by WASHINGTON (AP) – To find out what really works when nations try to fight climate change, researchers looked at 1,500 ways countries have tried to limit heat-trapping gases. Their answer: Not many have done the work. And success often means one has to pay a price, whether at the pump or elsewhere.
In just 63 cases since 1998, did researchers find policies that resulted in significant reductions in carbon pollution, a new study in the journal Science found Thursday.
For example, the moves toward ending fossil fuel use and gas-powered engines have not worked on their own, but are more successful when combined with some form of energy tax or surcharge system, the study’s authors said in an analysis. comprehensive of a global system. emissions, climate policies and laws.
“The key ingredient if you want to reduce emissions is that you have pricing in the policy mix,” said study co-author Nicolas Koch, a climate economist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “If subsidies and regulations come alone or in combination with each other, you won’t see big reductions in emissions. But when price instruments come into the mix like a carbon energy tax, they will deliver those significant reductions in emissions.”
The study also found that what works in rich nations does not always work as well in developing countries.
Still, it shows the power of the wallet and fighting climate change, something economists always doubt, said some outside policy experts, climate scientists and economists who praised the study.
“We won’t have a climate problem in the richer nations until the polluter pays,” said Rob Jackson, a Stanford University climate scientist and author of the book Clear Blue Sky. “Other policies help, but crawl on the edge.”
“Carbon pricing puts the onus on the owners and products that cause the climate crisis,” Jackson said in an email.
It is a great example of what works in the electricity sector in the United Kingdom, Koch said. That country instituted a mix of 11 different policies starting in 2012, including phasing out coal and a pricing scheme linked to emissions trading, which it said accounted for nearly half of emissions – “massive effect”.
Of the 63 success stories, the largest reduction was seen in the South African construction sector, where a combination of regulation, subsidies and equipment labeling reduced emissions by almost 54%.
It was the only success story in the United States in transportation. Emissions fell by 8% from 2005 to 2011 due to a combination of fuel standards — which amount to regulation — and subsidies.
But even the policy tools that seem to work still barely made a dent in ever-increasing carbon dioxide emissions. Overall, the study found 63 successful cases of climate policies that cut 600 million to 1.8 billion metric tons of the heat-trapping gas. Last year the world emitted 36.8 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide burning fossil fuels and making cement.
If all major countries somehow learned the lesson of this analysis and enacted the policies that work best, it would only reduce the UN’s “emissions gap” of 23 billion metric tons of all greenhouse gases by approx. on 26%, the study found. The gap is the difference between the amount of carbon on track to be released into the air in 2030 and the amount that would keep warming at or below internationally agreed levels.
“It basically shows that we need to do a better job,” said Koch, who is also head of the policy evaluation lab at the Mercator Research Institute in Berlin.
Niklas Hohne at Germany’s New Climate Institute, who was not part of the study, said: “The world needs to make a step change, move into emergency mode and do the impossible.”
Koch and his team looked at emissions and efforts to reduce them in 41 countries between 1998 and 2022 — so that doesn’t include the nearly $400 billion the United States spent in a climate-fighting spending package passed two years ago as a cornerstone of President Joe Biden. environmental policy — and logged 1,500 different policy actions. They put the policies into four broad categories — pricing, regulations, subsidies and information — and analyzed four distinct sectors of the economy: electricity, transport, buildings and industry.
In what Koch called “the reverse causality approach,” the team looked at emissions drops of 5% or more in various sectors of the countries’ economies and then figured out what caused them with the help of observations and machine learning. as control groups and accounted for weather and other factors, Koch said.
The team created a statistically transparent approach that others can use to update or replicate, including an interactive website where users can select nations and economic sectors to see what worked. And it could eventually be applied to Biden’s 2022 climate package, he said. That package was heavy on subsidies.
John Sterman, a management professor at the MIT Sloan Institute for Sustainability who was not part of the research, said that it is easier for politicians to subsidize and pass policies that promote low-carbon technologies. He said that was not enough.
“There is also a need to discourage fossil fuels by pricing them closer to their full cost, including the costs of the climate damage they cause,” he said.
___
Follow Seth Borenstein on X at @borenbears
___
Read more about AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment
___
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage is financially supported by multiple private foundations. AP is responsible for each and every subject. Find AP standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and covered areas of funding at AP.org.
