we carried out. The participants’ comments helped us to refine, redefine, and validate these recommendations.

As Colombia works toward implementing its Emissions Trading System by 2030, we encourage them to consider these recommendations to inclusively and equitably incorporate JREDD+. We encourage them to consult with stakeholders such as Indigenous and locally affected communities to develop climate policy.

 

[1] The Colombian Emissions Trading System is scheduled to be implemented by 2030 according to the Law 1931 of 2018 and Law 2126 of 2021.

[2] OPIAC- National Organization of the Indigenous People of the Colombian Amazon, OZIP- Organization of Indigenous People of Putumayo Department, ACILAPP- Association of Traditional Authorities of the Indigenous Peoples of Leguizamo Municipality and Upper Predio Putumayo Territories

 

 

 

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Building North-South cooperation to fight the ‘tragedies’ of climate change

By / Published: March 29, 2021

This post draws from a chapter for a book I wrote in 2020: “Overcoming the tragedy of distance – cooperating with our friends’ friends” in Living with the Climate Crisis ed. Tom Doig. Bridget Williams Books, Wellington, New Zealand 

I believe that finding ways to work more intensively and effectively with people with very different resources, cultures and life experiences is critical to rapid global decarbonization.

For me, the unprecedented challenge from climate change is that most mitigation has to occur in countries with fewer resources. Key high-emitting countries such as India, China, Indonesia and Brazil, as well as smaller countries such as Laos, Ethiopia, and Peru are all projected, in business as usual forecasts, to have rising emissions as they develop.

These countries have strongly competing priorities, as they also need to address poverty or resolve internal conflict. They are unlikely to mitigate greenhouse-gases fast enough without help. Yet, to stabilize the climate, those countries and all others must reduce their emissions to net zero and the faster the better.

Models by EDF(2019, pp. 200-232) and IETA(2019) suggest that we could double the amount of global carbon dioxide mitigation to 2035 with no extra cost if richer countries can support emerging and developing countries effectively, but that’s hard. ‘International trading’ of mitigation, where richer countries, or their companies, support developing countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, has long been a goal, but it has not yet lived up to its promise.

We will all benefit if we can resolve this together. I also think those of us with more resources owe it to poorer countries to help; they are the most vulnerable to climate change, to which they have contributed little. It seems deeply unfair to also expect them to bear the full burden of their transition to net-zero.

Tragedies of climate change

Humans however often struggle with cooperating and sharing with people who are far away from them, in either a physical or social sense. I struggle to empathize with people in India whom I will never meet, but who will need support when they replace coal-fired power plants with renewables as India moves toward net-zero emissions. I don’t think I’m alone in this and I imagine they feel the same about people like me who are not taking rapid action on climate change even when we can afford it.

Is our fundamental problem in mobilizing resources to support developing country decarbonization this “tragedy of distance?”

“Tragedies” are situations where we humans are brought down by our own flaws. These tragedies make climate change particularly challenging to address.

The “tragedy of the commons” suggests that if we can’t exclude people from use of a common resource, we are doomed to destroy it through overuse. For example, the fish stock in a particular area isn’t destroyed because people can’t see what is happening, but because if others are going to over-fish, whatever one individual does, it is in each individual’s personal interest to go fishing while the fish are still there. They feel they can’t protect it. That’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The “tragedy of the horizon” suggests that individual and collective myopia and selfishness lead us to take actions now although they will cause our future selves and future generations to suffer. The phrase was coined by Mark Carney (Former Governor, Bank of England) for climate change, but another classic example is most countries’ inability to invest enough of the wealth that they extract from non-renewable minerals, like oil, to sustain their citizens’ well-being in the future. Again, we can see this coming but struggle to avoid it.

These tragedies are not inevitable. Some communities solve them impressively (e.g., the many examples from the work of Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues, or Norway’s Sovereign Wealth Fund). Others find partial solutions. New Zealand avoids the worst problems of overfishing by limiting catches through the Quota Management System, a system which, though imperfect, has now lasted for more than thirty years. Humans also have relatively good ‘institutions’ for making intergenerational decisions. Families tend to have strong bonds for at least a couple of generations. We may not make “efficient” decisions for our own future selves and our descendants, but we do, generally, care.

