“Carbon Pricing Policy Making Through a Sectoral Lens”
7 & 8 March 2022
[Posted on Behalf of Katja Biedenkopf]In the 1990s, governments started pricing carbon – initially by adopting carbon taxes – in order to disincentivise the use of carbon-intensive products and processes. In the 2000s, a new type of carbon pricing policy started to diffuse: greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions trading (ETS). Various carbon pricing policy designs in the form of a carbon tax, a GHG ETS or a combination of both have been adopted by diverse jurisdictions at the subnational, national and supranational level. Researchers have started investigating why and how those policies were adopted in some jurisdictions and sectors but not in others (for example Biedenkopf et al. 2017; Wettestad & Gulbrandsen 2018). Yet, a comparative analysis of agenda-setting, policy formulation and policy adoption in a broad range of jurisdictions with an explicit focus on sectoral differences and dynamics is still missing.
Carbon pricing policies address and are applied in different sectors. For example, the national Chinese ETS initially focuses on the electricity sector only, while the California ETS covers a wide range of sectors. Whereas some studies assess carbon pricing policies’ effectiveness in specific sectors, research on the dynamics and factors that shape their agenda-setting, policy formulation and policy adoption from a sectoral perspective is scarce, if not absent. In our workshop, we aim to take a sector-specific approach to understanding carbon pricing policy-making. Individual sectors require diverse price levels to encourage decarbonisation. They are characterised by different interest and stakeholder constellations. Jurisdictions’ economies depend to varying degrees on different sectors; and the impact on low-income households varies depending on the sector in which prices of carbon-intensive products and processes rise. These and other factors shape agenda-setting, policy formulation and policy adoption in multiple ways. In the workshop, we aim to focus on those dynamics in a comparative manner.
We will organise a workshop that specifically focuses on carbon pricing agenda-setting, policy formulation and policy adoption in diverse jurisdictions and sectors, and invite submissions of abstracts specifically on:
- Analysing carbon-pricing agenda-setting, policy formulation and policy adoption in single case studies or comparative studies
- Investigating specific sectoral dynamics of carbon-pricing agenda-setting, policy formulation and policy adoption
- Exploring the role of sector-specific impacts on (in)justices and the respective influence on carbon-pricing agenda-setting, policy formulation and policy adoption
We especially encourage abstract submissions focusing on under researched geographical regions on this topic and from various disciplinary angles.
Please send an abstract of max. 500 words to katja.biedenkopf@kuleuven.be by 30 November 2021.
We will notify all submitters of the result of the selection by 15 December 2021.
The workshop will be held in a hybrid format on 7-8 March 2022. Participants who can travel to Leuven will be invited to participate in person, while we will also enable virtual participation for those who cannot travel. We have limited financial support for travel and accommodation expenses.
References
Biedenkopf, Katja, Patrick Müller, Peter Slominski and Jørgen Wettestad. 2017. Special Issue: A Global Turn to Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading? Experiments, Actors, and Diffusion. Global Environmental Politics 17(3).
Wettestad, Jørgen and Lars H. Gulbrandsen (eds.). 2018. The Evolution of Carbon Markets. Design and Diffusion. London: Routledge.
