03.03.2016 - This Friday, the European Union’s Council of Environment ministers will discuss how to follow-up on the Paris Agreement reached at the UN climate summit some weeks ago.
On this issue, Professor Ottmar Edenhofer, Chief Economist of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Co-Chair of the latest IPCC report on mitigation and Director of the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change:
“Putting Paris into practice is now less an issue of the much debated climate targets than of the tools how to actually achieve them. If the EU wants to effectively decrease CO2 output, it has to fix its Emissions Trading System. Introducing a minimum price would help stabilize investor’s expectations and hence boost low-carbon innovation. Second, the EU members should use the G20 – representing about three quarters of emissions worldwide – to coordinate CO2 pricing schemes. Only such pricing can deliver the transparency of every participant’s efforts that the national reduction pledges for Paris, due to their heterogeneous structure, so far could not provide. In helping to achieve this new level of transparency, Europe would be able to build what is most needed in climate policy now: trust.”
