Study shows which climate policies actually work:
With time running out to avoid catastrophic levels of climate change, a comprehensive new study has identified which government policies actually help to rein in planet-heating emissions.
Aided by machine learning tools, researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and other organisations looked at 1,500 climate policies implemented worldwide over the past 25 years — and found there were only 63 successful ones.
“Our insights on effective but rarely studied policy combinations highlight the important role of price-based instruments in well-designed policy mixes and the policy efforts necessary for closing the emissions gap,” reads the study, which was published in Science.
As an example, in the UK’s electricity sector, the introduction of a minimum price on carbon in 2013, alongside other measures such as stricter air pollution standards and renewable energy feed-in tariffs and auctions, yielded substantial emissions cuts.
