Designing Elements for a Robust Carbon Pricing Club

Experts from academia, government, international organizations, and civil society gathered to continue a dialogue on low carbon clubs at the intersection of pricing, technology investment, and trade. This workshop built on conversations which started at the Global Climate Policy Conference, organized by Climate Strategies and the Stanley Center in the spring 2015 in India and were continued at a workshop, hosted by the Stanley Center, Climate Strategies, ICTSD, and IDDRI on July 8, 2015, in Paris, which focused on the role, definition, and interest in developing low carbon clubs.

Carbon pricing policies have emerged as a powerful and viable tool for addressing global warming. As of September 15, 2015, 39 countries and 23 regions, representing 12 percent of the world’s population, had implemented a carbon pricing policy of some kind. Implementing carbon pricing policies involves navigating a number of dilemmas, including the selection of implicit (e.g., energy efficiency or product standards) or explicit (e.g., emissions trading schemes or carbon taxes) carbon pricing policies, depending on the response of different sectors of the economy. Conversations about syncing carbon pricing policies across multiple jurisdictions will help to set principles that will enable eventual market convergence and broaden the engagement in carbon pricing discussions overall in order to support the widespread adoption of carbon pricing that can lead to global market transformation and large-scale decarbonization.