Climate change is an issue where all tragedies—of distance, of the commons, and of the horizon—are fully engaged. Climate change is global and cumulative, with extremely long-term, long-lived impacts. Although it is now clear that people alive today are already experiencing the impacts, the major benefits from our mitigation actions today will be experienced not by older people like me, but by our children and grandchildren.

We have worked hard for nearly thirty years to build institutions at the international, national and local level to coordinate mitigation efforts. We need to keep doing this. Despite our lack of obvious success so far, we have made considerable progress. However, these approaches depend very much on a hierarchical approach. That approach is appealingly elegant and logical in responding to a global problem, and is a critical part of the solution, but it’s not working fast enough. And having only one coherent institutional approach is inherently fragile.

We need both coordination and cooperation

United Nations climate agreements try to replicate the success of economic institutions in managing human activity. However, in contrast to institutions that aim to address climate change, many international economic institutions, such as those that govern commerce and banking are essentially addressing a coordination problem. Their success is not easily replicated when dealing with a global cooperation problem like climate change.

Maybe the approaches of more traditional and Indigenous societies have something to offer us as a complement. These societies have broad networks of relationships that extend into the natural world and rely on these and shared belief systems rather than institutions to manage goals and conflicting interests. Traditional ways of thinking of Māori, the Indigenous people of New Zealand, contrast strongly with the hierarchical assumptions about how humans relate to each other and the natural world, “the Great Chain of Being,” common in much contemporary Western thought.

Can we harness shared belief systems and existing North-South relationship networks and reduce the tragedy of distance? Could that help us build deep collaborations among small groups of countries to support the large-scale transfers of resources needed for efficient global climate action?

Is it better to think about transfers to support mitigation in developing countries as primarily about establishing networks of relational contracts, and the strong communication and trust that supports them, rather than centralized carbon commodity trading systems where all have to trust one system?

Also posted in Climate Change, emissions / Leave a comment

Four reasons why China’s 2060 net-zero goal is so important

By / Published: October 16, 2020

A shift in ambition, narrative, global cooperation and likely support for mitigation in least-developed countries

Shanghai Bund skyline landmark ,Ecological energy renewable solar panel plant

The announcement by President Xi Jinping at the UN General Assembly last month makes me optimistic.

First, on its own, achievement of this goal will contribute to a reduction in expected future temperature by 0.2 to 0.3 degrees. 

Second, having a clear and ambitious end goal will shift the narrative within China from incremental slowing of emissions growth and reductions in some sectors to a focus on how emissions can be eliminated entirely (or close to it).

A vision of transformation toward a low-emissions China will complement the vision of a “Beautiful China.” Pollution control efforts are highly complementary with climate mitigation actions – e.g. moving to renewable energy from fossil fuels, restoring ecosystems – and can dramatically improve the wellbeing of the Chinese people. A clear and attractive vision can mobilize a wider community to seek and implement the multitude of small and large changes needed. It will increase confidence in the future of China’s new national ETS, the strengthening of which will almost inevitably need to be part of China’s strategy. That confidence will make the ETS more effective by generating realistic prices and greater certainty for investors.

Third, it changes the climate cooperation ‘game’, significantly.

Economists think of climate cooperation as a game because each player’s (in this case country’s) decisions depends on what they think other players/countries will do – like chess, or rugby. China’s latest ‘move’ responds to others’ earlier moves and anticipates and will influence later ones. Global cooperation on climate change is hard, because of temptations to free-ride. We can use game theory to explore ways to improve humanity’s odds of a good outcome. We know that humans can sometimes cooperate when it’s a repeated ‘game’ – we get many chances to try to cooperate, observe others, reward or sanction and then try again.

And it’s not a binary outcome where we either win or lose.  Any level of cooperation is better than nothing. It might be optimal to aim for no more than 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures but even if we don’t achieve that, 2 degrees would be better than 2.5 degrees.

Cooperation is easier when some players take leadership, and that’s what China has done. They are not the first emerging economy to set a net-zero target (Bhutan, Chile, Costa Rica, Fiji, the Marshall Islands and South Africa are examples of others), but China’s size makes its announcement a game changer in several ways. The Chinese have shifted the focal point for emerging country contributions to a more ambitious level.

In addition, the rewards to other countries from helping to encourage and sustain China’s efforts rise – if they act in ways that lead China to draw back from this commitment there is more to lose. The costs of mitigation will fall as China learns and shares its new knowledge and technology. Finally, there is less risk that efforts to lower emissions in one country will lead to movement of high emitting-activity to China thereby having no global impact.

