Abstract
Many economists have long held that carbon pricing—either through a carbon tax or cap-and-trade—is the most cost-effective way to decarbonize energy systems, along with subsidies for basic research and development. Meanwhile, green innovation and industrial policies aimed at fostering low-carbon energy technologies have proliferated widely. Most of these predate direct carbon pricing. Low-carbon leaders such as California and the European Union (EU) have followed a distinct policy sequence that helps overcome some of the political challenges facing low-carbon policy by building economic interest groups in support of decarbonization and reducing the cost of technologies required for emissions reductions. However, while politically effective, this policy pathway faces significant challenges to environmental and cost effectiveness, including excess rent capture and lock-in. Here we discuss options for addressing these challenges under political constraints. As countries move toward deeper emissions cuts, combining and sequencing policies will prove critical to avoid environmental, economic, and political dead-ends in decarbonizing energy systems.
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Change history
19 February 2018
In the PDF version of this Perspective originally published, the asterisk indicating that the author Gernot Wagner is one of the corresponding authors was omitted. This has now been corrected.
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Acknowledgements
We thank E. Barbier, D. Burtraw, O. Edenhofer, B. Keohane, C. Mitchell, L. Stokes and participants in the climate policy workshop at the University of Pittsburgh for discussions and feedback. We are grateful for research assistance from D. Willis. Thomas Sterner thanks Mistra Carbon Exit for funding.
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A correction to this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-018-0089-0.
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Meckling, J., Sterner, T. & Wagner, G. Policy sequencing toward decarbonization. Nat Energy 2, 918–922 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-017-0025-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-017-0025-8
