Pricing carbon is one of the most powerful and efficient strategies that governments and businesses are using to respond to climate change. The principle is simple: put a price on carbon pollution to account for the impacts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that stem from the economic choices made by both producers and consumers.

Demand for renewable energy is booming. Scholars often attribute this success to feed-in tariffs (FITs), which mandate that energy utilities pay a premium to renewable electricity producers and guarantee grid access for them. Why have so many countries, including least-developed ones, adopted these policies? We hypothesize that democratic governments have political incentives to adopt the FIT because it improves environmental quality, promotes rural development, and distributes electricity generation profits from large utilities to independent producers.

Feed-in tariffs (FITs), along with renewable electricity standards, are one of the most widely adopted renewable energy support policies around the world. As of 2013, 98 national and subnational governments had implemented FITs, nearly three times the number that had adopted them in 2004 (REN21 2015). In recent years, FIT activity has focused primarily on revisions to current policies, underscoring the need for stable and predictable, yet flexible, policy environments.

The case for climate action has never been stronger. Current weather extremes, including storms, floods and drought, affect millions of people across the world. Climate change is putting water security at risk; threatening agricultural and other supply chains as well as many coastal cities. The likelihood of severe pervasive and irreversible impacts will grow without action to limit and reverse the growth of GHG emissions globally.

The report is a one stop shop for learning about key developments and prospects of existing and emerging carbon initiatives. A challenging international carbon market has not stopped the development of domestic carbon pricing initiatives. Today, about 40 national and over 20 sub-national jurisdictions responsible for almost one fourth of global greenhouse gas emissions are putting a price on carbon.

Launched in May 2017, the Carbon Pricing Dashboard is an interactive online platform that provides up-to-date information on existing and emerging carbon pricing initiatives around the world.

This report documents progress made in conducting peer reviews of economies’ policies supporting fossil fuels, highlights recent developments in policy reforms around the world, and summarises other significant developments to further the goal of fossil-fuel subsidy reform.

This paper develops and operationalizes the Integrated Economic-Environmental Modelling (IEEM) platform which integrates environmental data organized under the first international standard for environmental-economic accounting with a powerful economy-wide modelling approach. IEEM enables the ex-ante economic analysis of public policies and investment on the economy and the environment in a quantitative, comprehensive and consistent framework.

The State and Trends of Carbon Pricing series reflects on the growing momentum for carbon pricing worldwide. It targets the wide audience of public and private stakeholders engaged in carbon pricing design and implementation. This report provides an up-to-date overview of existing and emerging carbon pricing instruments around the world, including national and subnational initiatives.

Many energy prices in many countries are wrong. They are set at levels that do not reflect environmental damage, notably global warming, air pollution, and various side effects of motor vehicle use. In so doing, many countries raise too much revenue from direct taxes on work effort and capital accumulation and too little from taxes on energy use. This book is about getting energy prices right. The principle that fiscal instruments must be center stage in “correcting” the major environmental side effects of energy use is well established.