Fourth, it means that China, a really large player, will now need to engage even more seriously in helping less developed countries accelerate their mitigation.

Reaching net-zero will be much easier for the Chinese if they can buy high-quality internationally transferable mitigation outcomes (new United Nations Paris Agreement language for international credits). Their engagement in this market could firm up the rules and, critically, mobilize the skills and financial and technical resources that the poorer countries who could credibly sell such credits will need to embark on their own transformational emission reductions journeys.

As China mitigates more aggressively domestically it will develop technology and know-how that it can also export, as it has already on a smaller scale. Some exports will be particularly useful for countries where lower-cost Chinese technology, such as electric buses or cars might be more attractive than expensive European or North American ones. China’s Belt and Road Initiative offers a critical mechanism that can be turned to this purpose. If China can help poor countries develop strong mitigation policies, through strong South-South cooperation, they could transform global cooperation further and strengthen markets for this technology. This would make me even more optimistic.

 

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How the pandemic is affecting oil markets, shale and the future of climate action

By / Bio / Published: July 30, 2020

Earlier this month, EDF’s Office of Chief Economist hosted a virtual fireside chat with Jason Bordoff, Professor of Professional Practice and Founding Director of Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and Marianne Kah, an Adjunct Senior Research Scholar and Advisory Board member at the Center.

Prior to joining Columbia, Bordoff had served in the Obama Administration as the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Energy and Climate Change on the Staff of the National Security Council. Kah had been the Chief Economist of ConocoPhillips for 25 years, where she developed the company’s market outlooks for oil and natural gas and led the company’s scenario planning exercises. The two discussed the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on oil markets, the outlook for shale and what the 25% decline in demand says about the challenge to move beyond fossil fuels, carbon reduction and climate action.

Maureen Lackner and Aurora Barone of EDF moderated the discussion.

Maureen: Let’s talk about the impact of COVID-19 on oil markets.

Jason: We told 4.2 Billion people around the world to stay home, and oil demand only dropped 25%. On the one hand, that was the largest drop you could possibly imagine. On the other hand we were still using 75% even though we had put half the world’s population under lockdown.  I found that a sobering reminder of how staggering a challenge it is to think about moving to a world beyond oil.

Maureen: You’ve said this idea of energy dominance or energy independence has emerged as a fallacy in the last few months. Can you explain what that means and how we should be thinking about the US role in global oil markets?

Jason: Independence is a fallacy, and this clearly revealed it. Because it’s still a global oil market. What often matters politically and from the standpoint of producers is the price you’re paying at the pump. What is different now is the macroeconomic impact of oil price shocks. This has revealed that we are still vulnerable to global oil supply shocks when oil prices go up and when they fall. There are few politicians who have been more critical of OPEC than President Trump, and the fact that he had no options available to him but to pick up phone and call Moscow and to call Riyadh and say, “Can you help us out, because the pain in the oil patch is too much to bear?” lays bare the idea that we’re not able to insulate ourselves against oil price shocks. And the best way to insulate yourself from oil price shocks is to reduce the oil intensity of your economy in the first place. Which, if at the same time that you’re calling Moscow and Riyadh, you’re rolling back fuel economy standards, doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

Maureen: What happens to US shale in all of this?

Marianne: The outlook for shale really changed before COVID-19 and before the price collapse, and it really had to do with investors being dissatisfied with the returns that were coming from these projects, because the industry was reinvesting 130% of operating cash flow. Investors got tired of it. That reduced investment already slowed production growth. There’s also increasing concern about environmental performance of some of these operations, particularly in the Permian Basin, which is growing at such a rapid rate. There’s a lot of flaring and methane emissions, which further encouraged investors to say, “I don’t want to fund this industry.” All of that happened before COVID. COVID just exaggerated these pre-existing forces by causing a large volume of oil demand to be lost, particularly since some of it may be permanent.

Jason: In the days of prices at $40 or $50, the U.S. was growing at a million to 1.5-million barrels per day per year, which is pretty extraordinary. And we did that year after year. I think those days are gone. Shale is still a major force. Shale is still there, but I think we’re going to see it growing at a much a slower rate, and I think that’s consequential for lots of issues—the environment, the U.S. economy and geopolitics.

Maureen: It seems pretty clear that we will see a pretty big consolidation in terms of the number of players, but when might see production come back, or most of it come back?

