By Michael Grubb, Heleen de Coninck and Ambuj D. Sagar
In Climate Policy’s latest editorial, Editor-in-Chief, Michael Grubb, together with Climate Strategies Chair Heleen de Coninck and the director of Indian Institute of Technology Ambuj D. Sagar, reflect on the current state of play in the climate negotiations in the run-up to Paris 2015.
They suggest that forming a plurilateral mitigation “club”, including those governments most committed to ambitious mitigation, would provide the most compelling, economically coherent and politically stable package for making genuine progress towards the global 2 degree goal.
They argue that three main areas of coordinated action by club members could mutually reinforce each other, lead to a positive dynamic, and deliver reciprocal benefits for those members. These would be:
- A domestic price on carbon, or equivalent measures, appropriate to the stage of economic and climate policy development;
- Domestic technology programmes and international technology cooperation, spanning the full chain of innovation from R&D to accelerated international deployment of zero-carbon technologies; and
- Agreed treatment of international trade in both energy/carbon-intensive commodities, and low-carbon technologies and products, potentially to be taken forward as a plurilateral agreement in accordance with the broad principles of the WTO.
Read the full Editorial, then come back to the blog to comment. All Michael Grubb’s Editorials 2010-2015 can be found here (found at the bottom of the page).