Policy Options to Reduce Ireland’s GHG Emissions Instrument choice: the pros and cons of alternative policy instruments. WP284. March 2009

Scott, Sue and Legge, Thomas. (2009) Policy Options to Reduce Ireland’s GHG Emissions Instrument choice: the pros and cons of alternative policy instruments. WP284. March 2009. [Working Paper]

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Abstract

The resolving scientific consensus about the causes and implications of climate change presents a policy challenge to governments: how to decarbonise economies and adapt them to avoid the worst effects of climate change in an efficient, or at least cost-effective, manner. Following internationally accepted principles articulated in the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, industrialised countries are expected to take the earliest action, for which the targets of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol – which expire in 2012 – are seen as a first contribution. In December 2007, at a UN conference in Bali, Indonesia, the international community began negotiations towards a new global climate agreement to deal with the post-2012 period. There are high expectations that an ambitious agreement will be reached at the follow-up UN conference in Copenhagen in December 2009. This optimism is partly due to the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States, who campaigned on a promise to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and by a further 80 percent by 2050. This offers the possibility of a renewed engagement by the United States in the international climate regime. Meanwhile the European Council – the regular summit of EU heads of state and government – finalised a unilateral commitment in December 2008 to reduce overall EU emissions by 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020; the European Union will extend this commitment to 30 percent in the event of a global deal with similar commitments by other major industrialised countries. This goal is also seen as a stage in the longer-term aim by developed countries to reduce their emissions collectively by 60-80 percent by 2050. The common EU position and the improved possibility of a renewed global response sends a signal to stakeholders in Ireland that the debate about climate change has turned from whether to act to how to act.

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