Publications

The French government has just officially unveiled the content of its €100 billion recovery plan, part of which is dedicated to the fight against climate change.

Foreword from Pierre DUCRET, Chair ...

An international consortium of 14  expert organisations, including I4CE, has launched the "Energy Policy Tracker" website to track Covid-19 recovery packages from a climate and energy perspective. Initial results show that until now, G20 countries have granted much more aid to fossil fuels than to clean energies. What about France? Louise Kessler, Director of I4CE's Economics Programme, looks back at the government policies already adopted in France as well as those that are still at the announcement stage.

Decisions taken in response to the COVID-19 crisis today will lock in the world’s development patterns for decades. With policy decisions made on a daily basis, information about how public money is being spent can be hard to follow. That is why a consortium of 14 expert organizations came together to track energy-specific responses by G20 governments.

To accelerate and deepen this work, the new European Commission will adopt a renewed Sustainable Finance Strategy.  As the public consultation to define the future directions of this strategy draws to a close, Julie Evain from I4CE points out three challenges to be met in order to integrate climate issues into the financial sector.

Ian Cochran and Alice Pauthier explain why even with COVID19, public financial institutions (PFIs) must continue their important work on aligning their activities with climate and sustainability goals – and how their progress may be key to ensuring that the response to the crisis is both just and green.

One of the main elements of the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for the 2021-2027 exercise is the shift of part of the funding towards an obligation to achieve environmental results. Is that an expensive development? Environmentally effective? In order to answer these questions, this I4CE study analyses numerous mechanisms, more or less oriented towards performance obligation.

In spite of its "greening" during the previous programming period, the Common Agricultural Policy has had very little impact on greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector, even though they must be halved by 2050. And the CAP's two flagship instruments on environmental issues - green payments under the first pillar, and agri-environmental and climate measures (AECM) under the second - have come in for strong criticism.

The pandemic caused by Covid 19 has triggered a major economic crisis. The emergency treatment of this crisis relied heavily on massive recourse to fiscal and monetary instruments already widely used during the 2008 crisis. But financial regulation was also mobilized to ease or alleviate prudential constraints in order to preserve bank financing for economic players, especially those most affected by the crisis. This illustrates the different facets of the use of financial regulation: primarily intended to ensure the efficient functioning of financial markets and financial stability, it can also be used with economic policy objectives.

States and more generally public authorities will not finance the transition to a low-carbon and climate-resilient economy on their own. Private financial actors have a key role to play and, over the past decades, they have taken numerous initiatives to promote "responsible investment" and "sustainable finance". However, the impact of these initiatives is far from commensurate with the climate challenge, , and financial regulation must play a role. This I4CE study analyses the different objectives that regulators can pursue to help the financial sector respond to the climate urgency, and provides an overview of the instruments at their disposal. It also highlights the challenges of implementing these instruments and identifies those that need to be used in the short term and those that need more time to be implemented.

In sharp contrast with the stimulus strategy adopted in France in 2008, which focused exclusively on directly visible economic benefits, each public euro invested to recover from the crisis will have to value the environmental and health co-benefits. This is the thesis of this article by I4CE and Terra Nova. With the increase of the French public debt and the eventual reduction of budgetary room for manoeuvre, valuing all the co-benefits of public action is no longer a simple option but an imperative. It would reduce the 50 billion euros/year costs of air pollution in France, among other societal benefits.

The current economic crisis has caused a drop in the price on the European carbon market (or EU ETS for European Union Emissions Trading System) and will contribute to the increase in the surplus of allowances. This highlights how necessary it is to reform the mechanism for managing this surplus or even to implement a floor price. However, for Charlotte Vailles from I4CE and Nicolas Berghmans from IDDRI, this crisis should lead us to consider the EU ETS no longer as the "cornerstone" of decarbonisation in Europe, but as a safety net.

Explicit carbon pricing systems - a tax or a carbon market - continue to develop around the world. In the 2020 edition of its Global Carbon Accounts, I4CE presents the main trends and provides an overview of these public policies: the countries that have adopted them, the sectors covered, the price levels, the revenues generated and what is being done with them. Find all this information in graphics.

From implementation to disclosure by companies in the TCFD framework   The transition to a low-carbon economy represents risks and opportunities for companies. Indeed, far-reaching changes are expected in socio-economic systems, with uncertainties about their timing and magnitude, and their economic and financial consequences. In this context, forward-looking methods –in particular scenario analysis – are […]

A few months ago, the European Commission launched a consultation on the revision of the Non-Financial Reporting Directive. The issue at stake is to strengthen the obligation for 6,000 large companies to communicate publicly on how they deal with major societal issues, such as climate change and low-carbon transition. For Romain Hubert of I4CE, reporting must be strengthened in particular on the scenario analyses that companies conduct to identify the risks and opportunities of the transition. But what exactly should they communicate?

Confronted with a health crisis that has caused a global social and economic shock, the European Union and countries around the world are adopting major economic support programs. Following the initial focus that must be on overcoming the health emergency itself, actions that contribute to climate goals can be an effective part of improving both the economy and the resilience of our society. I4CE’s proposal calls for a public finance package of 7 billion euros per year that is estimated to trigger 19 billion euros of additional public and private investment. Altogether, this package would contribute to the economic recovery post-crisis, while simultaneously reinforcing our society against future shocks without reducing France’s contribution to international climate goals.

The world is confronted with a health crisis that has caused a global social and economic shock – and in the short term we must be focused on responding to this disaster. Nevertheless, it is also important to start preparing now for the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic to avoid a deep and lasting economic recession. Around the world, international, national and local stakeholders are starting to draw up recovery plans. Many recognize that actions that contribute to climate goals can be an effective part of improving both the economy and the resilience of our society. We thus have an opportunity to accelerate investments that will be both pro-recovery, as well as contribute to the fight against climate change. However, this will require that we do not repeat the mistakes of the past, as explains I4CE’s Quentin Perrier, who draws parallels from the post-2008 financial crisis recovery plan.

Many states have set themselves the objective of becoming carbon neutral: their residual emissions will have to be offset by equivalent absorptions by carbon sinks on their territory. Julia Grimault explains the uncertainties surrounding the forest sink and calls for localized and no-regrets actions to act against climate change.

For several years now, the idea of using capital requirements for environmental purposes has been gaining ground. But before this can happen, however, several questions about such requirements need to be resolved, particularly as regards the instrument to be used and the objective to be achieved. Michel Cardona from I4CE has released this OpEd available on Euractiv

Climate change dynamics are on a trajectory of intensification which may require the use of new and notable measures. The Paris Agreement recognized the urgency of directing financial flows toward low carbon activities and climate-resilient development. However, the latest special Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report 1 stated that to limit global warming to 1.5oC, the financial resources directed to green activities are by far insufficient and investments on carbon intensive projects are still far too high. At the same time, climate-related risks continue to potentially endanger the stability of the financial sector and they are only marginally addressed by Basel III capital requirements.