Marianne: The industry desperately needs consolidation, because there are really too many producers that are producing small volumes in wells that aren’t that economic. You’ve seen some high-profile bankruptcies—Chesapeake and Whiting petroleum. But the question is, who is going to consolidate it now? Few companies have sufficient cash. The industry is generally in cash preservation mode. And a lot of these companies are very small companies that wouldn’t be material for the oil majors. I’m not sure that consolidation (beyond the Chevron-Noble acquisition) will generally happen now, even though it’s desperately needed.

Maureen: What does the long-term picture look like for major producers, and what does this mean for emissions and a potential energy transition?

Jason: I think for those of us who care about transitioning to a much cleaner decarbonized world, it’s not terribly encouraging. You see traffic patterns and congestion patterns in countries that have reopened like China at pretty close to pre-COVID-19 levels, in some cases even a little higher. Mass transit ridership is still down 30-50% in Chinese cities, not surprisingly, because people are worried about crowded spaces. They’re taking private vehicles more. Intercity travel is still down; diesel demand has held up. Jet fuel obviously is going to be down for a while. And maybe it’s middle to the end of next year when we get back to the level of oil demand where oil was before COVID-19. And then I think it will continue growing. I don’t think we’ve seen peak oil demand. I think aviation might look different for an extended period, given how concerned people will be about traveling coming out of this pandemic.

The kind of transformational change we need for deep decarbonization is not going to happen unless we make it happen, and that’s going to need significant policies, regulations, standards and investments. We may have a window to think about very large-scale investment in the economy, and that’s going to be a historic opportunity to use in a smart way from a climate standpoint.

Maureen: What do you think about this idea that we may be seeing peak oil happen sooner than anticipated, and how can we hold companies to account here and make sure this isn’t just some type of greenwashing, empty promise?

Marianne: There are some people who think we’ve lost two years—whenever the peak was going to be, it’s now going to be two years sooner, all the way to this transition is going to get rid of commuting and reduce travel by air. It may also geographically shrink  supply chains given concern about dependence on China and other foreign sources. There is a desire to nationalize supply chains—and not, for example, buy ventilators from China. That’s going to lower the amount of marine fuel used. One thing that I think is a sleeper is, there’s a renewed emphasis on clean air. On the other side, is the movement to personal vehicles. People are leaving mass transit and moving to personal vehicles. In a low price environment, it’s harder for electric vehicles to compete. People may decide to move out of cities, because they don’t want to be in an urban area anymore, which is going to mean more driving. There’s more deliveries, so that’s again, more driving. Single-use plastics were being banned, but now there may be a reversal of that trend, because people are worried about sanitary packaging. All of these deliveries are using plastic in their boxes. So I think the jury is still out on whether and the direction of long-term impacts on oil demand. There are a lot of moving parts, which is why it’s not obvious.

Maureen: Do you think that there are certain climate policies that are more palatable that we have more leverage for now? A price on carbon might actually be an attractive source of revenue under this new situation?

Marianne: Being an economist, I do favor a carbon price, because that is the most efficient way to get people to change their behavior. The devil is in the details in terms of whether it’s fair. How you get it done in the U.S. is the obvious question. And yes, the U.S. government does need the revenues given growing deficits, but if we don’t recirculate the revenues from the carbon tax into the economy, it will have a negative impact on the economy.

 Aurora: How might US E&P [Exploration & Production] financing be affected by recent events?

 Marianne: The low oil prices certainly have affected it. The current pandemic is considered a temporary situation, so there’s a belief that demand will come back to some degree and that prices will come back to $50-60, some forecasters even think $70 a barrel. In fact, we could even see a period of very high prices because there’s insufficient investment going on in the entire E&P sector now. It’s a cyclical industry. When people don’t have cash, they don’t invest.  I think the very low price we’re getting now from the coronavirus certainly hurts, but it’s really the change of perception—whether this industry is attractive to invest in, and does it have a long-term future that impacts investment. There are increasing questions from investors—how is this industry going to be impacted by carbon actions from governments? As more and more investors ask these questions, I think there’s going to be less and less investment.

