Climate policies that achieved major emission reductions: Global evidence from two decades

Meeting the Paris Agreement's climate targets necessitates better knowledge about which climate policies work in reducing emissions at the necessary scale. We provide a global, systematic ex post evaluation to identify policy combinations that have led to large emission reductions out of 1500 climate policies implemented between 1998 and 2022 across 41 countries from six continents. Our approach integrates a comprehensive climate policy database with a machine learning-based extension of the common difference-in-differences approach. We identified 63 successful policy interventions with total emission reductions between 0.6 billion and 1.8 billion metric tonnes CO<sub>2</sub>. Our insights on effective but rarely studied policy combinations highlight the important role of price-based instruments in well-designed policy mixes and the policy efforts necessary for closing the emissions gap.

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Publication Details

Journal
Science
Published
2024-08-22
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adl6547
Citations
230
Primary Topic
Climate Change Policy and Economics
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
257.46
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article

Climate policies that achieved major emission reductions: Global evidence from two decades

Nolan Ritter, Annika Stechemesser, Nicolas Koch, Felix Pretis et al.
230 citations
Science
Climate Change Policy and Economics
257.46
article

Climate policies that achieved major emission reductions: Global evidence from two decades

Nolan Ritter, Annika Stechemesser, Nicolas Koch, Felix Pretis, Daniel Nachtigall, M. Schwarz, Ebba Mark, Helena Vossen, Anna Wenzel, Elina Dilger, Patrick Klösel, Laura Menicacci
article en
230 citations

Abstract

Meeting the Paris Agreement's climate targets necessitates better knowledge about which climate policies work in reducing emissions at the necessary scale. We provide a global, systematic ex post evaluation to identify policy combinations that have led to large emission reductions out of 1500 climate policies implemented between 1998 and 2022 across 41 countries from six continents. Our approach integrates a comprehensive climate policy database with a machine learning-based extension of the common difference-in-differences approach. We identified 63 successful policy interventions with total emission reductions between 0.6 billion and 1.8 billion metric tonnes CO<sub>2</sub>. Our insights on effective but rarely studied policy combinations highlight the important role of price-based instruments in well-designed policy mixes and the policy efforts necessary for closing the emissions gap.

ScienceVol. 385(6711)
Organisation de Coopération et de Développement Economiques (FR), University of Potsdam (DE), IZA - Institute of Labor Economics (DE), University of Victoria (CA), University of Oxford (GB), Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (DE), New College (GB), Technische Universität Berlin (DE), Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (DE)
Climate action
Openalex Percentile: Top 0%
Climate Change Policy and Economics
257.46
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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Climate policies that achieved major emission reductions: Global evidence from two decades — Nolan Ritter, Annika Stechemesser, et al. · Science (2024) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS