This is the 3rd study to be published in the CEPS Policy Brief series from ongoing research being carried out for the EU-funded ADAM project (ADaptation And Mitigation strategies: supporting European climate policy). Following an introduction to the aims and objectives of the ADAM project, section 2 sets out the rationales for public policy related to adaptation to the impacts of climatic change in the EU.

Defying all odds, governments participating in the global climate negotiations at Bali, Indonesia reached agreement on a roadmap towards a global climate change agreement to be completed by the end of 2009, ready to fill the gap when the commitments under the Kyoto Protocol expire in 2012. The contributions in this book examine some of the most difficult and controversial questions that global climate change negotiators face between now and the emergence of a ‘Copenhagen Protocol’ in 2009, and even beyond.

This paper is based on ongoing research being carried out in the context of the ADAM project (ADaptation And Mitigation strategies: supporting European climate policy), funded by the European Commission. While initial responses to the challenges of climate change concentrated on mitigation, in particular reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in an attempt to curb the growth in global temperatures, there is now increasing recognition of the need for nations, communities and individuals, to adapt to some level of climate change, even with reductions in emissions.

In anticipation of the European Commission’s publication of its long-awaited proposal for implementing the European Council’s 2007 decisions on the integrated climate and energy policy, CEPS Senior Fellow Christian Egenhofer investigates the justification for continuing free allocation of allowances to industry.

The new international climate change agenda encompasses trade, argues a new CEPS Commentary by Christian Egenhofer that assesses the results of the UN climate change negotiations concluded in Bali on 15 December. The first-ever meeting among trade ministers on climate change is another sign of an emerging trade and climate change agenda.

Successful global sectoral industry approaches could become an effective means of broadening the range of contributions by all parties to greenhouse gas reductions, and of addressing competitiveness concerns in trade-exposed industries. This report puts these two hypotheses to the test and identifies the key requirements for global sectoral industry approaches to work.

The difficulty of achieving and implementing a global climate change agreement has stimulated a wide range of policy proposals designed to favour the participation of a large number of countries in a global cooperative effort to control greenhouse gas emissions.

This report examines the challenge of adequately addressing adaptation to climate change impacts in developing counties by means of international collaboration, and the reasons why it is in the interest of industrialised countries, including the EU, to do so. This is a topic that has been gaining prominence on the agenda of the international climate change negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as well as in other international forums.

This report contains an analysis on the review of the EU Emissions Trading scheme from a strategic and an operational perspective. It covers the implementation of the EU ETS undertaken to date, its linkages with investment decisions, the 2006 review and impacts on global carbon markets. The executive summary contains a number of concrete and operational policy recommendations for improving the EU ETS. The recommendations are primarily addressed to EU policy-makers but some of them may also be relevant to other key players influencing the functioning of the EU ETS.

This report presents the findings of a multi-stakeholder CEPS Task Force, co-chaired by David Hone, Shell and Lasse Nord, Norsk Hydro. After taking stock of the EU ETS, the report examines the need and potential for short-term adaptation of the second round of allocation and makes concrete and operational recommendations to EU member states and the European Commission.

The EU and the US have found themselves supporting two polar views on which strategy is the most effective in achieving stabilisation of greenhouse (GHG) emissions: ‘market pull’ vs ‘technology push’. As an advocate of the latter, the US asserts that the principal emphasis should be on technology development, financed through typical public R&D programmes. In supporting the ‘market-pull’ approach, the EU argues that technological change is an incremental process emanating primarily from business and industry, induced by government incentives.

In this new Policy Brief, US Congressional and Presidential actions on several recent budgets are examined for the four principal areas of the budget affecting climate change: technology, science, international and tax credits, with a special emphasis on energy technology. The author finds several major differences in Presidential and Congressional approaches to funding climate change programmes, providing further evidence that the Presidential-Congressional divide on climate policy is continuing to widen.

This book analyses the policy mixes that provide the best incentives for firms and governments to act on climate change and sign up to international climate agreements. In doing so, the authors address a multitude of related issues including the linkages between flexible mechanisms and voluntary agreements; regulation and taxation; the opportunities and barriers of the Kyoto Protocol for industry.