 

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What a small country’s successes and mistakes can teach us about emission pricing

By / Published: January 21, 2020

I’m from Aotearoa, New Zealand, and I really love its land and people, but I am fully aware that from a global perspective it appears pretty insignificant – that’s actually one of its charms.  But being small doesn’t mean you can’t make big contributions including toward stabilizing the climate. This recently published article highlights some lessons New Zealand’s experience with emissions trading can offer other Emissions Trading System (ETS) designers at a time when effective climate action is ever more urgent.

Talking intensively to ETS practitioners and experts around the globe about their diverse choices and the reasons why they made them has made me acutely aware of the need to tailor every ETS to local conditions.  In a complex, heterogeneous world facing an existential crisis, diversity in climate policy design makes us stronger and frankly, improves the odds that the young people we love will live in a world where they can thrive.

New Zealand created the second national emissions trading system in 2008, and the system established a number of firsts, some of which have been repeated widely, like output-based allocation of allowances to combat leakage risk.  Others offer cautionary tales, like linking a small country’s emissions trading market to a large emissions trading market over which you have little control.

Simplicity helps make an ETS more manageable and effective

New Zealand’s small scale makes simplicity a key virtue. Our regulators are well educated, but there just aren’t many of them.  This simplicity would also be a strength in a country with capability constraints, or where corruption is a problem and simplicity naturally increases transparency and reduces opportunities for manipulation.

Regulating fossil-fuel production and imports (that inevitably lead to predictable amounts of emissions – in the absence of effective carbon capture and storage) at the first point of commercialization, another first, made monitoring simple and, in the New Zealand context, minimized the number of regulated agents needed to cover almost 100% coverage of energy-related emissions including all domestic transport.

An ETS needs to match a country’s profile and culture

New Zealand’s small scale and our unusual emissions profile (around half our emissions are biological emissions from agriculture – cow burps and other unmentionables – and lots of land ripe for reforestation) led New Zealand to aim for an ‘all sources – all sectors’ coverage of emission pricing – and this worked well for our politics.  In New Zealand ‘fairness’ is a critical cultural value.  New Zealand’s ETS covers energy, transportation and industrial process emissions but also deforestation, reforestation, and fugitive emissions from fossil fuel production and landfill waste management.  We are still working out how to cover those challenging cows in a way that allows rural communities to thrive – with the current intention being to regulate with emission pricing at the farm level starting in 2025.

The cultural value of fairness also led to a strong linkage between the motivations for free allocation and th methods chosen.  Sectors and companies (sometimes pretty much the same thing in NZ) who lobbied for free allocation had to make a logical case that was publicly scrutinized. Lump-sum allocations were given as compensation to those who were losing the value of stranded assets – e.g. owners of pre-1990 forests, including Māori Iwi (tribes) who lost some of the value of forests they had recently received in Treaty settlements when deforestation began to attract carbon liabilities.  Output-based allocation is still provided for industrial activities that are emissions intensive and trade exposed and therefore face a risk of leakage of these economic activities to other countries where climate policy is weaker.  By effectively subsidizing the activities that might move, output-based allocation reduces that risk.

Political instability can negatively impact markets

Not all experiences have been positive however.  As the report highlights, New Zealand’s ETS has suffered from a lack of policy stability and hence lack of emission price stability.  This was partly because our emissions price was largely determined by international markets (from 2008 to mid-2015, New Zealand companies could buy and surrender unlimited amounts of international Kyoto units such as those from the Clean Development Mechanism and Joint Implementation).  New Zealand’s emission prices bobbed like a cork on the international market. Another critical flaw: not embedding our ETS firmly in a long-term vision for low-emissions transformation and within a wider non-political institutional framework that gives predictability of purpose in the inevitable ETS evolutionary process.

The ability to guide, enable and incentivize dynamic efficiency (e.g. efficient low-emissions investment) has always been a key argument for emissions pricing, but, as a profession we economists have paid too little attention to the political and cultural stability that is critical to enable this. Policy makers need to regularly adapt and update policies. That process of policy evolution can help guide us efficiently through a low-emissions transformation, or, in the face of powerful vested interests and strong temptations to globally free-ride, it can open up repeated opportunities to undermine ambition.

New Zealand is now engaged in the next step of its ETS evolution, learning from others and through critical reflection on our own positive and negative experiences, but continuing to innovate and tailor ETS solutions to our own unusual circumstances. The direct impact on global emissions will be small whatever New Zealand does with its ETS, but the lessons and the example that even small yet significant  countries can act and find new solutions, will hopefully help and inspire others.

Kia kaha Aotearoa

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