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  • Print publication year: 2020
  • Online publication date: June 2020

6 - Carbon Pricing

from Part II - Coherence and Management in the Climate-Energy Nexus
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Summary

International institutions established to promote carbon pricing and carbon markets (including carbon taxation, emissions trading and offsets) constitute a rapidly growing alphabet soup of acronyms straddling the boundaries between public and private organisations. All institutions within the carbon pricing sub-field subscribe to the norm that climate change should be addressed through placing a price on emissions. The various institutions perform different roles. While several of the private institutions set standards and commitments regulating how private actors should trade emission allowances and offset emissions, public and hybrid institutions tend to play information dissemination and networking roles focused on supporting political decisions to implement carbon pricing and to link carbon markets. The carbon pricing sub-field is characterised by coordination or co-existence, with significant attempts to establish a division of labour, and only little outright competition or conflict. Focusing on the interlinkages between the UNFCCC and the World Bank institutions that address carbon pricing, we found that also the relationships between these two particular sides are characterised by close coordination. This coordination is informed by cognitive and normative interaction mechanisms, while differences between both sides are managed in a bottom-up, incremental manner.

Keywords:

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