Emissions Gap of 23 Billion Tons of CO2 Equivalent by 2030 States Climate Report

University of Oxford, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change econometricians have analyzed 1,500 announced climate policies from 41 countries in a new study. The results conclude that of these, only 63 have any effect on carbon dioxide (CO2) or equivalent greenhouse gasses (GHGs) reductions of between 0.6 and 1.8 Gigatons. It sounds like bad news but other countries can reproduce these 63 effective policies to accelerate reductions and close a gap between the Paris Climate Agreement’s agreed-upon goals and current reality.

The study has created the Climate Policy Explorer, a dashboard where anyone can look at successful sector implementations and reduced emission results. I dove into the dashboard to see what I could learn. For example, it showed that 22.7% of successful policies in the electricity sector used a taxation strategy with one standalone reducing emissions by 28.92%, and seven deploying a policy mix of tax, subsidy and regulation reducing emissions by 25.63%. In the same sector, implementing air pollution standards led to 4 successful policies that reduced emissions by 19.05%. Renewable subsidies in 8 implementations produced more than 20% reductions.

One of the biggest sectors contributing to GHGs is transportation. A breakdown of policies by type notes that subsidies have produced 41.2% of the total emission reductions in this sector with 13 of 72 amounting to average emission reductions of 13.93%. Pricing policies in 17 of 67 implementations have produced 11.24% reductions.

The Explorer allows viewers to see what policies have succeeded and where deficiencies lie in execution. Some results are deceptive with emission drops coincident with economic and pandemic crises in the first two decades of the 21st century.

The research results were recently described in an article entitled “Climate policies that achieved major emission reductions: Global evidence from two decades” appearing in the journal Science. It describes an emission breaks methodology developed at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, INET Oxford. The break detection methodology incorporates machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence, to study multi-decade global data for many implemented climate policies. The results to date are both sobering and disappointing.

The Climate Policy Explorer makes all results transparent to policymakers across the world. States Dr. MoritZ Schwarz, an Associate of the Climate Econometrics Programme at Oxford, “Our results inform contentious policy debates in three main ways. First, we show evidence for the effectiveness of policy mixes. Second, our findings highlight that successful policy mixes vary across sectors and that policy-makers should focus on sector-specific best practices. Third, our results stress that effective policies vary with economic development.” The Explorer provides examples of concrete, effective mixed strategies that are working to mitigate carbon emissions and ones that have been tried with limited success.

Examples of Climate Policies Enacted and Results

The following compares two North American countries and their approaches to carbon emission reduction and climate change mitigation.

Canada and the U.S.

In the U.S., the Inflation Reduction Act was legislated in 2022 to spend $369 billion in the form of subsidies to help accelerate the country’s energy transition from carbon. Grants, tax credits and loans represented the policies America was using to help meet its target emission reductions.

In Canada, a two-track set of public policies were enacted. The first was an industrial pricing strategy for carbon pollution. The second was a progressive carbon levy that added costs for consumers using fossil fuels. That second also included offsetting rebates sent to consumers.

For both countries, these very different approaches to carbon policy have failed to hit needed emission reduction milestones. What are these milestones?

The U.S. set a target of 50 to 52% national carbon emission reductions by 2030. Most effective has been California’s state-level cap-and-trade program which other states have either joined in or mimicked, and two Federal Environmental Protection Agency programs, Energy Star aimed at consumers and the Green Power Partnership aimed at utilities.

Canada set a 40 to 45% carbon emission reduction target by the same year. Its most effective policies so far have been industrial carbon pricing and a large-emitter trading system. The least effective so far and the most misunderstood is the carbon levy on consumers at the gas pump.

At their current pace, both the U.S. and Canada are trending well below their target reductions in all sectors of their respective economies.

The United Kingdom and the European Union

The right carbon emission reduction policies can matter. In terms of the power sector in the United Kingdom, a carbon price floor was established in 2013 that has helped the country to reverse emissions growth. The carbon price floor was one of several policies that included stricter air pollution standards, the phase-out of coal-fired power plants, a feed-in tariff and carbon auctions. In its reporting, the UK states its mix of policies has reduced emissions from the energy sector by 43.6%.

The European Union has instituted a mix of carbon emission reduction policies with far more aggressive and ambitious targets. The EU goal is a net 55% or greater reduction from 1990 levels by 2030. Over 3,000 policies have been enacted across its member states to implement mitigation with targets set for GHGs in key economic sectors. Based on current trends, the EU will not meet the goal but should see 43% reductions by 2030.

Climate Policy Explorer Dashboard Hopes

The Institute wants policymakers to use the dashboard to study the effective and ineffective climate actions from 41 countries across all sectors of their economies to reduce continuing to try what doesn’t work and instead implement a core of best practices for their nations.

Professor Felix Pretis, Co-Director of the Climate Econometrics Programme, University of Oxford, stated in an August 23, 2024 press release, “Scaling up good practice policies identified in this study to other sectors and other parts of the world can in the short term be a powerful climate mitigation strategy…The dashboard that we make available to policy-makers provides an accessible platform to conduct country-by-country, sector-by-sector comparisons and to find a suitable policy mix for different situations.”

What the dashboard shows is that:

• Carbon pricing whether emissions trading systems or a carbon levy or tax is a proven method to reduce emissions.
• Renewable energy targets and incentives are encouraging the increased use of clean energy sources.
• Energy efficiency standards and programs are helping to reduce emissions across various sectors.

It is the combination of these types of policies administered across national economies, however, that is proving to be the most effective means to drive down emissions.

More tools like the Climate Policy dashboard are needed. Fully disseminated knowledge-sharing successes and failures are critical. Otherwise, global atmospheric warming of 1.5 Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) will be behind us before we know it, and we will face a very different world by 2050 and beyond.