5 May 2021
The literature evaluating the technical and socioeconomic outcomes of policy instruments used to support the transition to low-carbon economies is neither easily accessible nor comparable and often provides conflicting results. This paper shows how the team have developed and implemented a framework to systematically review and synthesize the impact of ten types of decarbonization policy instruments on seven technical and socioeconomic outcomes. It shows that the selected types of regulatory and economic and financial instruments are generally associated with positive impacts on environmental, technological and innovation outcomes. Several instruments are often associated with short-term negative impacts on competitiveness and distributional outcomes. It is discussed how these trade-offs can be reduced or transformed into co-benefits by designing research and development and government procurement, deployment policies, carbon pricing and trading. They show how specific design features can promote competitiveness and reduce negative distributional impacts, particularly for small firms. An online interactive Decarbonisation Policy Evaluation Tool allows further analysis of the evidence.
Both the tool and the paper are the result of the INNOPATHS project (H2020 project of the EC).
You can see the paper here
18 March 2021