Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Brief Communication
  • Published:

Policy sequencing towards carbon pricing among the world’s largest emitters

Nature Climate Change volume 12, pages 1107–1110 (2022)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Policy sequencing to gradually increase the stringency of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has become an influential narrative without much evidence beyond selected policies and sectors or case studies of individual countries. Here we provide international and cross-sectoral evidence on climate policy sequences for the G20 economies and 18 other large emitters. We find that policy sequences towards carbon pricing are a consistent pattern in the data.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Climate policy sequences of countries with a carbon price.
Fig. 2: Climate policy sequences and the adoption and stringency of carbon pricing.

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

All data are publicly available and were obtained from the following sources: climate policy data, https://climatepolicydatabase.org (CC BY-NC 4.0); data on carbon pricing policies, https://carbonpricingdashboard.worldbank.org/ (CC-BY 4.0: https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/public-licenses); data on education from the Human Development Indicators, https://hdr.undp.org/en/data (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 IGO: https://hdr.undp.org/terms-use); data on GDP per capita and control of corruption, https://data.worldbank.org/ (CC-BY 4.0: https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/public-licenses); data on fossil fuel reserves, https://www.eia.gov/ (public domain: https://www.eia.gov/about/copyrights_reuse.php).

Code availability

A replication package is available at https://github.com/mlinzze/climate-policy-sequences.

References

  1. Meckling, J., Kelsey, N., Biber, E. & Zysman, J. Winning coalitions for climate policy. Science 349, 1170–1171 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Meckling, J., Sterner, T. & Wagner, G. Policy sequencing toward decarbonization. Nat. Energy 2, 918–922 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Pahle, M. et al. Sequencing to ratchet up climate policy stringency. Nat. Clim. Change 8, 861–867 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Bertram, C. et al. Complementing carbon prices with technology policies to keep climate targets within reach. Nat. Clim. Change 5, 235–239 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Bataille, C., Guivarch, C., Hallegatte, S., Rogelj, J. & Waisman, H. Carbon prices across countries. Nat. Clim. Change 8, 648–650 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Stiglitz, J. E. Addressing climate change through price and non-price interventions. Eur. Econ. Rev. 119, 594–612 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Bennear, L. S. & Stavins, R. N. Second-best theory and the use of multiple policy instruments. Environ. Resour. Econ. 37, 111–129 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Fischer, C., Hübler, M. & Schenker, O. More birds than stones—a framework for second-best energy and climate policy adjustments. J. Public Econ. 203, 104515 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Leipprand, A., Flachsland, C. & Pahle, M. Starting low, reaching high? Sequencing in EU climate and energy policies. Environ. Innov. Soc. Transit. 37, 140–155 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Nascimento, L. Twenty years of climate policy: G20 coverage and gaps. Clim. Policy 22, 158–174 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. den Elzen, M. et al. Are the G20 economies making enough progress to meet their NDC targets? Energy Policy 126, 238–250 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Roelfsema, M. et al. Taking stock of national climate policies to evaluate implementation of the Paris Agreement. Nat. Commun. 11, 2096 (2020).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  13. Fekete, H. et al. A review of successful climate change mitigation policies in major emitting economies and the potential of global replication. Renew. Sustain. Energy Rev. 137, 110602 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Dechezleprêtre, A., Glachant, M., Haščič, I., Johnstone, N. & Ménière, Y. Invention and transfer of climate change–mitigation technologies: a global analysis. Rev. Environ. Econ. Policy 5, 109–130 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Linsenmeier, M., Mohammad, A. & Schwerhoff, G. The International Diffusion of Policies for Climate Change Mitigation Working Paper No. 2022/115 (IMF, 2022)

  16. Steinebach, Y., Fernández-i-Marı́n, X. & Aschenbrenner, C. Who puts a price on carbon, why and how? A global empirical analysis of carbon pricing policies. Clim. Policy 21, 277–289 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Eskander, S. M., Fankhauser, S. & Setzer, J. Global lessons from climate change legislation and litigation. in Environmental and Energy Policy and the Economy Vol. 2, 44–82 (eds Kotchen, M., Stock, J. & Wolfram, C.) (University of Chicago Press, 2020).

  18. Schmidt, T. S. & Sewerin, S. Measuring the temporal dynamics of policy mixes—an empirical analysis of renewable energy policy mixes’ balance and design features in nine countries. Res. Policy 48, 103557 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Best, R. & Zhang, Q. Y. What explains carbon-pricing variation between countries? Energy Policy 143, 111541 (2020).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank S. S. Aiyar (IMF), A. Alichi (IMF), M. Auffhammer (Berkeley), M. Chin (IMF), S. Dietz (LSE), S. Fankhauser (Oxford), G. Gostlow (LSE), D. Heine (World Bank), F. Jaumotte (IMF), L. Nascimento (NewClimate Institute), M. Pahle (PIK), R. Salgado (IMF), T. da Silva Filho (IMF), P. Sodsriwiboon (IMF), J. Wiegand (IMF) and participants in internal seminars at IMF and LSE for valuable comments and suggestions. M.L. acknowledges financial support by the United Kingdom’s Economic and Social Research Council with grant number 2300776. For the purpose of open access, the authors have applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising. All remaining errors are our own. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board or IMF management.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK

    Manuel Linsenmeier

  2. Earth Institute, Climate School, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Manuel Linsenmeier

  3. Research Department, International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC, USA

    Adil Mohommad & Gregor Schwerhoff

Authors
  1. Manuel Linsenmeier
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Adil Mohommad
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Gregor Schwerhoff
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

M.L., A.M. and G.S. designed the research. M.L. collected and analysed the data. M.L., A.M. and G.S. wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Manuel Linsenmeier.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature Climate Change thanks Chris Bataille, Jonas Meckling, Toon Vandyck and Michael Pahle for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Sample of countries included in the analysis.

Map shows whether the data on climate policies can be considered complete. See also Supplementary Table 2. Basemap adapted from World Bank Official Boundaries under a Creative Commons license CC BY 4.0.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Length of climate policy sequences at the time of adoption of the first carbon pricing policy.

The histograms show the cumulative percentages of countries that used the given number of instrument types in the corresponding sector before they adopted their first carbon pricing policy.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Tables 1–10 and Figs. 1–3.

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Linsenmeier, M., Mohommad, A. & Schwerhoff, G. Policy sequencing towards carbon pricing among the world’s largest emitters. Nat. Clim. Chang. 12, 1107–1110 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01538-8

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-022-01538-8

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing