1.1 Introduction

The aim of this chapter is to provide a solid, objective, and quantitative review of the key aspects of climate change. Before beginning this analysis, it is worth noting that the fact that Planet Earth has a greenhouse effect is not, in and of itself, negative. Indeed, this effect has directly facilitated the evolution of complex forms of life – the Earth’s temperature would be about 30°C colder were it not for the atmospheric greenhouse effect.

The problem of climate change that we are experiencing now is caused by the amplification of the greenhouse effect due to emissions from human activities. As greenhouse gases have been accumulating in the atmosphere since pre-industrial times, and more rapidly after World War II, the Earth has been experiencing global warming on a very fast timescale, which has caused profound environmental changes across tens of years instead of tens of thousands of years as occurred in the distant past.

After this short introduction, in the first section we will analyse observed trends in greenhouse gases, before in Section 1.2 discussing observed climate change and its impacts. In Section 1.3, we will review the total and per-capita greenhouse gas emissions of principal emitters (that is, major countries or groups of countries such as Europe). In Section 1.4, we will look at the quasi-linear link between the greenhouse gases accumulated in the atmosphere and global warming, and investigate the emission limits required if we are to contain global average warming below 1.5°C or 2.0°C. Finally, we will summarize and link all these topics, and discuss the level of global average warming that we could face in 2050 under four possible emission scenarios – one with a continuous future increase of greenhouse gas emissions of 1% per year, and three with a continuous future decrease of greenhouse gas emissions by 1%, 3%, or 5%, respectively. We will also point out that if we want to reach net zero emissions by 2050, we actually need to be even more drastic in our reductions, and aim for an average 8% annual decrease.

1.2 Growing Concentrations of Carbon Dioxide and Methane

The concentration of greenhouse gases has been increasing since the start of the industrial revolution. Figure 1.1 shows the annual mean concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH₄) since 1960.Footnote ¹

Figure 1.1

Annual mean concentration of carbon dioxide (CO₂, solid line; in parts per million, ppm) and of methane (CH₄, dashed line; in parts per billion, ppb), measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory.

Source: Carbon dioxide data provided by Dr Pieter Tans, NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory, Boulder, USA (gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/) and Dr Ralph Keeling, Scripps Institution of Oceanography (scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/). Methane data provided by Ed Dlugokencky, NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory, Boulder, USA (gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends_ch4).

In 2015, the concentration of carbon dioxide passed the 400 parts per million (ppm) mark, a value that the Earth last saw about two and a half million years ago.Footnote ² Note also that the increase follows an exponential curve, and that the annual percentage increase has been continuously growing. For example, while in the 1960s and 1970s the annual percentage increase was between 0.2% and 0.4%, in the last two decades it has been above 0.5% (Figure 1.2). Further consider that the last two decades have seen a positive trend, with the growth rate increasing by about 0.01 every year, from about 0.47% in 2000 to about 0.65% in 2020.

Figure 1.2

Annual percentage increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO₂, solid line) and of methane (CH₄, dashed line), computed from the Mauna Loa Observatory data shown in Figure 1.1. The two lines show the best linear-fit straight lines that fit the data between 2000 and 2020.

Source: Data provided by NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory, Boulder, USA (https://gml.noaa.gov).

Methane concentrations have also been increasing from about 1,645 ppb in 1985 (figures from before 1985 are not available) to 1,879 ppb in 2020 (Figure 1.1). Figure 1.2 shows that the annual growth rate had been decreasing between 1985 and 2000, but since then values have been growing at a very rapid rate. The last two decades have seen a clear trend, with the growth rate increasing by about 0.03% every year, from about 0% in 2000 to 0.60% in 2020. This increase could be linked to the fact that, beginning in 2000, many countries began switching to methane as a means of electricity production. This increase can also be attributed to the melting of the permafrost – a layer of subsurface soil that is typically frozen year-round, especially near the poles – which has released yet more stored methane into the atmosphere.Footnote ³

1.3 Observed Global Warming

As the concentration of greenhouse gases has steadily increased, the atmosphere has been absorbing more long-wave radiation emitted by the Earth, with the result that its lower layers have been warming, causing more long-wave radiation to be redirected back towards the Earth’s surface, warming it as well.

Figure 1.3 shows the anomaly of the global annual mean temperature with respect to the pre-industrial value (that is, for each year, the figure shows the difference between the global annual mean temperature of that year and the global annual mean temperature in the period 1850–1900). The solid line shows the annual values, and the linear-fitted straight line with a slope of ~0.02°C/year (degree centigrade per year) shows the long-term warming trend. Note that superimposed upon this linear warming trend of ~0.2°C per decade are natural oscillations of about 0.1–0.2°C. These natural oscillations are due to natural changes in the Earth’s ocean, and atmospheric conditions linked, for example, to the occurrence of large-scale episodes in the tropical Pacific that are associated with warmer (during El Niño events) or colder (during La Niña events) ocean temperatures. Exceptionally large volcanic eruptions have also resulted in temperature variations in the following 1–3 years.

Figure 1.3

Land-surface global warming with respect to the pre-industrial level between 1980 and 2020. The dotted line shows the annual average anomalies of the land two-metre temperature, where the anomaly has been computed with respect to the pre-industrial level. The two straight lines show the best linear fit lines between 1980–2000 and 2000–2020.

Source: Generated using Copernicus Climate Change Service information (2022) available at https://climate.copernicus.eu.

This figure has been created using a very recent data set produced by the EU Copernicus Service, the ERA-5 reanalysis, constructed by assimilating all available observations of the Earth system with the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts’ (ECMWF) state-of-the-art model.Footnote ⁴ It covers the satellite era, that is, the period from 1980 onwards during which satellite data have allowed a more accurate monitoring of the Earth. Because ERA-5 spans an era during which the number and quality of observations have not varied in such a way as to affect estimates of Earth’s climate, and as it processes all available observations using a state-of-the-art Earth-system model, it provides a very valuable and high-quality estimate of how the Earth’s climate has been evolving in this period.

Figure 1.3 shows that in 2020 the global average temperature was about 1.2°C warmer than the pre-industrial level, up from about 0.5°C in 1980, and that the six years from 2015 to 2020 were the six warmest years since 1980. Figure 1.3 also shows that the warming trend of the last two decades, 2000–2020, has been higher than that between 1980 and2000, increasing from 0.01°C per year (that is, 0.1°C every 10 years), to 0.026°C per year (0.26°C every 10 years). Table 1.1 reports the trends computed for the two periods, 1980–2000 and 2000–2020, expressed in terms of variations over 10 years, for several key climate surface variables.

It is interesting to compare global warming measured over land with that computed over sea. Figure 1.4 shows the equivalent of Figure 1.3, but for the global ocean. Note that in 2020 the global average sea-surface temperature was about one degree warmer than pre-industrial levels, up from about 0.4°C in 1980, and that the six years from 2015 to 2020 were also the six warmest years for the ocean since 1980. If we compare the warming trend of the two periods, 1980–2000 and 2000–2020, results (Table 1.1) indicate that it also increased, albeit by a smaller amount than on land surfaces, from 0.014°C per year (that is, 0.14°C every 10 years), to 0.018°C per year (0.18°C every 10 years).

Figure 1.4

Ocean global warming with respect to the pre-industrial level. The dotted line shows the annual average anomalies of the sea-surface temperature, where the anomaly has been computed with respect to the pre-industrial level. The two straight lines show the best linear fit lines between 1980–2000 and 2000–2020.

Source: Data from Our World in Data: https://ourworldindata.org.

Average global warming is not the only evidence that the climate is changing, as was summarized by the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published in August 2021, notably the Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) of the IPCC Working Group I.Footnote ⁵ The water cycle also intensifies, bringing with it in some regions more intense rainfall and flooding, as well as more intense drought in other regions. Concerning rainfall, precipitation has been concentrating in fewer, more intense events, especially at high latitudes. Some areas, such as the Mediterranean region, have seen, on average, a decrease in the average amount, and more frequent and longer dry periods.

Climate change-induced sea-level rise has been accelerating particularly in the past decade, with sea levels rising by an average of 3.4 mm per year, so much so that extreme sea-level events that previously occurred once in 100 years could conceivably happen every year by the end of the twenty-first century. Permafrost thawing, the loss of seasonal snow cover, the melting of glaciers and ice sheets, and a more substantial melting of Arctic sea ice (which is projected to be ice-free in summer before the end of the century) have also appeared more frequently. Climate change has also induced ocean warming, ocean acidification, and reduced oxygen levels, which have been affecting the ocean ecosystems.

For cities, some aspects of climate change have been amplified, including heat waves (as urban areas are usually warmer than their surroundings), flooding from heavy precipitation events, and sea-level rise in coastal areas.

Figure 1.5 shows how the Arctic sea-ice minimum extension has decreased from 1980 to 2020. It bears noting that in 2020, the minimum extension was about 50% smaller than the minimum extension in 1980. It also bears noting that, as was the case for the global average land and ocean temperatures, this melting trend has steadily increased in the last two decades as against the period between 1980 and 2000 (see also Table 1.1).

Figure 1.5

Arctic minimum sea-ice extension, compared to the 1980 level (in 1980, the minimum extension was about 7.7 million km²; a value of –0.1 indicates that the minimum extension has decreased by 10%, to about 6.8 million km²). The dotted line shows the annual average decrease of the minimum extension, computed with respect to the 1980 value. The two straight lines show the best linear fit lines between 1980–2000 and 2000–2020.

Source: Data from Our World in Data: https://ourworldindata.org.

As a final piece of evidence, Figure 1.6 shows the global sea-level rise, with respect to the 1980 level. In 2020, the sea level was, on average, about 120 mm (12 cm) above the 1980 level. It is also noteworthy that, as was the case for the other three variables, the sea-level rise was occurring about two and a half times faster in the last two decades compared to the first two decades (Table 1.1).

Figure 1.6

Sea-level rise, expressed in mm, compared to the 1980 level. The dotted line shows the annual average sea-level rise, computed based on the 1980 value. The two straight lines show the best linear fit lines between 1980–2000 and 2000–2020.

Source: Data from Our World in Data: https://ourworldindata.org.

Figures 1.3 to 1.6 and Table 1.1 indicate very clearly that global warming has been accelerating in the past two decades, which should not come as a surprise if we consider that, in these two decades, greenhouse gas emissions have been increasing faster than ever before (Figure 1.2).

The Working Group I (WGI) IPCC-SPM report also provides some updated estimates of the chances of crossing a global average warming level of 1.5°C and 2.0°C in the next decades. These global average limits were selected by the 196 countries that signed the Paris Agreement in 2015 as warming thresholds that should not be exceeded.Footnote ⁶ The WGI IPCC-SPM confirms that unless there are immediate and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to 2.0°C will be beyond reach. Both the WGI IPCC-SPM report and the Copernicus Climate Change Service reported that without immediate and drastic reductions, the global average warming will be above the 1.5°C level in about 15 years (the exact year of crossing this level depends on future emissions).Footnote ⁷

1.4 How Did We Get to This Point?

Greenhouse gas molecules, once injected into the atmosphere, are transported by the atmospheric flow globally, and remain there for a long time. For CO₂, current estimates suggest that they remain in the atmosphere for anywhere between 30 and 1,100 years, with the number of years depending on which removal processes are dominant. Methane (CH₄), by contrast, remains in the atmosphere for about 12 years, and is then removed by chemical reactions. Nitrous oxide (N₂O), another important greenhouse gas, remains in the atmosphere for about 150 years.

Let us suppose that today we decided to completely stop emitting greenhouse gases: how long would it take for the actual concentration to halve? The answer again depends on the greenhouse gas: for CO₂, the time to halve the concentration is about 120 years, for CH₄ it is about 10.5 years, and for N₂O it is about 132 years. This rather long lifetime (long with respect to human life) of greenhouse gases is the reason why the effects of human-induced emissions are (and will be) felt for many generations after they are injected into the atmosphere. It is also the reason why, to understand how we got to this situation, it is important to accumulate emissions over a long time, and analyse who has contributed most to the existing stock of greenhouse gases, and not limit ourselves to the most recent years.

Figure 1.7 shows the total and per-capita CO₂ emissions between 1990 and 2016. These two years have been selected because 1990 is often chosen as the reference with respect to what emission reduction targets are set, and 2016 because at the time of writing (2022) this is the last point available in the data archive we used in this work.Footnote ⁸ ‘Per capita’ values have been computed, year by year, by dividing the total emissions by each country/region population.

(a)

Total CO₂ emissions accumulated between 1990 and 2016 by the seven major global emitters: the United States, Russia, India, European Union, the People’s Republic of China, Canada, and Australia (values are expressed in gigatons, that is, 10⁹ tons).

(b)

CO₂ emissions per capita accumulated between 1990 and 2016 by the seven major global emitters (in tons).

Source: Data from Our World in Data: https://ourworldindata.org.

In terms of total emissions (Figure 1.7a), during the 1990–2016 period the United States, People’s Republic of China (hereafter indicated as PRC), Russia, Canada, Australia, India, and the European Union (EU) emitted about 68% of the world CO₂ emissions. The PRC and the United States contributed most: they emitted about 21% and 20%, respectively, of the CO₂ emissions injected into the atmosphere in those 26 years. They are followed by the EU, which injected about 12% of the total accumulated CO₂ emissions. The other major emitters followed these three, with contributions ranging from about 7% (Russian Federation) to 1% (Australia).

Let us now contrast the total emissions with the emissions per capita, because emissions per capita are considered a more ‘just’ measure as they reflect better whether each individual person has been given access to the same amount of energy. Energy that today, it is worth remembering, is still mostly produced (84%) using fossil fuels.

Figure 1.7b shows that one person living in the United States has emitted over 26 years some 500 tons of CO₂ in the period spanning 1990–2016, compared to about 120 tons for a person living in the PRC. Australia, Canada, and Russia now rank second, third, and fourth among the major emitters, respectively. Note that, for comparison, a person living in India has emitted only about 30 tons of CO₂ in that same 26-year period, about the same amount that persons living in the top four polluters injected into the atmosphere in only 2 years.

It is interesting to compare these numbers with the world average CO₂ emissions per capita over the same period, that is, 115 tons. Compared to this reference, a person living in the top four polluters emitted about four times more than the reference, a person living in the EU about two times more, a person living in the PRC the same as the average, and a person living in India one quarter, that is, four times less.

Figure 1.7 can help us to understand who has contributed more to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and thus to global warming. Clearly, as economies have developed and transformed throughout the years, the emission ranking has been changing. It is interesting to compare Figure 1.7 with the ranking of the last available year, 2016, shown in Figure 1.8.

(a)

Total CO₂ emissions in 2016 by the seven major global emitters: the United States, Russia, India, EU, the People’s Republic of China, Canada, and Australia (values are expressed in gigatons, that is, 10⁹ tons).

(b)

CO₂ emissions per capita in 2016 by the seven major global emitters (in tons).

Source: The World Bank. Emissions data are sourced from Climate Watch Historical GHG Emissions (1990–2020). 2023. World Resources Institute. Available online at: climatewatchdata.org/ghg-emissions. Data source: World Development Indicators. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC

Figure 1.8 indicates that in terms of total emissions, in 2016 the PRC was the top contributor with a contribution of about 29% to global emissions, followed by the United States with about 15% and the European Union with about 8.5%. If we look at per-capita emissions, in 2016 the United States, Canada, and Australia were the top polluters (as they were in terms of accumulated emissions between 1990 and 2016), with emissions per capita at about 15 tons, compared to about 7 tons for a person living in the PRC, 6.5 tons for a person living in the EU, and 1.8 tons for a person living in India. Note that in 2016, the world average CO₂ emission per capita was about 4.5 tons. On this footing, it is evident that even in the most recent past there have still been countries emitting about four times more than the average, and countries emitting about a quarter (that is four times less).

1.5 The Link between Greenhouse Gases and Global Warming

The WGI IPCC-SPM report on the physical basis of climate change published in August 2021 talks about a quasi-linear relationship between the amount of greenhouse gases that are emitted in the atmosphere and global warming.Footnote ⁹ Indeed, if we contrast global warming, measured by the global annual average surface temperature anomaly from 1980 to date against greenhouse gases accumulated since 1980, we can detect a quasi-linear trend.

The best-fit straight line shown in Figure 1.9 has a slope of 0.5°C per 1,000 gigatons, which means that during this period, an accumulation of 1,000 gigatons of greenhouse gases explains 0.5°C of warming. The coefficient of determination of the linear fit, r² = 0.82, confirms the existence of a robust linear relationship. The correlation is not perfect (that is, 82% instead of 100%) because there are variations around this linear relationship, which reflect the fact that each year’s climate is influenced not only by greenhouse gas concentration, but also by the atmosphere and ocean internal dynamics (such as whether the year was characterized by a strong El Niño or La Niña event, or whether other changes in the large-scale circulation caused heat waves over large areas of the globe). Note that the slope of 0.5°C per 1,000 gigatons found in our data analysis is very close to the slope of about 0.45°C per 1,000 gigatons reported in the WGI IPCC-SPM.

Figure 1.9

Total accumulated greenhouse gases from 1980 (x-axis; source: data from Our World in Data: https://ourworldindata.org) versus global annual average surface temperature anomaly with respect to the pre-industrial level (y-axis; source: generated using Copernicus Climate Change Service information (2022) available at https://climate.copernicus.eu).

We can use this quasi-liner relationship to estimate the maximum we could emit if we wanted to limit warming below 2.0°C. Given that in 2020 the global average warming was about 1.2°C, if we assume a slope of 0.45°C per 1,000 gigatons, we can only emit about 1,800 gigatons of greenhouse gases. Note that in 2019, we (that is, the global population) emitted about 45 gigatons of greenhouse gases (of which roughly 30 gigatons comprised CO₂ and roughly 15 gigatons comprised CH₄ and other greenhouse gases). If in the next decades we continue to emit, on average, about 45 gigatons per year, in about 40 years we would inject 1,800 gigatons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and global warming would very likely be above 2.0°C.

If, instead, we want to keep global warming below 1.5°C, we have to limit the emissions to less than about 670 gigatons. If we continue to emit as we did in 2019, that is about 45 gigatons per year, we will surpass that value in about 15 years.

1.6 Concluding Remarks

We started our discussion, in the introduction, by remembering what the greenhouse effect is, and its key role in allowing the development of complex life forms over Planet Earth. Then, in the first section, we discussed the observed, continued increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere; an increase that is mainly due to human activities, as stated very clearly in the WGI IPCC-SPM report published in August 2021:Footnote ¹⁰ ‘It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred’ (see also the WGI IPCC-SPM at Figure 1.1). This has been confirmed by the latest IPCC report on climate change mitigation, released in April 2022 by the IPCC Working Group III.Footnote ¹¹ These two, together with the IPCC Working Group II report on impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability, provide one of the most reliable, authoritative, and up-to-date summaries of the state of the climate and of our knowledge on how it will very likely evolve in the forthcoming years.Footnote ¹²

In the second section, we documented the impact of the continued increase in greenhouse gas concentration on a few key climate variables between 1980 and 2020, and we also briefly documented the uncontroversial impacts of climate change on the Arctic sea-ice extension and the global average sea level. By comparing linear trends between two 20-year periods, 1980–2000 and 2000–2020, we have highlighted how many physical variables confirm that climate change has been accelerating.

In the third section, we discussed how humanity reached this point, and analysed emissions accumulated over a 26-year period between 1990 and 2016. We have compared total country emissions to per-capita emissions, showing that according to this latter measure the ranking sees the United States as the top contributor to climate change, followed by Australia, Canada, the Russian Federation, the EU, and then the PRC.

In the fourth section, we discussed a quasi-linear relationship between the amount of greenhouse gases accumulated in the atmosphere and global warming. This relationship, which is pointed out explicitly in the 2021 WGI IPCC-SPM report, shows that an accumulation of another 1,000 gigatons of greenhouse gases would lead to a 0.45°C warming. This relationship can be used as a simple, back-of-the-envelope estimate of the future climate. If this is applied, considering that in 2019 the global population injected into the atmosphere about 45 gigatons of greenhouse gases, and assuming that emissions will continue at this level, on average, for the next decades, we can predict that in about 15 years the global average warming will be about 1.5°C. We can also predict that in about 40 years the global average warming will be at about 2.0°C.

Therefore, it should be clear both what has been happening to the climate, and why it is necessary to start immediately to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases in a substantial way. If we want to keep the average global warming below 1.5°C or 2.0°C (these being the two targets agreed at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP) meeting in 2015), we need to start substantially reducing emissions immediately, on average by at least 5% per year, until we reach zero net emissions in 2050.

We can apply the simple quasi-linear relation between accumulated greenhouse gases and global average warming to look ahead. If we analyse the emissions during the last decade, they grew from nearly 40 gigatons in 2009 to nearly 46 gigatons in 2018 (data from The World Bank database: https://data.worldbank.org), and thus by about 1% annually. The diamonds in Figure 1.10 show the amount of greenhouse gases accumulated in the atmosphere and projected warming in 2050 computed by applying the quasi-linear relationship discussed above, under four emission scenarios:

• A continued average increase of 1% per year, as was the case in 2009–2018: this will cause a further 1,738 gigatons of greenhouse gases to be injected into the atmosphere, which will reach 3,173 gigatons in 2050, and a warming of 2.0°C by 2050.

• A continued average decrease of 1% per year, starting in 2019: this will cause a further 1,249 gigatons of greenhouse gases to be injected into the atmosphere, which will reach 2,684 gigatons in 2050, and a warming of 1.75°C by 2050.

• A continued average decrease of 3% per year, starting in 2019: this will cause a further 994 gigatons of greenhouse gases to be injected into the atmosphere, which will reach 2,429 gigatons in 2050, and a warming of 1.61°C by 2050.

• A continued average decrease of 5% per year, starting in 2019: this will cause a further 703 gigatons of greenhouse gases to be injected into the atmosphere, which will reach 2,138 gigatons in 2050, and a warming of 1.47°C by 2050.

Figure 1.10

As Figure 1.9 (up to accumulated emissions of about 1,500 gigatons (dots)), adding projections of the state of the climate in 2050 in four emission scenarios (diamonds; see text for details).

Source: Generated using Copernicus Climate Change Service information (2022) available at https://climate.copernicus.eu.

This rather crude and simple prediction confirms results obtained with more complex Earth-system models: only by decreasing the emissions on average by 5% every year can we limit the global average warming to below 1.5°C. However, it is worth mentioning that even in this scenario, in 2050 we will still be injecting about 9 gigatons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. If we want to achieve net zero emissions, a target often discussed by the EU, we must reduce emissions, on average, by at least 8% every year. In fact, an average annual reduction of 8% per year would lower emissions from 45 gigatons emitted in 2019 to about 3 gigatons by 2050, a value much closer to zero.

2.1 Introduction

Since the early 1990s, when the international community became openly aware of the climate problem, the European Union (EU) has nurtured an ambition to be a leader in the fight against climate change. So far, it has succeeded in its intent, although admittedly competition for this distinction has generally been low. The EU has consistently played a positive role in the definition of a global climate regime, from the Kyoto Protocol to the Paris Agreement. Equally relevant, the EU has been a pioneer in the implementation of ambitious and innovative policies for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions domestically. In this respect, the EU Climate and Energy Package, which was adopted in 2009, can be considered a turning point given the scope of its targets and policies as well as its integration into a broader policy agenda. Notably, the ‘20–20–20’ targets, which stood for a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (relative to 1990 levels), a 20% share of renewables in energy consumption and a 20% reduction in energy consumption (relative to business as usual), all to be achieved – as indeed they were – by 2020, have shaped the framework of EU climate and energy policies in subsequent years. The same targets became part of the Europe 2020 Strategy (2010), with which the EU pursued improved international competitiveness and sustainable growth. In 2019, after many other EU initiatives in the climate–energy domain and in response to an ever more real climate emergency, the European Commission (EC) led by President Ursula von der Leyen launched the European Green Deal (‘Green Deal’).

As stated in the original Communication by the EC, the Green Deal is ‘a new growth strategy that aims to transform the EU into a fair and prosperous society, with a modern, resource-efficient and competitive economy where there are no net emissions of greenhouse gases in 2050 and where economic growth is decoupled from resource use’.Footnote ¹ In the Green Deal, more clearly than ever before, the EU’s pursuit of environmental and social sustainability is not subordinated to that of economic growth. Rather, it is a condition and even a driver of economic growth. Focusing on the Green Deal’s item that is most relevant to this chapter, the goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions – or climate neutrality – by 2050 was put forward for the first time in the Green Deal Communication itself. For this goal to be meaningful, the EU needs to continue working in parallel: at the international level and domestically. Human-induced climate change is caused by global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, of which today less than 10% originate in the EU. The EU, therefore, will continue to foster international climate co-operation. Moreover, it will influence climate action abroad through its own achievements and failures in moving toward net zero. The challenge is to demonstrate that a reformed economic system can thrive while greenhouse gas emissions are quickly reduced and eventually eliminated. The EU today looks like a laboratory where economic, climate, and energy policies are experimented with and will ideally be replicated elsewhere.

At the time of writing, namely, autumn 2022, the EU laboratory for climate neutrality was in full swing. In 2021, the EC presented a comprehensive package of legislative proposals, dubbed ‘Fit-for-55’, which seeks to enable the EU to meet a more ambitious emissions reduction target for 2030 than the one previously set: a reduction of 55% instead of 43% (relative to 1990 levels). The Fit-for-55 package provides for many existing and new policy instruments to be updated and introduced, respectively.Footnote ² Important reforms of existing instruments concern the EU Emission Trading System (ETS), energy taxes, emission efficiency standards for vehicles, energy efficiency standards for buildings, and the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions and removals in the land use, forestry and agriculture sector, among others. Important novelties include, inter alia, the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM), a second ETS covering greenhouse gas emissions from road transport and buildings, and new regulations on hydrogen and renewable gases as well as on methane emissions in the energy sector. Most if not all of the Fit-for-55 proposals are currently working their way through the EU legislative process, which by law can only successfully end with an agreement between the European Parliament and the Council of the EU. In any case, net of the changes that will be introduced during the legislative process, the general direction that these proposals have already traced is not in question.

Achieving climate neutrality on a large scale requires deep structural changes in the energy system and in the wider economy. It also implies that all sectors of society are involved and that only a large set of ambitious, well-co-ordinated, and innovative policies can be effective. With the Green Deal, the EU is aiming to accomplish this massive socio-technical transition by mid-century. In this chapter, we examine a few critical components of the EU’s strategy for achieving climate neutrality. Of the many such elements that could be considered, we have chosen four: (a) carbon pricing, (b) electrification, (c) ‘clean molecules’, and (d) sustainable finance. Crucially, EU policy stands at the global frontier in each of the corresponding domains. Carbon pricing implemented through the EU ETS has characterised EU climate policy over the past 20 years. The EU ETS will remain central in the policy mix and new instruments are being developed to address the undesirable effects of high carbon prices. Meanwhile, as part of a vision of a future integrated and decarbonised energy system, two major technological developments are being promoted, each with its own technical and economic challenges. First, the EU aims to maximise the share of electricity in final energy consumption. Second, alternative energy vectors, including notably green hydrogen and biomethane, also known as clean molecules, will be used to decarbonise energy-intensive activities not suitable for electrification. Last but not least, the EU is trying to radically ramp up the volume of private capital channelled towards sustainable investments. This too requires the adoption and implementation of a host of new specific financial capacities and regulatory tools.

The chapter is structured as follows. The first section describes carbon pricing in the EU, focusing on the EU ETS and on the forthcoming CBAM. Sections 2.4 and 2.5, respectively, discuss the roles of electrification and clean molecules in the future European energy system. Finally, Section 2.6 reviews the sustainable finance priorities, capacities, and regulatory instruments put forward by the EU, before a brief conclusion.

2.2 Carbon Pricing: Gearing Up for Net Zero

In June 1992, literally on the eve of the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, and only one or two years after carbon taxes were first adopted by a few northern European countries, the EC presented a legislative proposal for an EU carbon tax. The proposal eventually failed because Member States did not reach unanimity, which is a requirement for fiscal matters under EU law. Eleven years later, the EU succeeded in adopting the EU ETS: a novel instrument chosen by the Union to meet its long-term greenhouse gas emissions reduction target under the Kyoto Protocol (a reduction of 8% relative to 1990 levels, over 2008–2012) and potentially other similar targets in the future.

Just as with carbon taxes, ETSs incentivise the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by putting a price on carbon. However, the two forms of carbon pricing fundamentally differ in certain respects. It suffices to mention two features of ETSs that are not shared with carbon taxes. In an ETS, carbon prices are market prices of emission allowances issued by a regulatory authority. Moreover, ETSs such as the EU ETS, which more specifically are so-called ‘cap-and-trade’ systems, set upper limits on the total volume of regulated emissions. Simply described, the ‘cap’ of an ETS is given by the supply of emission allowances that are distributed to regulated entities within multi-year trading periods (called ‘phases’ in the EU ETS). The demand for allowances depends on output levels and emission intensity of regulated entities, among other factors. The interplay of demand and supply determines allowance prices.

In principle, the main strength of carbon pricing is cost-effectiveness, meaning the ability to cut greenhouse gas emissions at minimum cost. On the other hand, ‘carbon leakage’ and inequitable distributional effects are potential side effects of carbon pricing that need to be addressed. Carbon leakage is the phenomenon whereby emission reductions achieved in a jurisdiction (or sector) are to some extent offset by emission increases elsewhere. In the absence of a global uniform carbon price, higher carbon prices in a country can result in carbon leakage due to the deteriorated international competitiveness of domestic firms in certain sectors – which is in itself an economic problem, of course. Depending on which sectors are regulated, carbon pricing can also result in undesirable distributional effects across households. Poorer households are typically more affected than richer ones, in relative terms, by price increases of energy goods such as electricity, natural gas, and motor fuels. The higher carbon prices are, the greater the need for measures that can effectively counter these side effects. Today, the main challenge for the EU in leveraging carbon pricing relates to the design and implementation of such measures.Footnote ³

2.2.1 The European Union’s Emissions Trading

In operation since 2005, the EU ETS has imposed a linearly declining cap on greenhouse gas emissions from about 10,000 heavy energy-using and electricity-generating installations and aircraft. The total volume of emissions covered by the EU ETS currently accounts for slightly over 40% of the EU’s total greenhouse gas emissions. Given increased climate ambition under the Green Deal, the current reform of the EU ETS mandates a steeper cap trajectory whereby the cap will reach in 2030 a level 61% below that of 2005 emissions.

The EU ETS is often referred to as a ‘cornerstone’ and a ‘flagship’ of EU climate policy. The use of these terms is warranted. First, the EU ETS has contributed to reducing emissions by imposing significant carbon prices or, just as importantly, by determining the expectations of significant carbon prices in the future. Second, the cap alone has ensured consistency of regulated emissions with long-term emissions reduction targets. Third, the EU ETS, which at the time was the first instrument of its kind to be used for climate mitigation, has represented a model to follow and improve on for many countries. Partly inspired by the EU ETS, many other ETSs have been established around the world, including China’s ETS, with many more likely to be established in the future.Footnote ⁴

From a regulatory point of view, the EU ETS has changed substantially over the years. This is no surprise, as the EU ETS itself can be considered a ‘grand policy experiment’.Footnote ⁵ Not only that, its evolution accelerated in response to major external events such as the Great Recession (2007–2009) and, more recently, the Green Deal. Major reforms were carried out in 2009 (Reform for Phase III, 2013–2020), 2015 (Market Stability Reserve),Footnote ⁶ and 2018 (Reform for Phase IV, 2021–2030). The current reform is no less relevant than the previous ones. In fact, it may be considered the most relevant so far in that it is the first to amend the system with a view to reaching net-zero emissions. The proposed reform comprises five main elements:Footnote ⁷ (1) a reduced cap, in line with the climate neutrality target; (2) revised rules on free allocation and on the Market Stability Reserve; (3) extension of the EU ETS to maritime transport; (4) a separate, brand new ETS for buildings and road transport; and (5) increase of the Innovation and Modernisation Funds as well as new rules on the use of auction revenues. Below is a description of the EU ETS that is focused on three of its fundamental dimensions touched by the reform: scope, cap trajectory, and allowance allocation.

2.2.1.1 Scope

Since 2005, the perimeter of emissions covered by the EU ETS has occasionally widened as a result of countries joining the system or extensions to previously exempt greenhouse gases or sectors. The current proposed reform of the EU ETS includes its extension, as of 2023, to emissions from maritime transport, specifically from ships above 5,000 gross tonnage. The volume of emissions involved makes this a significant step in the evolution of the EU ETS. At the EU level, maritime transport represents 3–4% of total carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. Globally, CO₂ emissions from this sector are projected to increase between 90% and 130% by 2050 compared to 2008 levels.Footnote ⁸ Given the lack so far of adequate measures to decarbonise maritime transport, the extension of the EU ETS to cover these emissions is an expedient development. The proposed extension concerns all emissions from intra-EU voyages, 50% of emissions from extra-EU voyages (that is, starting or ending outside of the EU), and all emissions occurring when ships are at berth in EU ports. To ensure a smooth transition, the requirement to surrender allowances covering 100% of emissions would be phased in over 2023–2025.

2.2.1.2 Cap Trajectory

In the regulation of cap-and-trade systems, setting the long-term cap is obviously a critical task. If an environmental target has already been identified, the task may seem straightforward: the cap just has to be consistent with that target. In actual fact, estimating business-as-usual emissions is needed to evaluate emissions abatement and the resulting levels of allowance prices, that is, carbon prices. Even if the market of emission allowances was perfectly efficient, both excessively high carbon prices and excessively low carbon prices can be problematic. Therefore, carefully calibrating the climate policy mix so that it results in a desirable combination of carbon prices and other climate policies (for example, subsidies for renewable energy, for energy efficiency, energy standards, etc.) is of the essence.

The cap of the EU ETS is indeed related to the broader targets for the EU’s overall greenhouse gas emissions, hence including emissions not covered by the system. To align the cap with increased emissions reduction targets set in the European Climate Law,Footnote ⁹ the EC has proposed to cut regulated emissions by at least 61% relative to 2005 levels by 2030. This is a major tightening of the cap, which under current legislation would reach a reduction of ‘only’ 43% instead. Accordingly, the linear reduction factor, which measures the annual reduction in newly issued allowances, would almost double from the current 2.2% to some 4.2%. Carbon prices can be expected to rise in the future as a result of increased cap stringency. An interesting question, however, is to what extent they have already adjusted as a result of the market having discounted this announced development. As Figure 2.1 shows, prices of EU allowances have more than tripled since the Green Deal was announced in late 2019.

Figure 2.1

Prices of European Union allowances (2005–2022).

Source: International Carbon Action Partnership, Allowance Price Explorer.

2.2.1.3 Allowance Allocation

The rules on the allocation of emission allowances are also an essential element of any cap-and-trade system. These rules are likely to be revised in a more or less substantive way on the occasion of any broad reform of a system. In the history of the EU ETS, some trends in the evolution of the allocation rules can be noted: (a) expansion of auctioning to the expense of free allocation; (b) targeting of free allocation with a view to minimising carbon leakage risk while avoiding windfall profits; and (c) use of free allocation as a tool for incentivising emissions abatement in investment decisions. These trends continue with the current reform.

As the cap declines over time, the total volume of allowances that can be given away is going to shrink. Indeed, this is the fundamental reason why the CBAM will gradually replace free allocation as the main approach to carbon leakage prevention. At the same time, allowance auctioning will be phased in for the aviation sector and, as already established by the previous reform for Phase IV, it will continue to expand (up to 100% in 2030) for the industrial sectors not deemed at risk of carbon leakage. Careful distribution of increasingly scarce allowances available for free allocation is also reflected in the space for more stringent emission efficiency benchmarks proposed by the EC. The maximum annual update of these (product) benchmarks, which are used for determining individual allocations of free allowances and which in the EU ETS correspond to the average of the 10% most greenhouse gas-efficient installations, would rise to 2.5% from the current 1.6%. Moreover, it has been proposed that free allowances will be partly granted conditional on proven decarbonisation efforts by firms so as to further incentivise the uptake of low-carbon technologies. Finally, the parameters determining mandatory participation of industrial installations in the EU ETS will be revised to remove unintended (dis)incentives. Notably, firms would not exit the EU ETS, which entails giving up valuable free allowances in excess of emissions, as a result of adopting effective abatement technologies (for example, through electrification). Not only will this remove a barrier to the adoption of break-through technologies, but – by keeping innovative installations in the EU ETS – it will also improve emission efficiency benchmarks and thus encourage greater emissions reductions in turn.

2.3 The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism

In real-world climate policy, the introduction of the EU CBAM represents a disruptive innovation and potentially a game changer depending on the responses that it might trigger internationally. From a theoretical point of view, the CBAM is a climate policy tool that falls under the category of border carbon adjustments (BCAs). Given climate mitigation policies with different levels of stringency across countries, the purpose of BCAs is to minimise carbon leakage occurring via the competitiveness channel. The logic of BCAs is to level the playing field for domestic and foreign producers competing in the same markets. Countries with a domestic carbon price may impose levies on the carbon embodied in imports from regions where carbon prices are lower or nil; by the same token, rebates on exports to regions with lower or no carbon prices could offset embodied carbon payments.Footnote ¹⁰ This way, firms subject to more stringent climate policies would not be penalised by higher production costs, either in domestic markets thanks to import charges or in foreign markets thanks to export rebates. As a result, net of expectations about the future, production activities and related greenhouse gas emissions should not shift abroad – not owing to climate policy, at least.

The idea of BCAs is not new. Over the past 15 years, they have been the subject of many studies and debates on international climate policy. Yet to date we have hardly any experience with actual BCAs. The only existing BCA we know of is applied in conjunction with California’s ETS: it taxes electricity imports from neighbouring U.S. states on the basis of emissions intensity.Footnote ¹¹ The CBAM will be the first BCA affecting international trade. It thus raises several issues concerning country relations, including its very compatibility with World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules, the impacts on other economies and the related consequences. Up until the Green Deal, fears of retaliatory trade measures proved effective in inhibiting any international BCA initiative.

The reason why the time for the CBAM seems to have come today is a genuine need of the EU to strengthen its arsenal against carbon leakage. It is a need that has emerged stronger than ever with the Green Deal. The further tightening of the EU ETS cap entails a faster reduction in the number of emission allowances issued in the future. All else being equal, this implies faster growth in allowance prices and a faster reduction in the number of free allowances. Therefore, free allocation as a tool for limiting carbon leakage is bound to lose effectiveness. A second reason why the EU decided to adopt the CBAM is the possibility of inducing other countries to increase their emission reduction efforts. In this sense, along with the benefits offered to other countries – for example, through technological transfer and financial aid – the economic costs threatened by the CBAM should help. Countries with less-stringent climate policies as compared to the EU might decide to narrow the gap in order to minimise national welfare losses or, better, take the opportunity to put the economy on a more sustainable path. Indeed the greatest success of a BCA would be removing its own raison d’être, that is, different levels of climate policy stringency. As such, the measure of the CBAM’s success will be the responses, in terms of policies and emissions abatement, by foreign governments and firms.

In the following, we describe the workings of the CBAM as proposed by the EC and discuss its compatibility with WTO rules. Other relevant questions, which are not addressed here for reasons of brevity, include the expected effectiveness of the CBAM in limiting carbon leakage and the CBAM’s expected economic impacts on both EU and other countries, especially developing ones.

2.4 Electrification: Leveraging Wind and Sun

Electricity is an extremely versatile energy vector that can be used to deliver (almost) any type of energy service, from lighting to heating, from cooling to mobility, normally with negligible local negative environmental consequences or safety hazards. Electricity can be generated from many different energy sources, including modern renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar photovoltaic (PV), which have seen major cost reductions in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. The combination of these characteristics explains why electricity will play a central role in the transformation of the energy system necessary to deeply decarbonise the economy in the coming decades.

In 2021, electricity satisfied almost 23% of final energy consumption in the EU, a share that has been relatively stable in recent years.Footnote ¹⁵ Except for a few captive uses, the main one being represented by electronic and electrical appliances, electricity competes with other energy sources and vectors. In the heating and industrial sectors, competition is mostly with natural gas, while in transport electricity competes against oil derivatives, such as gasoline, diesel, and kerosene. Several factors explain why the share of electricity in final energy consumption has remained relatively stable over the years. First, natural gas and oil derivatives have specific characteristics, such as a higher energy density and their being easier to store than electricity, which make their use with current technologies more convenient, especially for certain applications. Second, the existing infrastructure for the transport and use of energy is still mostly centred around gas and oil derivatives (think of the current fleet of passenger cars, which are generally equipped with internal combustion engines, and the petrol stations for refuelling them). On the contrary, consumers do not generally have an infrastructure in place that can support a much larger distribution and use of electricity to satisfy their demand for energy services. Third, the existing structure of energy taxation and sector regulation often penalises a broader use of electricity beyond what is captive (think of increasing-block electricity tariffs that still exist in some jurisdictions or tax rebates on fuels that specific classes of consumers frequently benefit from).

Promoting the electrification of final uses whenever technically feasible and economically efficient is a fundamental building block of the European strategy for climate neutrality by 2050, as it enables leverage on the recent successes in the decarbonisation of electricity generation. Over the past two decades, technological development and policy support have pushed the share of renewables in the European electricity mix. From the early 2000s to 2021, annual electricity generation from renewables more than doubled, surpassing 1,100 terawatt hours (TWh) in absolute terms and reaching a share of almost 38%. Wind, solar, and, to a more limited extent, bio-based energies have experienced remarkable growth and reached, under certain circumstances, grid parity with electricity generated from fossil fuels or nuclear. Their still largely untapped potential, in particular for solar and wind, suggests they will likely continue to grow and feed the European energy system with significant additional volumes of electricity in the coming years.Footnote ¹⁶

The EU Strategy for Energy System Integration issued by the EC in July 2020 considers a greater electrification of end-use sectors as one of three complementary and mutually reinforcing concepts upon which energy system integration can be built. The other two are a more ‘circular’ energy system, with energy efficiency at its core, and the use of renewable and low-carbon fuels, including hydrogen, for end-use applications where direct heating or electrification are not feasible.Footnote ¹⁷ The central role of electrification in supporting a climate-neutral economy at the least cost across sectors is confirmed by the action plan included in the same strategy, which features an acceleration of the electrification of energy demand, building on a largely renewables-based power system, as one of its six fundamental pillars. In the strategy, the EC foresees the possibility to reach a share of renewables in electricity generation around 55–60% and a share of electricity in final energy consumption around 30% by 2030. According to the scenarios developed by the EC, these numbers would be consistent with a trajectory ensuring climate neutrality in 2050.

However, in order to achieve those targets and be in a good position to reach climate neutrality 20 years later, several actions are needed in the decade to 2030. Notably, the EU must tackle the barriers to the expansion of renewable electricity supply, the accelerated electrification of energy demand, and the development of the necessary infrastructure linking supply and demand within and beyond the electricity sector. In what follows, we will first describe the main policy measures that the EC proposed in the Fit-for-55 package, which followed the Strategy on Energy System Integration. Then, we will provide a more critical overview of the opportunities and the challenges that electrification raises in the current transformation of the European energy system.

2.5 Clean Molecules: The Challenge of Market Uptake

In the European vision for a carbon-neutral economy by 2050, the evolving role of natural gas in the future EU energy mix is a central element, and to some extent an innovative one. For decades, natural gas has constituted the energy backbone of European industrial and household consumption. Nowadays, more than 20% on average of the European primary energy consumption is still covered by natural gas. In recent years and more convincingly since the mid-2010s, Europe has embraced its no-regret conversion towards renewable energies and has at the same time embarked on a slow but progressive phasing out strategy of natural gas and the other fossil fuels from the EU energy system. In an effort to reach the EU climate goals, the overall European decarbonisation strategy has envisaged, already since 2016, a considerably smaller role for natural gas in the energy mix by 2050, as well as its gradual replacement with renewable electricity and a mix of clean molecules such as renewable hydrogen, biogas, biomethane, and synthetic methane.Footnote ²⁸

However, the presence of these clean molecules in the EU energy mix is currently minor if not negligible. Biomethane is already present in the existing natural gas network and is widely considered among the most commercially viable alternatives to replace at least part of current natural gas consumption, due to similarities in chemical composition and therefore compatibility with existing infrastructure. Still, only 3 billion cubic metres (bm³) of biomethane and 15 bm³ of biogas are currently produced in the EU,Footnote ²⁹ approximately 1% of overall gas consumption (fossil gas and clean molecules combined). According to the European Biogas Association,Footnote ³⁰ biogas and biomethane in 2021combined covered about 200 TWh. Although biomethane production is envisaged to increase massively in the coming years due to ambitious national initiatives, sustainable biomethane is not an infinitely scalable energy vector (as the feedstock from which is produced is limited), which prevents it from being able to displace fossil methane. Furthermore, there is a risk of creating perverse incentives whereby strong support for biomethane may lead to more animal agriculture and consequently higher overall emissions.Footnote ³¹

While hydrogen is also likely to play a significant role in the EU energy mix by 2050, its demand is still modest (257 TWh, or just over 8 megatons, in 2020). The total hydrogen currently used in Europe amounts to approximately 6 GW as its use is currently restricted to feedstock in specific industrial clusters in Europe. Different to biomethane, the availability of hydrogen is potentially unlimited, because hydrogen is the most common element present in nature. Rather, the difficulty relates to its exploitation as a large-scale energy source, due mainly to the still infant stage of the technology which can enable its generation. Further obstacles to a fast upscale of hydrogen concern its transport. Indeed, while biomethane is not that different in chemical terms from natural gas, and can therefore be transported via the same infrastructure, hydrogen molecules have a different chemical composition, strongly limiting the possibility of utilising the existing gas infrastructure to transport, compress, or store hydrogen. Nevertheless, the EU has reiterated on many occasions its strong belief that renewable and low-carbon gas will play a determinant role in the transition to a climate-neutral economy and in the future EU energy system. As we will see in the next section, at the regulatory level, this message has translated into specific measures aimed mainly at facilitating market uptake of clean molecules, namely biomethane and renewable hydrogen.

2.6 Sustainable Finance: An Ambitious European Union Agenda to Develop New Markets

Sustainable finance is a relatively recent policy priority of the EU. It can be retraced to the original agenda setting work of the High-Level Expert Group on Sustainable Finance (HLEG). Created in 2016, the HLEG was following the momentum built in Europe after the Paris Agreement around the mobilisation of private capital towards sustainability purposes. Although greatly amplified lately by the Green Deal drive, virtually all the recently adopted and pending EU legislative initiatives that aim at fostering sustainable finance by better channelling private capital towards green financial instruments can be traced back to the ideation work performed as part of the HLEG.

Sustainable finance has reached the status of a dedicated EU policy area with the release of its Action Plan on Sustainable Finance.Footnote ⁴² Largely side-lined due to the COVID outbreak and the resulting health crisis management needs, the EU sustainable finance agenda was facing a significant risk of ending up in the EC’s drawers, like many regulatory initiatives before that. Yet as sustainability concerns came back to the fore of EU agenda-setting already in the summer of 2020 as EU policymakers, stakeholders, and the wider public showed a renewed concern to preserve our environment. After the first waves of COVID receded and the EU’s flagship response to COVID (Next-Generation EU, or NGEU)Footnote ⁴³ was agreed and implemented, the European Commission invested yet further time and energy to come up with an attempt at revitalising its sustainable finance agenda through the publication of its Renewed Sustainable Finance Strategy in July 2021.

Sustainable finance now has solid roots in the Green Deal agenda, but has in many ways also spilled out of it. It has gained its own traction, especially ever since the new programmatic work elaborated and set out under the Renewed Sustainable Finance Strategy. In what appears to be the most operational definition of EU sustainable finance, one can assume that sustainable finance is a ‘Commission workstream that supports the European aim of channelling private investment towards the transition to a climate-neutral economy’.Footnote ⁴⁴ For recollection the EC committed to mobilise at least one trillion in sustainable investments over the period 2020–2030. Sustainable finance in the EU can be narrowed down to three central building blocks, which will be explored in turn in the following sections: (1) a set of EU financial capacities; (2) a two-legged approach to definitional standards; and (3) regulatory initiatives on disclosure. Taken together, these blocks are thought to contribute to significantly increasing the amount of private capital poured into European sustainable investment.

Sustainable finance in the EU takes many shapes and forms. All instruments will have effects on their own. Yet they will also interact and can therefore best be described as a mix of mutually reinforcing carrots and sticks. The virtuous circle is indeed at play to ensure that new and more rigorous sustainability standards are both supported by a host of newly injected funds as well as new data. Figure 2.2 illustrates this dynamic.

Figure 2.2

European Union sustainable finance key building blocks.

2.7 Conclusion

With the Green Deal, the EU has accelerated the pace towards climate neutrality, which is to be reached by 2050, as well as towards other related environmental objectives such as those on biodiversity and local pollution. The EU today presents itself as the main live laboratory of policies for steering a capitalist economy onto an environmentally sustainable path. Recent signs of growing determination and efforts to fight climate change by the two greatest greenhouse gas emitters and economic powers, namely China and the United States, gratify the EU’s leadership in this field – even if accompanied by rising international competition in green industries – and above all they give us hope for a less-bleak future. For reasons of brevity, we could not possibly examine all the relevant aspects of the EU’s strategy for climate neutrality. We thus focused on four of its building blocks that see the EU at the global frontier of policy: carbon pricing, electrification, clean molecules, and sustainable finance.

Carbon pricing has always been at the heart of EU climate policy by virtue of its expected cost-effectiveness and an enduring appreciation of this property by EU policymakers. Nevertheless, only after many years and multiple reforms does the EU ETS finally seem to be functioning as intended. Over the past year, the price of EU allowances has floated – not without some major oscillations – around 80 euro per ton of CO₂. While the functioning of a cap-and-trade system should not be judged solely by the price that it determines, that figure does fall within the 50–100 US dollar range for the period 2020–2030 identified by the High-Level Commission on Carbon PricesFootnote ⁵³ as consistent with the achievement of the temperature target of the Paris Agreement. The EU ETS is undergoing reform again. However, this time the ultimate purpose of the reform is to start equipping the system towards net-zero emissions. In this same vein, the EU has decided to unilaterally introduce the CBAM. This is a difficult but necessary initiative to begin aligning international trade rules with the imperative of global climate neutrality.

The incredible cost reduction of certain technologies such as wind and solar PV over the past two decades has allowed the EU to achieve positive results in the decarbonisation of its electricity mix. Expanding the use of electricity in buildings, transport and industry looks like a promising choice to build on such a positive technological trend and reap the benefits of a highly versatile energy vector, which can be used efficiently and with negligible local polluting implications. Nevertheless, rapid electrification poses important challenges that must be addressed, if one wants to ensure an environmentally sustainable and secure supply of energy to European citizens and firms in the coming years. Electrification calls for a radical change of the capital stock in the energy sector, not only upstream (need to build new renewable-based power plants) and midstream (need to build new power lines at transmission and distribution level), but also downstream (need to replace fossil fuel-based appliances such as gas boilers and internal combustion engines with electric ones). Providing sufficient and co-ordinated incentives to the multiple actors at stake is not easy. Several rules, within and beyond the electricity sector, must be reassessed and potentially amended. With the proposals in the Fit-for-55 package, the EC has taken the first steps in this direction. Whether this will be sufficient in the turmoil that currently characterises energy markets is hard to tell.

Moving to clean molecules, the EU’s action plan for decarbonisation outlined in the Green Deal involves the integration of renewable and low-carbon gases (so-called clean molecules) as a progressive replacement for traditional fossil fuels in some specific sectors and energy uses. The energy crisis and the outbreak of war in Ukraine has not led to any back step, at the European policy level, regarding the fundamental role that clean molecules are destined to play in the EU decarbonisation strategy. In fact, without a prompt and progressive deployment of renewable and low-carbon gases, the achievement of the Green Deal objectives is at risk. The EC has been working to facilitate the integration and market uptake of renewable and low-carbon gases with several initiatives in recent years and focusing in particular on facilitating the upscale of biomethane and the market uptake of renewable hydrogen in the future EU energy mix via the publication or the review of EU directives and regulations. The viability of satisfying meaningful portions of natural gas demand with biomethane and renewable hydrogen requires a number of key developments, including significant sustained demand for renewable hydrogen, an increase in the availability of renewable energy, and a further reduction in the cost of renewable electricity and in the cost of electrolyser manufacturing and the supply chain.

The expanding role of the EU in sustainable finance is puzzling because of the mutually reinforcing dynamics at play between its financial capacity instruments and its standard and regulatory instruments. In this policy area and more than in other policy areas the European Commission has acted both as a policy agenda developer and as a policy agenda implementer. Having access to a host of instruments to finance sustainable projects, the Commission can equally use these instruments to ensure that the definitional standards it promotes have a market uptake. This is abundantly clear in the cases of the green bond standard and of the Taxonomy, which has been made operational through the eligibility criteria of the NGEU. However, the Taxonomy also helps to structure the more detailed and broader reporting foreseen by the CSRD. This being said, at the time of writing the jury is still out as regards the effectiveness of the EU sustainable finance strategy that, if one were to simplify, can amount to the financial arm of the Green Deal. The loopholes of the EU Taxonomy have been flagged since the EC decided to include natural gas and nuclear as transitional activities. Also, and although it is perhaps too early to tell, several voices are questioning the incomplete nature of the framework, in particular when it comes to the highly opaque and unregulated ESG ratings markets. ESG ratings regulation and supervision appear as the new frontier of this vibrant policy area.

3.1 Introduction

Climate change is increasingly recognized as posing issues related to human rights – ranging from first- and second-generation human rights (civil and political rights) to third-generation rights such as the right to a sustainable environment (within the context of the right to development). In October 2021, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) recognized the ‘human right to a safe, healthy, clean and sustainable environment’.Footnote ¹ The Council also appointed a Special Rapporteur on Promotion and Protection of Human Rights in the Context of Climate Change.Footnote ² In July 2022, the UN General Assembly confirmed the fundamental right to environmental protection.Footnote ³

The UNHRC has generally approached the relationship between climate change and human rights from the perspective of specific human rights.Footnote ⁴ A report published in 2009 acknowledged that climate change affects particular fundamental rights across the spectrum of civil and political rights (first-generation rights under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, or ICCPR) and economic, social, and cultural rights (second-generation rights under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, or ICESCR), spanning the rights to life, food, water, and work.Footnote ⁵ The report noted that climate change disproportionately affects specific vulnerable groups, such as women, children, and the elderly.Footnote ⁶ For example, women are particularly affected by climate change because of gender discrimination and inequality, which exacerbate factors such as poverty and access to financial services.Footnote ⁷ The report also highlighted the difficulty of holding States responsible for climate-related human rights violations because of the complexity of establishing a causal link between greenhouse gases emitted in a State and, for instance, a storm’s devastating impacts on people living in Kiribati in the Pacific. Given the difficulty of attributing responsibility to States, the Council recognized the importance of addressing such problems as first- and second-generation human rights.Footnote ⁸

The 2009 report established the blueprint of all subsequent studies on climate change and human rights, which have developed via a set of initiatives of the UN. Most notably, various Special Rapporteurs have tackled the problem.Footnote ⁹ For instance, the Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights systemically considered the implications of climate change in a report dedicated to the problem of ‘climate change and poverty’.Footnote ¹⁰ That report underscores that climate change impacts, first and foremost, poorer regions such as sub-Saharan Africa, with developing countries bearing around 75–80% of the cost of global warming.Footnote ¹¹ More recently, the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Development explained that climate change increasingly affects a wide range of internationally established human rights, including the right to development, with disproportionate effects on groups such as indigenous peoples, internally displaced persons, persons with disabilities, and vulnerable women.Footnote ¹²

A recent document adopted by the UNHRC summarizes the relationship between climate change and human rights.Footnote ¹³ The report analyses the impact of climate change on specific human rights, spanning the rights to life, development, health, food, and self-determination.Footnote ¹⁴ It also illustrates how climate change affects the fundamental rights of specific groups, including indigenous people, women, children, migrants, displaced persons, and people with disabilities.Footnote ¹⁵ Further, it describes the human rights obligations of States and businesses with respect to climate change, providing underpinning fundamental principles.Footnote ¹⁶ Finally, the Report discusses issues such as the institutional role of the UN and UNHRC, the impact of the recognition of a human right to a sustainable environment, and prospects for future action.Footnote ¹⁷

The relationship between climate change and third-generation human rights, in the form of a human right to a sustainable environment, has received special attention. In adopting Resolutions A/HRC/48/L.18, A/HRC/48/L.23 and A/76/L.75,Footnote ¹⁸ the UNHRC and General Assembly have respectively declared the ‘human right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment’. Despite understandable enthusiasm raised by the ‘historical’ declaration of the Council, certain questions must still be considered. Will these declarations be mere rhetoric, or a revolutionary achievement that will prove an essential instrument to fight climate change via fundamental rights? This question involves two other questions – the first substantive, and the second institutional. As we shall see, these questions are two sides of the same coin.

Concerning substance, the human right to a sustainable environment can be of material significance in the fight against climate change. The right to a healthy environment could ensure normative consistency across a wide range of policy issues and facilitates the achievement of better human rights outcomes through improved environmental performance, including reduced greenhouse gas emissions and cleaner air.Footnote ¹⁹ Most significantly, the human right to a sustainable environment might simplify questions of causation. A State could be held responsible under such a right for emitting excessive greenhouse gas emissions without the need to prove a further breach of specific human rights, such as the right to life. In other words, it is not necessary to prove that the United States, Russia, and China emit excessive greenhouse gases under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and Paris Agreement, and are thus responsible for triggering a storm with devastating effects on human lives in specific island nations. The United States, Russia, and China might be held responsible simply for emitting excessive greenhouse emissions, in breach of the universal human right to a sustainable environment. This would simplify the adoption of human rights remedial procedures when States emit excessive greenhouse gas emissions.

Beyond its declaration of a human right to a healthy environment, recent UNHRC action has had several other important impacts. Together with Res. A/HRC/48/L.23,Footnote ²⁰ the UNHRC appointed a Special Rapporteur on Promotion and Protection of Human Rights in the Context of Climate Change, via Res. A/HRC/48/L.27.Footnote ²¹ That resolution recalls that human rights are ‘universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated’.Footnote ²²

The Special Rapporteur is mandated to ‘address the adverse impact of climate change on the enjoyment of human rights, in the light of scientific data and assessments, and in a well-integrated manner’, advancing progress towards ‘the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the [Paris Agreement] and the [UNFCCC]’.Footnote ²³ The Rapporteur will consider how the adverse effects of climate change (for instance, sudden- and slow-onset disasters) affect the ‘full and effective enjoyment of human rights’, aiming to ‘strengthen the integration of human rights concerns into policymaking, legislation and plans addressing climate change’ so that States can effectively prevent and remedy the effects of climate change.Footnote ²⁴

The resolution also mandates that the Special Rapporteur emphasize ‘existing challenges, including financial challenges’ for States in their effort to promote and protect human rights when addressing the effects of climate change. The purpose is to formulate recommendations on the respect for, and promotion of, human rights, particularly within the framework of areas such as mitigation and adaptation policies, practices, and investment.Footnote ²⁵ Furthermore, the Rapporteur is requested to ‘synthesize knowledge, including indigenous and local traditional knowledge’, and to ‘identify good practices, strategies and policies’ regarding ‘how human rights are integrated into climate change policies and how these efforts contribute to the promotion and protection of all human rights and poverty alleviation’.Footnote ²⁶

The resolution thus appears to establish a coherent framework for studying the relationship between climate change and human rights, which has thus far been carried out in a fragmented way by different Special Rapporteurs on specific human rights, such as the rights to food and water. It is against this backdrop of a growing international mandate for environmental human rights (EHRs) that the EU has introduced its ambitious climate action plan, the Green Deal. The literature on this subject has already attained impressive proportions, too large in fact to cite here. However, the concern of this chapter is not with the specifics of the Green Deal but with the normative challenges to its implementation that may emerge at its intersection with human rights. For this purpose, it is important to develop a coherent implementation perspective that will shed light on the process of harmonizing environmental protection and human rights through law.

3.2 The Implementation Perspective

Seldom is it possible for scholars in any discipline to trace the origin of a field of research with any great precision to any given point in time. Arguably, the study of policy implementation is an exception. Perhaps with excessive intrepidity, I will date the appearance of implementation research in the policy sciences to 1 January 1973. On that date, books with the following subtitles were published – (1) How to Understand the United States Government and other Bulky Objects; and (2) How Great Expectations in Washington are Dashed in Oakland; or Why it’s Amazing that Federal Programs Work At All, This Being a Saga of the Economic Development Administration as Told by Two Sympathetic Observers Who Seek to Build Morals on a Foundation of Ruined Hopes. Fortunately, the primary titles are less fatiguing – The Institutional Imperative and Implementation.Footnote ²⁷

In our present context, mention of Jeffrey Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky’s Implementation will come as a surprise to few. Its impact as a founding text in implementation studies has reverberated through three editions and many an aspiring policy scholar has had his or her pre-professional ardour cooled by this tale of broken dreams. If a programme designed to create employment while catering to the interests of local businesses and community groups alike can begin life as a widely supported (and reasonably well-funded) federal priority, only to die in ignominy, what chance of success do any of us ever have? One answer, perhaps even darker than the question itself, is suggested by Robert Kharasch’s The Institutional Imperative. His insight was that implementation per se is rarely the objective of implementers. In a world where institutions can survive both abject failures (think, the ‘war’ on drugs) and success so spectacular that their raison d’être disappears (consider the March of Dimes campaign for a polio vaccine), it may be time for policy scholars to admit that institutional survival is the true objective of all policies once they fall to the tender mercies of actual government.

But before wrapping ourselves in the warm and protective folds of cynicism’s cloak, we should recall that governments have actually achieved substantive successes in the past. After all, did the Allies not defeat the Axis (if not fascism tout court)? Did the New Deal not put people back to work? Did NASA not put men on the moon? And perhaps a more important question – did not these policies enjoy an identifiable advantage that the programmes of the Economic Development Administration lacked? The obvious answer (but not automatically mistaken for that reason) is that the Axis powers posed an existential threat to the Allies by 1939. Almost as obvious was that the collapse of the world economy 10 years earlier imperilled everything that those in the developed world valued. Less obvious, but still the stuff of fevered worries in high places and low, was that Sputnik foreshadowed Soviet domination in the space above our very heads. The resulting sense of urgency gave war planners, New Dealers, and steely eyed missile-men a significant advantage over mere mortals. It gave them the power that flows from consensus.

Elsewhere, I have discussed the importance of consensus in democratic societies and in international environmental policy at considerable length.Footnote ²⁸ Here, it is sufficient to observe that the consensus underlying the Allied war effort in 1939, the New Deal a decade earlier, and the race for the moon a generation later was of a particular variety. It was not a military, economic, or scientific equivalent of the ‘American Dream’ or the ‘Brotherhood of Man’. In each instance, the consensus was sufficiently concrete that what counted as success was relatively clear and sufficiently strong to provide a level of public support that made a direct path to the goal both justifiable and sustainable. In short, it provided the bureaucrats charged with implementing those policies persuasive (or, at least, plausible) claims to be pursuing the public interest rather than their own. Invoking the analytical context established by our sub-discipline’s founding scholars, it reduced the volume of democracy’s divergent voices to a manageable level and aligned institutional survival with substantive policy success.

So, the first rule of policy implementation would appear to be to ‘seize the high ground’ that only the claim of political consensus can offer by framing policy objectives in terms of a compelling public interest. Turning our attention to the implementation focus of this volume, seizing the policy high ground is precisely what much climate policy advocacy attempts to do (with only modest and variable evidence of success so far). Its core arguments, emphasizing that the challenges posed by climate change are caused by us all and impact us all, are sufficiently concrete and direct to hope for success. But whether success is likely remains an open question because the problem is so large and the necessary solutions so numerous. There are, in fact, few examples of how that big a problem can be coherently addressed by so many small solutions. To that end, by nearly any measure the EU’s Green Deal – the focus of many chapters in this volume – is the most coherent and ambitious attempt yet to activate government bureaucrats to actually pursue the many diverse climate solutions that our current predicament demands. Indeed, its obvious allusion to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal foreshadows its scope and ambition – aspiring to nothing less than the remaking of Europe as the first climate-neutral continent on Earth.

Early as we are in our experience with so grand an endeavour, how are we to evaluate the prospects for successful implementation of the Green Deal? We can, and should, take a careful policy-analytic approach to each of its constituent elements in an effort to assess both their value as climate solutions and their viability as political initiatives. But another level of evaluation is of equal importance. How likely is it that the Green Deal, as a whole, will actually be implemented and is implementing it likely to advance the plan’s implicit objective of showing the way for other continents (and their constituent nation-states) to effective climate policy? If what I have argued above is even approximately accurate, the answer to these questions depends significantly on the character of the Green Deal’s underlying consensus. Does it (or might it) capture the level of public commitment necessary to bring normative order to democracy’s cacophony and focus the attention of relevant governance actors on what policy success requires?

The short answer to this question is, we don’t know. But saying that is not the same thing as saying that there is no way to know. In fact, a small-bore variation of the question has already been put to the nations of the world and those of the EU have already given a uniquely hopeful answer. In 1976, Portugal became the first nation on Earth to entrench the substantive right to a healthy environment in its constitution.Footnote ²⁹ Over the succeeding half-century, many other nations have followed suit, with many of those being EU members. The substantive premise of this essay is that an examination of that experience may shed light on the likelihood that the Green Deal will be implemented in ways that achieve the objectives of climate activists and acquit the motivations of EU officialdom. Before taking up that task, I would like to highlight a few of the methodological premises that support this analytical approach.

3.3 Constitutions, Consensus and Policy Implementation: The Tangled Web We Weave

Using the ‘natural experiment’ of environmental constitutionalism as a proxy for a European nation’s commitment to the implementation of the EU’s Green Deal is not entirely unproblematic.Footnote ³⁰ First of all, the effectiveness of environmental constitutionalism is open to question. David Boyd extols environmental constitutionalism’s virtues, providing numerous examples of its good effect. However, environmental constitutionalism can take a variety of forms. Many nations have imposed a generalized obligation on government to maintain a safe and/or healthy environment. Another form of environmental constitutionalism imposes a similar obligation on individual citizens. These two forms of environmental constitutionalism would together present intolerable analytical difficulties in our present context. The meaning and effectiveness of a governmental duty in this setting ‘depends on its wording, its location in the constitution, whether it is enforceable by individuals and groups, and a host of factors external to the constitution’.Footnote ³¹ Likewise, the character of individual obligation clauses is rendered doubtful by the fact that constitutions ‘are generally enforceable against the state, not individuals’. It is, therefore, ‘unclear what legal purpose is served by the constitutionalization of individual environmental duties’.Footnote ³² For these reasons, the ‘environmental duty’ forms of environmental constitutionalism are ill-suited to our present purpose because of their inherently ambiguous meaning and doubtful significance.

The remaining forms of environmental constitutionalism – procedural and substantive environmental rights – are far less problematic (from an analytical perspective) than clauses that purport to impose environmental duties. The rights clauses, however, differ from one another in at least one important respect. Procedural environmental rights clauses are distinctly territorial creatures. They are ‘most commonly found in constitutions from Eastern Europe and Latin America’, suggesting that they may be responses ‘to the historical suppression of environmental information by autocratic regimes’,Footnote ³³ rather than clauses with independent environmental significance. So, while not as inherently problematic as the environmental duty clauses, procedural environmental rights present similar difficulties of interpretation. Luckily, the fact that such procedural clauses are accompanied by substantive environmental rights in all but one instance justifies us in assuming that European procedural clauses are regarded as a complement to substantive rights rather than an independent expression of them.

We will, therefore, include in our roster of environmental constitutionalism ‘positive’ EU nations only, those whose constitutions contain a substantive environmental right. The natural experiment I introduced above is not an environmental constitutionalism activity generally, but rather the adoption of substantive environmental rights clauses. Constitutional entrenchment of an environmental human right, by itself, provides little protection for either humans or the environment. As James R. May has noted, ‘courts have yet to engage express environmental rights as often as might be expected’.Footnote ³⁴ As a consequence, there are ‘surprisingly few judicial decisions implementing constitutionally enshrined environmental rights provisions’.Footnote ³⁵ It is difficult to imagine that the problem is lack of either pollution or plaintiffs. Rather, the poor track record of environmental constitutionalism implementation so far can be traced to obstacles such as ‘text, meaning, judicial receptivity’ failures of ‘political will’ and the lack of ‘standards’ and ‘enforceability’.Footnote ³⁶ However, the vicissitudes of adjudication do not justify the assumption that environmental constitutionalism provisions are intended merely to provide makeweight arguments or, worse, political window dressing for authoritarian or rapacious regimes (especially among EU nations).

Absent evidence of such political duplicity, countries that have taken this step are entitled to the presumption that their commitment to a clean environment has become deeply enough ingrained in the national governing consensus that its provision for all has found expression in their foundational documents. Especially in the case of EU nations, substantive environmental constitutionalism clauses, where they are found, mark off a policy space ‘in which there is some considerable congruence between the views of political leaders and those whom it is their duty to serve’.Footnote ³⁷ They are generally the product of a conjunction between two influences, both of which have become common across the EU. The first is a ‘concrete political context’ within which a constitution is adopted or amended that features the delegitimisation of right-wing political actors.Footnote ³⁸ The second is ‘a generic and broad consensus about social rights’ that combines an ‘overall conception of the role of the law and of the state’ in the nation’s legal tradition, the ‘values of Social Catholicism’ and an ‘international Zeitgeist favorable to social rights’.Footnote ³⁹ This level of consensus clearly approaches that which we have already identified as constituting a foundation for successful policy implementation. Its potential efficacy in climate policy debates is enhanced yet further by the fact that this ‘special category of rights lies at the intersection of a two-way instrumentality. Environmental human rights can both protect vital environmental interests and empower individuals to enjoy other fundamental rights that are not directly environmental in character’.Footnote ⁴⁰ This makes the presence (or absence) of substantive environmental constitutionalism clauses a useful indicator of a nation’s environmental consensus. While it by no means guarantees the implementation of environmental human rights, it captures both the commitment to environmental protection and the recognition of the ecological prerequisites to the enjoyment of human rights more generally that are essential to that goal. It also offers an opportunity to plug a fairly obvious hole in the EU Green Deal where (for both practical and normative reasons) explicit environmental human rights really ought to be.

Furthermore, substantive environmental constitutionalism clauses more precisely fit our analytical concern than those which impose duties. As a general matter, constitutional law has learned over the course of its history to resolve the dissensus resulting from conflict among comprehensive normative doctrines with ‘an exclusively secular overlapping consensus’ (Rawls) and with the support of an often homogenized ‘constitutional patriotism’ (Habermas).Footnote ⁴¹ In this context, substantive rights clauses function as ‘built-in rights-wideners’ that allow us to ‘bridge the modern chasm between a high-speed cultural evolution and a much slower evolution of our moral psychology’.Footnote ⁴² They do this through a process of negation which ‘creates a praxis of giving and accepting reasons which finally causes the emergence of a rationally justifiable egalitarian system of norms and discourses’.Footnote ⁴³ In this context, however, the EU is caught on the horns of a unique dilemma. Will the normative power that its progressive development seeks to create and harness be an engine of Kantian cosmopolitanism (as scholars and publicists alike tend to assume), or will it become a force for a Hobbesian logic of normative homogenization (as its harshest critics and bureauphobes everywhere argue)?Footnote ⁴⁴ Put differently, will Green Deal consensus be purchased at the cost of EU pluralism? An examination of this question in the environmental constitutionalism context may shed light on this question and, by extension, tell us whether hidden normative dissensus threatens effective implementation of the Green Deal.

3.4 The European Union as an Arena of Climate Policy Implementation

Having established substantive environmental rights constitutionalism as our indicator of the normative climate for successful implementation of the EU Green Deal, we may now approach that topic directly. The first observation we can make is that the EU has been fertile ground for the adoption of substantive environmental rights. Of the 27 current members, 16 have substantive environmental rights clauses in their constitutions. While the presence of 11 ‘dissenters’ may give pause, that should not (by itself) be a cause of despair. Three dissenting EU members (Cyprus, the Republic of Ireland, and Malta) are common law nations.Footnote ⁴⁵ And while there is some controversy regarding the continuing relevance of legal traditions,Footnote ⁴⁶ their importance in this context is difficult to dispute. Of fully common law countries worldwide, only one (Jamaica) has adopted a substantive environmental rights clause. In the light of the apparent power of this cross-cutting influence on substantive environmental rights decisions, it seems entirely reasonable to eliminate the three common-law EU members from our analysis (as both unremarkable and nearly unavoidable).

Two of the remaining eight EU members without such clauses differ from their colleagues in a different yet pertinent way. Denmark and Sweden, while nominally civil law nations, have legal codes that stretch much further back in time than their continental counterparts and owe virtually nothing to them by way of legal borrowing. For its part, Denmark is the oldest State in Europe and its legal system is ‘essentially national in character’, having ‘evolved independently of Roman law’.Footnote ⁴⁷ Likewise, early Swedish law ‘grew up in undisturbed isolation … exhibiting a unique instance of law almost solely self-developed’.Footnote ⁴⁸ The oldest Swedish written law was that of Västergötland, which was written down, copied, and revised during the early 1200s, duly becoming Sweden’s first book in 1280. In form and content it tracked Sweden’s even older law, which was ‘similar in its principles to that among other northern and Teutonic peoples and was made familiar through the Icelandic sagas’.Footnote ⁴⁹

In fact, given the early shared history of Denmark and Sweden, it would have been remarkable if either country had found time to so much as wonder how law might be developing beyond Scandinavia. They were far too busy glaring at each other across the Øresund to pursue such pastimes. Be that as it may, each of these ‘dissenting’ members of the EU earns a pass when it comes to substantive environmental rights constitutionalization. Countries whose legal history is Scandinavian are habitually counted among the world’s most progressive societies, particularly as regards human rights. Moreover, both Denmark and Sweden are regular top 10 members of the World Population Review’s most environmentally friendly countries list.Footnote ⁵⁰ If either Green Plan truculence or environmental rights abuses born of legal tradition come from anywhere, it is unlikely to be the EU’s far north. We can, therefore, safely eliminate two more substantive environmental rights dissenters from our analysis.

We are now left with six civil law members of the EU whose reluctance to adopt a substantive environmental rights clause cannot be banished from our analytical field of vision by historical hand-waving. Austria, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, and Luxembourg are near neighbours of the 16 substantive environmental rights-adopting EU members and have legal histories that are intimately intertwined with them. So, if there is something systemic in their particular manifestations of civil law that differs significantly from that of their 16 substantive environmental rights EU partners, we need to know what it is. As with our first invocation of the concept of legal traditions, a preliminary answer lies ready to hand. A fundamental difference among civil law nations has long been recognized between those whose systems are primarily German in origin and those whose systems more generally follow the Code Napoléon. All six of our remaining non-substantive environmental rights members of the EU have legal systems that are widely regarded as having Germanic law origins. What, precisely, are we to make of this fact?

3.5 Vive la Diffèrence?

With 22 EU members still in our analytical field of view, it is unlikely that we will be able to tease apart the factors that explain the Germanic and French ‘flavours’ of civil law in each of those cases. However, given the stark difference between them that environmental constitutionalism has revealed, it is difficult to believe that the explanation for deutscher dissens is as trivial as the preference for chocolate over vanilla. The obvious solution is to concentrate our attention on what appear to be the ‘source codes’ of European legal development – the Code Napoléon of 1804 and the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (BGB) of 1900. The literature on the history and development of civil law is voluminous almost beyond reckoning. However, in the remainder of this section I will call upon only those parts of that literature necessary to discuss distinctions between the Code and the BGB that might reasonably explain their differential impact on environmental constitutionalism and which might be expected to present obstacles to the successful implementation of at least some elements of the Green Deal.

Having focused our attention on the Code and the BGB, it is almost inevitable that we should notice that they are (so to speak) the legal bookends of that momentous period in history often called the long nineteenth century. It is natural, then, to wonder how much further back in history we should look for a better understanding of those legal milestones. One answer can be found in the magisterial work of Harold Berman on the development of the Western legal tradition,Footnote ⁵¹ and the impact on that development of the Protestant Reformation.Footnote ⁵² The first volume of Berman’s magnum opus is significant for its demolition of the long-standing social scientific conceit that law is a secondary influence upon history because it is part of society’s ideological superstructure rather than its material base. As Berman succinctly puts it, ‘the fact that Hegel was wrong in supposing that consciousness determines being does not mean that Marx was right in saying that being determines consciousness’.Footnote ⁵³ Moreover, in spite of the fact that he had escaped the grasp of economic determinism, its crippling sociological assumptions left a legal theorist of Max Weber’s stature unable to explain some of the unique features of Western society – that it was not the Western State that emerged first, but the Church in the form of a State; that the first principal stage of Western development was the product of a dialectical tension between theology, science, and law; and that those social institutions were held together by a unique sense of time, of evolution, and of revolutions both past and yet to come.Footnote ⁵⁴ All of these are matters of single importance to Berman’s analysis.

For all this, and as important as Berman’s historical and methodological insights are, of primary concern to our inquiry is his contribution to our understanding of the fractures that appeared in the Western legal tradition centuries after its birth in the High Middle Ages. The bifurcated contours of Continental European law as we see them today were established, on Berman’s telling, by the Protestant Revolutions in Germany (1517–1555) and England (1640–1689). But before we are carried away with the theological particulars of those revolutions, it is worth remembering that one of the EU dissenters (Italy) has a Protestant population of under 1%. So, Protestantism per se will not meet our dual criteria. While it might or might not present Green Deal implementation issues, it cannot be part of an explanation of environmental constitutionalism outcomes. But perhaps the Protestant revolutions placed more issues in doubt than just theocratic orthodoxy. Here, again, Berman is a helpful guide.

Far from portraying the German Protestant revolution as ‘a story of “Luther and the princes” against “papacy and empire”’, Berman argues that ‘it was not only, and not primarily the combination of religious prophets and a secular high magistracy that was responsible for the great transformation of church and State but rather the actions of large segments of the German people as a whole, and especially of the merchant and artisan classes within German cities’.Footnote ⁵⁵ Berman also saves a place in his analysis for the peasantry and the urban poor, whom the high magistracy had crushed in an earlier massive revolt. And, while Berman’s continental focus is on Germany, he argues that ‘the German Revolution was a European Revolution’ – having profound impacts throughout Central and Eastern Europe and seizing the Scandinavian imagination even more firmly than it did the Germanic.Footnote ⁵⁶

While Berman’s first volume and its emphasis on the High Middle Ages generally tracks the viewpoint of other scholars of civil law history,Footnote ⁵⁷ his account of the Protestant revolutions has been met with somewhat more dissent. Much of it is methodological and need not detain us because there is little dispute about Berman’s central claim that the Lutheran revolutionaries had a distinctive legal philosophy. Contrary to the scholastics, for whom reason was the superior cognitive facility, Luther preached that reason should be subordinated to conscience. Conscience was ‘the bearer of man’s relationship with God … that shapes and governs all of the activities of his life, including both his apprehension and his application of natural law’.Footnote ⁵⁸ Further, Luther ‘considered it to be the duty of the prince to oversee reform’ because the extensive changes that were needed in legislation and the courts were not appropriate work for the masses.Footnote ⁵⁹ The corollary principle, that ‘orthodoxy was to be laid down by the ruler of each state’,Footnote ⁶⁰ became one of Protestantism’s early political selling points.

Of greater importance to our concerns, however, was that home-field advantage was congenial to a parallel development in the Lutheran take on natural law. Far from a universalistic counterforce, natural law thinking provided a legal methodology that reinforced Protestant localism (and historicism). With law increasingly ‘associated with the legislative sovereignty of each nation’ in the person of their princes,Footnote ⁶¹ a new trajectory was established in legal thinking. ‘Instead of trying to discover true principles of law from assumptions about human nature, as the French did under the influence of secular natural law, the Germans sought to find fundamental principles of German law by scientific study of the data of German law: the existing German legal system in historical context’.Footnote ⁶² Thus, we see that ‘in old Germanic law and even in the nineteenth century, custom was of great importance’.Footnote ⁶³ This pattern of legal science within the context of a local ‘database’ was appealing because it was infinitely replicable and its results contributed to wide variations in the reception of the Code as Napoleon attempted to export it to the rest of Germanic Europe.Footnote ⁶⁴ When we consider how the fortunes of continental law might have differed if the French Code had been received throughout the Germanic States as it was elsewhere in Napoleon’s domain, we might well conclude that ‘the dramatic event in European legal history was not codification itself, but the German rejection of French codification’.Footnote ⁶⁵ But how are we to determine which aspects of this Germanic dissent are relevant to the environmental constitutionalism outcomes that we have documented and which factors among those might complicate the implementation of the Green Deal? It is to that complex question that I now turn.

3.6 What Makes the Difference?

As a general matter, the social forces of justice and state authority present themselves to us wearing many faces.Footnote ⁶⁶ As a matter of typological construction, we can distinguish between States that take activist approaches to the administration of justice, emphasizing the achievement of preferred policy outcomes. Conversely, a State’s approach to questions of justice may be reactive, concentrating on resolving discrete disputes arising from naturally occurring social contexts. Moreover, in crafting its judicial institutions and processes, a State may create a hierarchical officialdom which subjects the work of every judicial actor to direct review. Alternatively, judicial institutions may rely on multiple sources of authority with the expectation that they will coordinate their efforts in order to achieve justice. Assigning either France or Germany to any of these categories with certainty is inherently difficult. However, their respective codes do betray certain tendencies that bear on the questions at hand.

For example, the Code Napoléon is a distinctively post-revolutionary document. When the French Revolution swept away the ancien régime, whose central government had been too weak to unify French law, the way was open to a wave of reformers who drafted a code that was ‘very brief and sketchy; deliberately so’ as its authors ‘professed a contempt for both Roman law and customary laws, aiming to make the law simple, direct and available to every citizen’.Footnote ⁶⁷ The hope was the French Code would become ‘a kind of popular book that could be put on the shelf next to the family Bible or, perhaps, in place of it’, and that its clarity would ‘allow citizens to determine their rights and obligations by themselves’,Footnote ⁶⁸ thus fulfilling the utopian object of making lawyers unnecessary. And it is important to observe that the dominant rationalism of the time is reflected in the Code’s pretention to sweep away all prior law. After all, only ‘an exaggerated rationalism can explain the belief that history could be abolished by repealing a statute’.Footnote ⁶⁹ In all of these ways, the ideology of French codification ‘accurately reflects the ideology of the French Revolution’.Footnote ⁷⁰ The fact that Napoleon himself was more charmed by the brevity and ambiguity that made the Code more ‘portable’ and thus more useful to his ambitions does nothing to diminish its essentially revolutionary character.

For its part, the BGB is just as bold about its larger objectives as was the Code Napoléon. It declares its character at the very outset by including a heretofore unheard of feature – a ‘general part’ that was ‘dominated by the dogmatic teaching of German universities in the nineteenth century which … had completely changed (while purporting merely to systematise) the German ius commune’.Footnote ⁷¹ Again, we see the pretension to overturn all that had gone before. But this time the motivation was not revolutionary but, rather, counter-revolutionary – an expression of the Pandectist commitment to remake German law by reaching back beyond the European experience to apply the Pandects of Justinian directly to German legal custom and to their immediate concerns. Their philosophy was one of pure legal science, but also a bold expression of German nationalism. While the Pandectists’ claims to purity of purpose and political neutrality were belied by their embrace of the values of ‘the dominant middle class which believed in the theory of laissez-faire … freedom of contract and the protection of private property’,Footnote ⁷² their apparent activism was actually more reactive in character. After all, the German ius commune that the Pandectists swept away was by that time far from a pure-bred beast – being neither truly ‘common’ nor fully German. The primary culprit, as in so many other things European, was Napoleon.

Napoleon found his Code to be a handy tool for standardizing legal practice in the areas he had come to dominate. Its ‘emphasis on legal equality and property rights’ made it attractive to the emerging middle-classes, as a consequence of which it ‘was translated into a number of languages and introduced into various subject States along with the jury system, a uniform court hierarchy, and judicial due process’.Footnote ⁷³ However, in Germany, reception of the Code was (perhaps predictably) rather chaotic. Some German States had the Code forced upon them through annexation (chiefly the Rhine departments and Hanseatic cities). Others adopted it more or less as it was urged upon them (Westphalia, Berg, Frankfurt, Ahremberg, and Anhalt-Köthen) or after making significant changes to it (Baden). A sly few adopted it but never brought it into effect (Nassau and Würzburg), or began the process of adoption and then slow-walked it (Hesse-Darmstadt and Bavaria). The rest dithered until it eventually became evident that Napoleon was not going to press hard for its adoption – which they ultimately (and often quietly) declined to do.Footnote ⁷⁴ However, the damage was already done. The French bacillus had entered the German body-politic, a foreign presence that festered in Baden, Berg and the Rhineland, where ‘the Code Civil remained on their statute books until the [BGB] came into force’.Footnote ⁷⁵

Having established the activist quality of the legal culture which produced the Code and reactive character of the BGB, the forms of French and German structures of authority can be described with relative ease. The activism and hierarchy of French law is evident in its historical commitment to the ‘investigating judge’ as well as in its propensity to multiply ‘official units – panels of low-level officials – in order to permit mutual supervision in implementing centrally imposed policy’.Footnote ⁷⁶ In Germany, on the other hand, the principle that the sources of law are limited to only custom and statute, taken together with the history of German law as a ‘patchwork of localized and diverse bodies of custom, uncoordinated by any judicial hierarchy’Footnote ⁷⁷ mark German legal officialdom clearly as ‘coordinate’ rather than hierarchical and its approach as reactive. So here we have one explanation for the fact that ‘modern scholars profess to see two different “families” among civil law systems or two branches of the civil law “family”, one deriving from the Germanic sphere of influence, the other from the Latin or, more particularly, the French’.Footnote ⁷⁸ The question remains, however, why should civil law nations with activist and hierarchical legal systems be so much more receptive to environmental constitutionalism than those with reactive and coordinate systems? And, ultimately, what can we learn from that data point about the likely challenges to the implementation of the EU Green Deal? To answer these questions, we need a more detailed perspective on environmental constitutionalism and the role it plays in environmentalism more generally. To gain that perspective, we shall begin by returning to the concept of consensus.

3.7 What Difference Does the Difference Make?

Elsewhere, I have discussed two contrasting (although not contradictory) approaches to the formation of governance consensus.Footnote ⁷⁹ The approach that I have called ‘declaratory’ begins with the pronouncement of abstract principles, followed by an exegetical process of determining what sort of policies those principles suggest, and is concluded by a deductive exercise which establishes the rules that are needed to guide a target population that is (implicitly) assumed to wish to comply with the declared principles. This simple model captures the essence of rational management (with its mission statements, organizational goals, and individual objectives), of activist/hierarchical state authority, and of the broad characteristics of international regime formation. All of these familiar processes move from the general to the specific, using abstract declarations to (ultimately) resolve concrete problems.

On the other hand, the ‘adjudicatory’ form of consensus development begins with the resolution of many instances of what ultimately is recognized to be a more general problem. The archetypal example is the common law process of resolving individual disputes which (eventually) provides a large enough ‘database’ of resolutions that the successful ones can be identified and their common properties isolated. Legal treatises then follow, often restatements of the judge-made law, and finally (when the cases capture a problem of sufficient import) the development of model codes in anticipation of eventual codification. The adjudicatory model captures, admittedly in idealized form, the process of consensus formation in common law countries – including their development of human rights through reactive legislative solutions to emergent social problems within the framework of only sparse (and largely procedural) systems of constitutional rights.Footnote ⁸⁰

In comparing the legal cultures of France and Germany, what should we expect in this context? The Code, which we have characterized as abstract and even vague, has succeeded historically for precisely that reason. Its scope was universal – ‘all Frenchman became citizens, without differentiation of status … all feudal burdens on land were abolished, as were all feudal privileges’.Footnote ⁸¹ While it purported to cover all subjects that the nation’s judiciary might confront, it purchased that universality at the cost of generality. Indeed, a primary reason for the breadth of its influence and adoption is that ‘it expressed more generally, and therefore more attractively than its rivals, the ideals of the codification movement which continued in civil law countries throughout the nineteenth century’.Footnote ⁸²

The authors of the BGB, on the other hand, would not have seen their project as part of a transnational movement. Their aspiration was to provide so complete and historically grounded an account of its area of coverage (limited by the confines of historically identifiable German legal custom) that judges would find the answer to any conceivable problem within its four corners. A companion goal was to derive those answers, to the greatest possible degree, from uniquely German customs and practices. A word that might fairly be applied to the BGB is ‘accommodationist’. It was ‘not intended to construct an ideal system on the basis of universal natural law; its object was to maintain (as far as this was compatible with the necessities of unification) the connexion of the present with the past, but without neglecting the change in the conditions of life brought about by modern social and economical developments’.Footnote ⁸³ The adoption and subsequent durability of the BGB is the product of a consensus that ‘rested (and rests) on several foundations. These include the Germanic nature of the Code and the historical and cultural values that the new law embodied’.Footnote ⁸⁴ In contrast to the declaratory character of the Code Napoléon and its exegetical and deductive methodology, the BGB is seen (at least by its adherents) as the inductive product of concrete problem-solving through any number of customs and practices that have allowed the German people to ‘adjudicate’ their differences over the centuries. It is almost as if the German Pandectists had been in close correspondence with the American most widely remembered for having written that ‘the life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience’.Footnote ⁸⁵

3.8 Some Conclusions (Tentative, of Course)

If the parallel suggested by the immediately preceding sentence sends a shiver down the spines of civil law scholars, perhaps it should. Common law countries reject the concept of environmental human rights almost unanimously, with only Jamaica significantly breaking ranks. Moreover, the leading common law countries are well known for their sparse collections of basic rights – tending towards political and civil rights thought to be ‘constitutive’ of their polities in the most fundamental sense. So, while the point is a quite general one at this juncture, we have a wider and entirely plausible context for the dissent by EU countries with legal systems inspired by the Germanic/Romanist civil law tradition rather than that of the French.

Moreover, respecting our primary question concerning the implementation of the EU Green Deal, we have found that the ‘natural experiment’ of environmental constitutionalism has potential lessons to teach. If Berman is correct in treating the German and English elements of the Protestant Reformation as revolutionary siblings, perhaps the shared (and largely secular) conservatism of those revolutions is something we should attend to. The departure of the UK may turn out to have been an unexpected boon to the implementation of the Green Deal. But Germany and the Germanic legal culture are still alive, well, and fully present at the heart of the continent and its politics. And, as the various provisions of the Green Plan mature into programmes and mandates, that legal culture may assert itself.

For example, reactive legal institutions deploying coordinate political authority are more comfortable resolving concrete disputes than they are promulgating regulatory policy.Footnote ⁸⁶ So when it comes to the style of environmental policy that appeals to various countries, Germany may prove to be more like the United States than anyone might have expected – which is not necessarily all bad. As one early indication of its positive potential, the environmental justice movement in Germany appears to be significantly more prominent than it is in France, of which it was said as recently as 2014 that it simply had no environmental justice movement.Footnote ⁸⁷ This has a number of implications.

First, environmental justice is a product of the civil rights movement rather than the broader human rights movement. In comparison to environmental human rights, environmental justice is far more concerned with environmental manifestations of racial, ethnic, and class discrimination. Although environmental justice activists recognize environmental human rights activists as kindred spirits on the global stage, their interests generally lie closer to home – often manifesting a concentric circle perspective in which those closest to us are the subjects of our strongest obligations.Footnote ⁸⁸ As compared with environmental human rights, therefore, environmental justice is typically characterized by a significant degree of localism.

Second, environmental justice has generally been concerned with the reasons for injustice rather than the rationale for greater justice. In part because of its localism, but also because of its frequent need to situate its concerns in certain legal categories of protected persons, the movement struggles to reach beyond issues affecting discrete and insular minority populations.Footnote ⁸⁹ A broader environmental human rights perspective is often resisted as the product of classical liberalism that is largely blind to the environmental plight of women and the people of the developing world.Footnote ⁹⁰ This can express itself as a preoccupation with remedial measures as opposed to regulatory policy. As an ironic consequence, ecofeminists,Footnote ⁹¹ and those whose concerns involve the global south,Footnote ⁹² often look elsewhere for theoretical and political allies. In this way environmental justice’s local and particularistic success tends to isolate it from the more universal narratives (and advocates) that characterize the broader environmental human rights movement – sources of support that might help environmental justice reach beyond its localism to achieve greater global influence. Fissures of this sort within the environmental movement offer gaps into which reactionary forces can drive wedge issues.

Third, and finally, environmental justice’s primary focus is on the imposition of environmental disadvantage on those who have been rendered helpless to resist by a history of persecution – of the denial of what we generally consider their civil rights. In large part, this is a function of the statutory frameworks within which environmental justice actions must be situated (particularly in the United States). The result is that environmental justice issues are commonly associated with environmental racism involving the exposure of minority communities to disproportionate health risks as a consequence of their political disenfranchisement. The primary narrative is one of individual conscience rather than universal reason. Important as this focus is, it often overlooks the systemic issues of the ‘reduced environmental quality of life … lack of participation … in environmental policy- and decision making … asymmetry of governmental and private-sector responses’ to environmental demands of minorities and ‘the much larger but related international problems of environmental justice’.Footnote ⁹³ Thus, the vital strengths that the environmental justice movement has realized from its remedial focus on local and particular injustices driven by an individualism of conscience have been bought at the cost of the advantages that a more global, universal and prospective approach might offer.

To a significant extent, the environmental human rights movement still carries environmental justice strands in its genetic makeup. However, those genes do not manifest themselves everywhere and the unfortunate consequences of that run in more than one direction. For example, the EU Green Deal is regrettably silent on the issue of environmental human rights. That, I suggest, is no coincidence. Without the powerful and pressing issues of ‘environmental racism’ that roil politics in the United States, there was less likelihood that an influential environmental justice movement would emerge in Europe. As a consequence, ‘a Eurolegalism relying on rights frames has been a relative latecomer to the environmental policy arena. And the rights that have been evident are – in the case of legislative rights – procedural rather than substantive in nature and in that respect, offer a somewhat less powerful Eurolegalism’ than would otherwise be the case.Footnote ⁹⁴

The hole in EU environmentalism that I am describing is also evident in the absence of judicial dialogue between the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the EU regarding environmental rights. That pattern is a glaring exception to the generally cooperative disposition exhibited by the two courts in other domains of human rights protection.Footnote ⁹⁵ This fact, when combined with relative absence of environmental human rights framings in Eurolegalism is almost enough to make one believe that those in the know are avoiding this corner of the environmental policy space because they know it to contain old unexploded ordinances. In any event, European environmentalism has thus been (and continues to be) deprived of the advantages of environmental justice activist energy and public attention that have benefited American environmentalism as a result of its informal partnership with the American civil rights movement. Perhaps that is the cost of ignoring the fact that localism and the exercise of individual conscience are still actively contested values. Consider that in the most recent wave of the World Values Survey, two items separated France and Germany in a way that few others do. In response to the item that asked how close respondents felt to the rest of the world, nearly 30% of French said ‘very close’ while only 15.5% of Germans gave that response.Footnote ⁹⁶ And when asked whether a long list of personal traits were important qualities in a child, only 36% of French respondents thought the ‘independence’ was important, whereas nearly 70% of Germans thought so.Footnote ⁹⁷

Finally, with respect to climate issues in particular, the abstract quality of environmental rights that lack environmental justice lineage contributes to the Janus-faced form that climate change narratives take. On the one hand, the climate change narrative ‘is a discourse of judgment, pathology, and catastrophe’. It is ‘a hostile “other” in collective consciousness, condemning us to suffer for our excesses, threatening us with environmental conditions’ we have long associated with ill-health while holding over our heads ‘the prospect of a radical dispossession’ of the things we value most. On the other hand, an analysis of climate discourses by the World Trade Organisation, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development suggests that ‘the global governmentality of climate protection is built on four discursive pillars – globalism, scientism, efficiency, and an ethics of growth – that make climate protection function as a powerful but meaningless rhetorical tool’.Footnote ⁹⁸ The technocratic elitism that results has proven quite resilient in the face of conventional environmental arguments, but seems forever vulnerable to environmental justice assaults – which draw their power from our nagging awareness that ‘the very notion of the domination of nature by man stems from the very real domination of human by human’.Footnote ⁹⁹

Having now discussed some of the normative differences that cohere with the distinction between activist and hierarchical forms of legal authority and legal institutions with a more reactive character that relies on coordinate authority structures, we can now speculate briefly about what implementation obstacles to the Green Deal will look like in general. In the light of the German preference for an inductive approach to the formation of political consensus, the generalized conservatism that is sometimes attributed to the Germanic strain of civil law now begins to appear to be more a form of experimentalism – a preference for solutions that have been field-tested on a small scale before being introduced as a regulation of general application. So too that individualism which expressed itself in the English revolution as a founding principle of liberalism appears on the continent less an intrusion into the German body politic than a venerable expression of personal independence grounded in personal conscience. The nationalism that equally attended the development of German civil law is less a rejection of the world than it is a suspicion about deductive reasoning from abstract universals and a preference for empiricist induction. Finally, these three elements taken together suggest that the Germanic form of civil law has a pronounced tilt towards normative decentralization – a form of governance that embraces the concept of subsidiarity as both a legal and moral principle. Accommodating that perspective while transforming the entire European way of life will be an endless challenge, increasing in difficulty as the need (and demand for) collective ‘transformation’ grows and our responses more closely impinge upon our normative cores. So, that process may well force the scholars and jurists of the EU onto the environmental rights minefield some of them appear to have been avoiding. I suspect that ground is where the most daunting challenges to Green Plan implementation will be encountered. But there is at least one bright spot.

While my discussion to this point of the declaratory and adjudicatory models might suggest that these are competing approaches to the formation of rights, it is not necessarily the case. These approaches are both models, potentially complementary ones, of how governing consensus can be built. And whatever else a right may be, it necessarily involves the assertion of a particular kind of consensus. In order to become functioning elements of a governance structure, ‘rights must be so well-established that they are rarely disputed, and real rights must present socially, politically, and legally accepted bounds on what must, can, and cannot be done in the everyday lives of humans’.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ The adjudicatory and declaratory models describe at a general level alternate methods for developing such legally accepted boundaries by harnessing both the remedial and regulatory potential of law.Footnote ¹⁰¹ I am convinced that deploying these models in tandem, as a pincer attack on the obstacles to climate change policy implementation, is the strategy we will all finally be forced to adopt.

The need for this two-pronged approach is evident in European views on the pursuit of non-trade policy objectives through trade policy decisions. Views among EU institutional actors on the importance of environmental and human rights objectives align well with those of the European public generally, with both diverging from business community opinions. However, on the more practical matter of whether non-trade objectives should be addressed through trade policy, EU actors share the opinions of the business community rather than those of their citizenry.Footnote ¹⁰² This disjuncture clearly suggests a normative gap between EU citizens and EU institutional actors – both public and private. Indeed, if elite attitudes are the shoals upon which environmental human rights are destined to founder, then broader public participation is likely to be the key mechanism through which environmental rights will eventually become effective. The implementation of environmental human rights will likely be propelled by a combination of confrontational and institutional modes of participation.Footnote ¹⁰³

Such an ‘outside/inside’ pattern of rights creation and development is very much the norm in common law countries.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ It is also entirely consistent with the adjudicatory model of consensus formation as I have described it. And, if the account that I have provided of Germanic civil law is generally accurate, it suggests that EU nations that have followed that tradition are not so much normative holdouts as they are devotees of local experimentation. Even if this is accepted, it does not necessarily bode ill for the long-term development of an EU normative consensus on climate rights. It means only that much of the heavy lifting will likely have to be accomplished through intensive interpretation of the entire domain of environmental rights by the European Court of Human Rights, consistent with its long-standing view of the European Convention as a living instrument of governance.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ However, this will require time that a changing climate may not permit us.

4.1 Introduction

Largely because of an abundance of natural resources, which make up almost half of its federal budget, the Russian Federation is one of the world’s main oil and gas producers.Footnote ¹ Russia is also one of the world’s biggest emitters of carbon dioxide and its main gas producer, State-owned Gazprom, consistently ranks among the largest emitters of industrial greenhouse gases.Footnote ² While the federal Parliament (‘Duma’) has recently passed climate legislation establishing, inter alia, a national carbon-pricing scheme, the country is reportedly far from being on track to achieve the objectives established under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement.Footnote ³ Theoretically, the situation has been convincingly contextualised within a framework whereby Russia uses energy as a weapon to strengthen its ‘spheres of influence’, along the lines of a political doctrine that is deeply rooted in the Cold War.Footnote ⁴ Prior to war in Ukraine, the EU imported 90% of its gas supply, with Russia providing around 45% of those imports, in varying levels across Member States.Footnote ⁵ Russia also accounted for around 25% of oil imports and 45% of coal imports.Footnote ⁶ Essentially, the EU and its Member States represent the main market for Russia’s oil and gas, importing 50% and 70% of Russia’s exported oil and gas, respectively.Footnote ⁷ Arguably, while interdependence between States has the potential to minimise conflict, in the case of Russia it has exacerbated the potential for war in Ukraine and the EU energy crisis.Footnote ⁸ Scholars indeed speak of an ‘EU–Russia energy war’.Footnote ⁹

In a fast spiral of dependence on Russia, the EU and its energy policy have been significantly affected by the ongoing war in Eastern Europe, given that several limits on import of oil and gas from Russia have been established as sanctions in response to the use of force against Ukraine.Footnote ¹⁰ Furthermore, some pipelines transporting energy from Russia and Ukraine to the EU have de facto become unavailable.Footnote ¹¹ Moreover, Gazprom has halted the provision of energy to countries such as Bulgaria, Finland and Poland.Footnote ¹² In addition, war necessarily undermines the cohesion of the international community and its cooperative capacity to react to the global climate threat required by the very nature of climate as a common good and codified in the UNFCCC, particularly in Articles 3 and 4. At the same time, war has disclosed the possibility of a fundamental rethinking of the EU energy policy within the framework outlined by the Green Deal,Footnote ¹³ including the possibility of accelerating the roll out of clean energy technologies as the preferred option.Footnote ¹⁴ Indeed, when Russia began to send troops into Ukraine in February 2022, the President of the European Commission, Ursula Von Der Leyen, stated that a transition away from fossil fuel is an adequate response, massively and strategically investing into renewables for EU energy independence.Footnote ¹⁵

This contribution examines the situation based on a three-step analysis. The first part of the chapter is dedicated to climate policies in Russia, aiming to understand whether the Russian energy policy is fundamentally aligned or misaligned with the UNFCCC. The second part of the chapter outlines possible ways forward for the EU vis-à-vis Russia’s influence, particularly in the light of recent developments triggered by war in Ukraine, with specific regard to the way in which the EU envisages implementing the Green Deal and the clean energy transition in the long term. The third part of the chapter assesses the feasibility of the ways forward, by focusing on the implications of war in Ukraine for contracts that the EU, its Member States and companies have in place with Russia, in order to understand whether the EU options are legally plausible.

4.2 A Difficult Green Transition

4.3 Accelerating the European Green Deal as a Response to Russian Influence?

While the EU has over time sought to improve the diversification of energy supply, for instance, by unbundling energy production and distribution through the Third Energy Package,Footnote ⁴¹ this has proved insufficient to unwind Russian dependencies,Footnote ⁴² with half of natural gas imports coming from Russia in 2021,Footnote ⁴³ as clearly underscored by the recent Ukrainian crisis. Therefore, the crisis represents a critical moment that might trigger a shift in the EU energy supply policy to end the ‘EU’s tacit support in perpetuating Russia’s authoritarian regime’,Footnote ⁴⁴ including short- and long-term measures. Leaders in the EU, UK and United States have indeed welcomed the decision of Germany to halt the certification of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline when Russian forces proper moved into those regions of Ukraine occupied by Russian-backed separatists since 2014. Reportedly, besides the possibility of a hydrogen and gas pipeline from Norway and the Netherlands as well as renewed North Sea drilling,Footnote ⁴⁵ the German government is also aiming to accelerate a shift to a 100% renewable electricity system by 2035.Footnote ⁴⁶

In the short term, the EU is looking favourably to increasing energy import from developing countries such as Libya, Algeria and Azerbaijan, as well as delaying coal plant closures as an immediate response to shortages in gas supply.Footnote ⁴⁷ Furthermore, the EU envisages measures aiming to lower domestic energy prices induced by war in Ukraine, such as setting retail prices for households and micro-enterprises.Footnote ⁴⁸ At the same time, the EU envisages reliance on a larger State Aid toolbox. The idea is that of establishing a Temporary Crisis Framework, which could, for instance, allow liquidity support for all undertakings directly or indirectly affected by the crisis,Footnote ⁴⁹ specifically, energy-intensive consumers, as a form of compensation for the increase in energy costs owing to price shocks triggered by war in Ukraine. Another possibility is expanding the list of sectors eligible to benefit from the Emission Trading System State Aid guidelines, subject to demonstrable improvements in energy efficiency and decarbonisation, but avoiding competition distortions among Member States. Other measures aim to allow EU Member States to levy temporary taxes on windfall profits, offsetting higher energy bills.Footnote ⁵⁰ From the standpoint of supply security, smarter use of energy infrastructure has also been proposed so as to improve EU storage, particularly gas storage, and prevent possible supply disruptions by Russia.Footnote ⁵¹ In this regard, the EU is also investigating the possibility of anticompetitive practices by Gazprom, whose storage is allegedly at 16%, well below the market average of 44%.Footnote ⁵²

In the long term, the EU estimates that the clean energy transition will have to be drastically accelerated in order to increase the independence of the EU and its Member States from unreliable suppliers and volatile fossil fuel markets. The European Commission considers that the case for a rapid clean energy transition has never been stronger. War in Ukraine is thus seen as a means to implement the Green Deal and accelerate the transition to a green economy, benefiting both households and energy-intensive companies. In more detail, the EU envisages the necessity of reaching independence from Russian gas well before the end of 2030. According to the Commission, it is indispensable to accelerate the diversification of supply, reducing energy demand and improving the roll out of green energy technologies.Footnote ⁵³ The general framework is outlined in the Fit-for-55 package, which implements the objectives of the European Green Deal. On the one hand, this package envisages the acceleration of energy-efficiency efforts by Member States, such as increased annual energy savings obligations and new rules to decrease energy consumption in buildings. Similarly, the Commission foresees a revision of the taxation of energy products.Footnote ⁵⁴ On the other hand, the package envisages an improvement in renewables via the enhancement of sectoral targets, with a special focus on sectors where progress with integrating renewables has been slower to date, particularly in the fields of transport, buildings and industry. In this context, the EU adopted the REPowerEU Plan as a response to the situation in Ukraine, aiming to improve the production of renewable gas, particularly biomethane and hydrogen, coupled with a diversification of LNG supply via pipelines and other transport means.

More specifically, the objective of the REPowerEU Plan is doubling the Fit-for-55 target for biomethane,Footnote ⁵⁵ producing 35 bcm per year by 2030 and an additional 14 million tons of renewable hydrogen on top of the 5.6 million tons foreseen under the Fit-for-55 package to replace 25–50 bcm per year of imported Russian gas by 2030.Footnote ⁵⁶ These measures require the development of an adequate regulatory framework to support a European market for hydrogen, including the installation of integrated gas and hydrogen infrastructure and storage facilities. This is in line with the Fit-for-55 proposal to lower gas consumption by 30% by 2030. At the same time, the EU aims at increasing the share of renewables in the grid, particularly via extensive electrification, and addressing infrastructure bottlenecks.Footnote ⁵⁷ Within this framework, the goal is improving the Fit-for-55 objectives, which currently envisage doubling the EU photovoltaic and wind capacity by 2025 and tripling it by 2030. This can be done by channelling EU financing into next-generation technologies, particularly by prompting States to identify areas suitable for the development of renewable energy projects and via a simplification of bureaucracy and procedures for implementing necessary operative licences through fast permit procedures. Based on these developments, it is estimated that the EU could reach 1 terawatt hour of solar power capacity by 2030.Footnote ⁵⁸ It is therefore interesting to note that the sixth package of sanctions adopted by the EU against Russia includes a ban on import of fossil fuel, particularly covering crude oil, seeking to strengthen the diversification of energy supply and accelerate the deployment of renewables.Footnote ⁵⁹

The combination of the Fit-for-55 and REPowerEU plans will bring energy generation within the EU borders through renewable sources, together with improved renewable import capacity. It is calculated that the Fit-for-55 package has the capacity to reduce annual EU fossil fuel-derived gas consumption by 30% – equivalent to 100 bcm by 2030 – with the REPowerEU plan further reducing another 155 bcm.Footnote ⁶⁰ Doubts have been cast concerning the feasibility of such an accelerated EU green policy timeline, however. For instance, while REPowerEU focuses on diversifying gas supplies and using larger volumes of biomethane and hydrogen production and imports, it has been noted that higher gas prices have led to an increase in power costs, which in turn has increased the cost of producing green hydrogen.Footnote ⁶¹ More fundamentally, the generation of renewables envisaged under REPowerEU seems to be in excess of what has been achieved to date, and economic modelling suggests that, for the time being, it is virtually impossible for the EU to ‘overbuild’ renewable electricity generation capacity.Footnote ⁶²

4.4 Can the EU and Its Member States Move Forward?

4.5 Conclusion

Russia’s energy policy is still largely grounded in fossil fuel dependence, with the war in Ukraine another instance of Russia’s use of energy supply as a means to create dependency and spheres of influence. The war is therefore a culminating moment that discloses the possibility of a paradigm shift – among other things – in EU energy policy. Within the boundaries outlined by the Green Deal, the EU aims to adopt short- and long-term measures. While short-term measures mostly seek to support households and energy-intensive companies in facing the energy price shock triggered by war, long-term measures aim to increase the diversification of energy sources for the EU at the expense of energy provision from Russia. Diversification discloses the opportunity of improving the quantity of low-carbon energy in the mix, particularly via intensive electrification, facilitating a fast green transition under the European Green Deal. After all, this approach would be in line with the EU plan to introduce a carbon border adjustment mechanism, which in a baseline scenario is predicted to cost Russian exporters some 33 billion euros by 2030.Footnote ⁸²

From a legal standpoint, it might be argued that the EU and its Member States are ‘non-belligerent’ entities vis-à-vis Russia, and thus war in Ukraine might provide a justification to suspend contracts for energy provisions currently underway with Russia, but not necessarily to terminate them. A more radical and adequate justification might therefore be found in the broader context of necessity, whereby the need to ensure energy security of supply is undermined by war and would compel a diversification of energy sources, with investment in renewables as the preferred option, particularly in the light of the UNFCCC obligations.

5.1 Introduction

This aphorism, often misattributed to Winston Churchill, is at best a backhanded compliment that has nevertheless become popular with American politicians and political commentators alike. It recognizes some negative characteristics of both Americans and the American political system, namely, significant propensities for denial, avoidance, and piecemeal half-measures. But it captures an underlying optimism in the way Americans prefer to see themselves – as skeptical but enterprising, determined, pragmatic tinkerers who are fundamentally well-intentioned. Also embedded in it are some questionable but seldom dissected assumptions about the fundamental nature of the politics and governance problems Americans face, namely, that all problems are fixable so long as Americans eventually do the right thing. Even if accepted at face value, the aphorism becomes much less reassuring if one recognizes that some problems cannot be fixed, in any meaningful sense of ‘fixed’, but can only be prevented or ameliorated. Eventually coming around to doing the right thing is commendable, but only so long as it is not too late. If problems involve issues of irreversible damage or system degradation, the only truly effective action may be early efforts of avoidance or prevention. Moreover, doing the right thing seldom consists of a single isolated action, but rather of interconnected sets of poorly understood processes extending over generations, involving complicated and coordinated efforts at experimentation, learning, execution, revision, and follow-through. This is the political challenge that the climate warming problematique poses for everyone, but nowhere more so than for the United States. The aphorism offers little reason to be hopeful.

If there is any fairness or validity in its characterization of Americans and their country (and surely there is a bit),Footnote ² it suggests that U.S. climate policy and governance will continue for some time to be characterized by denial, avoidance, half measures, and considerable experimentation. But it also tells us to expect that the U.S. climate policies and governance will involve tinkering that over time will make the United States incrementally more effective in reducing the rates of emission of greenhouse gases per capita, per unit of gross domestic product (GDP), and even overall. The United States will undertake a variety of programs that do not threaten powerful political actors, such as programs to mitigate the levels of greenhouse gasses already in the atmosphere. And the United States will achieve, however expensively, considerable societal and economic adaption to the physical realities of a warmer climate. The American political and economic system has a latent capacity for innovation and rapid transformation that is greater than that of most other countries, if something occurs that serves as a catalyst for action (such as a crisis posing dangers so clear and present that they are universally acknowledged). Perhaps what might be called a ‘Samuel Johnson focusing circumstance’Footnote ³ will emerge before 2030 that will lead to the United States doing the right thing by overcoming both the current high levels of national political dissensus and the numerous veto points in the American policy system. Otherwise, if and when Americans ever finally come around to doing the right thing, it will certainly be well after it is too late to contribute meaningfully to stabilizing global temperature increases at or near 1.5 degrees Celsius (°C). By that standard, then, failure is probably already baked in (as is, of course, true for most other countries as well).

Stimulated by broadly foreseeable but not specifically predictable events such as catastrophe-precipitated crises, however, the United States may nevertheless become a decisive contributor to carbon stabilization at some not-too-much-higher level. If for no other reason, the United States has a substantial capacity to contribute to the kinds of scientific, technological, and economic advances that will make possible prudent and measured carbon capture and removal strategies that are inevitably going to be required for the world ever to get to net zero and then net negative carbon emissions.

With respect to national performance on greenhouse gas emissions and mitigation strategies, therefore, even if the current Biden administration continues to succeed in securing legislative approval of major portions of its climate proposals, the United States is unlikely to appear soon on any ‘top 10’ lists of greenhouse policy countries, although even here it may become a leader in some specific areas such as methane emissions, resource management practices, or research. The United States has always been a leader in climate research, both basic and applied, and will continue to invest, contributing disproportionately to a better scientific understanding of climate causes and effects and the development of more effective technological innovation applied to mitigation, emissions reduction, and adaptation (contributions that will notably increase the climate policy capacities of all countries).

Various comparative assessments of national climate policy performance have generally tended to focus on policies for achievement of mitigation and reduction of national emissions, either reductions in the amount or rate of net total greenhouse gas emissions, or reductions proportionate to per capita, or to per GDP. Considering net emissions, the United States has done a better job since 1990 than it is usually given credit for, and that will likely continue going forward. But the forward path will continue to be a slow and torturous one. In the twenty-first century, neither the Bush nor the Trump administrations reversed or even significantly altered U.S. greenhouse gas emissions trends, nor did the initiatives of the Obama administration steer policy to a markedly different trajectory either (and still would not have even had all proposed policies for all those administrations been accepted by Congress and the Supreme Court). In part this is because no presidential administration has made climate policy a true priority and none has proposed radical or systemic policy changes. Climate performance continues to improve gradually in response to structural policy choices about efficiency and pollution control made decades ago. In large part it is also because in the United States much climate policy is made by subnational governments and in nongovernmental arenas that are potentially influenced by, but not controlled by, the national government. So, it is predictable that the United States will continue to achieve marginal improvements in its climate performance, but it is likely that these improvements will not be enough to contribute in a major way to stabilizing or lowering global atmospheric greenhouse gasses in the next 30 years. Again, it is a safe bet that the United States is not really going to come around to ‘doing the right thing’ any time soon.Footnote ⁴

5.2 United States Climate Policy’s Mini-Successes and Many Failures: Whys and Wherefores

Comprehension and evaluation of the climate policies of the United States is particularly challenging. United States climate governance develops and is implemented in a notably diverse cultural and social context, and it must be applicable on a trans-continental land mass with a degree of geophysical and biological variation across terrain, climate risk, and resources, as is found in few other nations. The economic system of every country affects and is affected by all climate policies, and the United States has a richly complicated economic system, with minimal central coordination and direction. The economic system is so complex in part because it is embedded within a political system that is especially fragmented and perhaps more complex than that of any other country, with most of its working institutional structures created semi-independently at different times and with varying motivations. These political structures are autonomous enough to allow them to work at cross purposes to each other, which they often do. There are the famous ‘checks and balances’ among the three branches of the national government, of course, but also checks and balances offered by a multitude of State and local governments and the thousands of often semi-autonomous bureaucracies and regulatory agencies. The American political system overall has never been subjected to the kinds of sweeping reorganizations and restructurings that often have occurred in other countries during or after wars or revolutions. Because the American system has a strong structural bias against policy change, with many actors empowered to veto political action, significant national policy change tends to occur mainly in periods of national near-consensus (the Great Depression; World Wars; the 1960s). In the twenty-first century the extent of U.S. societal dissensus (polarization) has been high and has grown on political issues with significant normative dimensions including mostly environmental ones, making it a challenge to transcend ideology with pragmatism even in routine policy-making, much less for normatively charged climate policies.Footnote ⁵ At the national level in the United States, nothing truly big can happen without at least temporary emergence of a near-consensus that something should be done.Footnote ⁶

The compound U.S. political system is poorly understood by outsiders and certainly by most Americans as well, including most public personalities and news media elites, nearly all of whom, if they think of climate policies at all, think only in terms of the formally adopted policies and initiatives of the national government. Indeed, most scholarly books and articles about U.S. climate policies, or about environmental policies more generally, share this same bias, including university textbooks. The bias extends to nearly all comparative climate policy assessments, which tend to focus mainly, or exclusively, on the actions and performance of various national governments, ignoring any independent actions of subnational governing authorities or nongovernmental actors. This is especially problematic when countries with a federal system are compared with their unitary brethren; such summary assessments often provide very incomplete and unbalanced pictures of the climate policy landscape.Footnote ⁷ The U.S. federal government is, of course, central to the development, adoption, and implementation of many crucially important climate policies. But in addition to the complexity created by 50 sovereign state-level governments, the United States also has what might seem to be innumerable other sovereign and semi-autonomous governing authorities (not actually innumerable because the Census Bureau counts them every five years in a formal census of governments, the most recent of which in 2017 identified more than 90,000 governmental authorities, including 38,779 general-purpose governments and 51,296 special purpose governments, all of which have a considerable degree of autonomy from the national government). Collectively these 90,000+ subnational governments employ many times more people than the single national government does.

The importance of these 90,000+ subnational governments to climate policy and governance can hardly be overstated. Just as the causes of climate warming permeate every aspect of everyday life, so each one of these 90,000+ governments has some responsibility for, and some impact on, policies affecting climate. In such a semi-anarchic system, policy is rarely made in other than partial, muddled ways, usually separately and simultaneously. Many climate policies become established as the shared efforts of multiple governments, such as between the national government and the States, or among the States and multiple local governments. But some policies, such as those dealing with land use, housing, and education, are overwhelmingly the responsibility of individual local governments. Many of these local governments are themselves internally fragmented with patterns of power dispersal being similar to that found in the U.S. national government – with divided legislatures, executives independent of the legislatures, and considerable autonomy allocated to regulatory bodies and implementing bureaucracies. To a degree found in no other country, the U.S. judiciary (in both its local and State as well as national manifestations) plays a prominent role not only in interpreting statutory climate policies but also in determining their constitutionality (including whether state and local laws and regulations pass muster under individual state constitutions). The judiciary is also important in shaping policy through application of the precepts of common law. There are few, if any, aspects of existing or potential climate policy in the United States not subject to the various legal prohibitions, permissions, or mandates founded in millennia of judge-made common law developments – for example, of contracts, property, and tort.Footnote ⁸

Beyond governmental authority, the United States has a particularly large, rich, and vital civil society and nonprofit sector that engages in the broadest possible range of activities – for example, resource management, transportation, housing, disaster recovery, migration, education – that have innumerable direct and indirect climate implications. Conservation land trusts are just one example of this kind of climate-relevant nongovernmental governance (not unique to the United States). Regional and local conservation land trusts now number in the thousands.Footnote ⁹ These and other environmental, church, and civic organizations and informal networks self-organize to undertake climate policy and governance beyond that which is done by governments, but also in collaboration with 90,000+ governments and often while exercising considerable discretion as agents of governments.

As such, the erratic and generally half-hearted efforts of the U.S. national government to develop climate policies over the past 35 years are indeed significant, but they constitute only one part of the picture – a big but still minority part of the picture at that. To muddy it further, adoption and implementation of some of the most notable national policies with climate impact significance were originally motivated by other concerns, and even now may not be mainly thought of as climate policies. An outstanding example is the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (‘Montreal Protocol’). In the 1980s the United States was an international leader, first in banning many routine uses of ozone-depleting chemicals and then in leading negotiations that produced the initial Montreal Protocol, an agreement that no one at the time imagined to constitute climate policy at all. Nevertheless, because many ozone-depleting chemicals and substitutes for ozone-depleting chemicals are also extremely potent greenhouse gasses, the tremendous success of the Montreal Protocol as amended and implemented worldwide has had substantial impact on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions globally (ironically, substantially much more impact than any explicitly climate-referenced international agreement!).

Likewise, aggressive U.S. air pollution policies, although not focusing on greenhouse gases per se until after 2009, have nevertheless led to substantial changes in industrial and commercial activity, residential heating, and transportation that have reduced the consumption of fossil fuels (and shifted fuel use from coal and oil to cleaner-burning natural gas), which has had as a direct effect the reduced emission of the greenhouse gasses methane and nitrous oxides and as a side effect the reduced emission of carbon dioxide. After World War II, many state and local governments undertook regulation of air pollution from stationary sources, primarily residential and commercial buildings. With a focus on visual pollutants, this accelerated a shift already underway from coal to cleaner combusting fuels for heating and industry. Meanwhile research – much of it funded by the federal government – led to the nature of air pollution being better understood as involving a great deal more than the soot apparent in smoke.Footnote ¹⁰ Although air quality was already improving in many places in the United States as a consequence of economic drivers and the efforts of state and local governments, the adoption of the national Clean Air Act of 1970 established a substantial new regulatory regime aimed at protecting human health from harm caused by air pollution.Footnote ¹¹ Henceforth a new national regulatory agency would set stringent, scientifically grounded standards for emissions, ambient air quality, and technology, and then would enforce them in collaboration with the States. Most of these standards became stricter over time, as justified by evolving scientific understanding. The result was dramatic improvements in air quality over time, even as both U.S. population and per capita GDP increased markedly over the next half-century – and with accompanying, but mostly unintended, decreases in greenhouse gas emissions.

Over the same period, different motivations prompted the adoption and implementation of various national policies to improve U.S. energy efficiency. None of the efficiency policies established prior to 1990 had even the secondary purpose of reducing emissions of greenhouse gasses. Rather, they were intended to help achieve the goal of national ‘energy independence’ via the reduced consumption of oil in particular. After the dramatic rise in oil prices in 1973, the United States began establishing a wide variety of efficiency standards, most notably for vehicles but also for building construction and operations, long-lasting household and commercial appliances, and a variety of consumer and commercial goods such as light bulbs. Many of these kinds of efficiency standards were established by state governments as well as by nongovernmental certification associations. Energy efficiency was also driven, of course, by incentives provided by monetary savings. In the United States the net effect was an improvement in the average annual decrease in national energy intensity from 1% per year before the mid-1970s to 2% per year thereafter,Footnote ¹² explaining much of the overall 2% decrease in annual greenhouse gas emissions that occurred from 1990 to 2019 in the absence of any major national effort explicitly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.Footnote ¹³

After 1990, no major new national climate relevant programs and initiatives that would require congressional authorization and presidential approval, such as a carbon or British Thermal Unit tax or a watered-down version of a Green New Deal, have been able to overcome the many veto points in the legislative process. Big policy developments or change continue to be unlikely going forward, in the absence of a crisis that has enough impact and immediacy to coalesce previously unimaginable levels of support. The exceptions are and will be the occasional programs that get folded into small and large budgetary, infrastructure, and macroeconomic stimulus packages. For example, the economic stimulus package passed in the depths of the Great Recession in 2009 allocated billions of dollars to energy efficiency, energy conservation, renewable energy, energy research, and public transportation, all of which had an impact on greenhouse gas emissions.

Thus, extending and ratcheting up of earlier policies on pollution control and energy efficiency constituted much of the national government’s climate policy from 1990 to 2021.Footnote ¹⁴ These are areas for which the authorizing legislation had been adopted as long ago as the 1970s and that had delegated rulemaking and enforcement to executive agencies led by presidential appointees. Under the Obama administration (2009–2017), for example, regulatory authority delegated to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Clean Air Act of 1970 was used to designate carbon dioxide as a pollutant and to justify the EPA’s proposal of plans and rules to regulate it as such. As authorized by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975,Footnote ¹⁵ a schedule of increasingly stringent fuel-efficiency standards was enacted for motor vehicles. The Trump administration (2017–2021) attempted to reverse these and many other climate regulatory initiatives partially or completely, but in most instances the rollbacks left in place policies that were more demanding than those that had existed a decade earlier.Footnote ¹⁶

What the history of both air pollution control and energy efficiency policy demonstrates is that: (1) the adoption of such sweeping national policies depends on the existence of a near-consensus; and (2) successful implementation (over decades) requires that such policies need to be both sufficiently concrete so that what counts as success is relatively clear and sufficiently strong to inspire a level of public support that makes a direct path to the goal both justifiable and sustainable.Footnote ¹⁷ If ever there emerges a degree of consensus in the United States that supports the adoption of far-reaching climate policy, then there will be reason to be optimistic that, over time, implementation of such a policy will be as successful as air pollution policies have been.Footnote ¹⁸

5.3 Climate Policy and Implementation Going Forward

Joseph Biden became U.S. President having campaigned more extensively on climate as an issue and having prioritized climate action more in his early days in office than any previous president.Footnote ¹⁹ The climate policy strategy of the Biden administration (2021 to present) involved three broad types of action, each of which was undertaken fairly independently of each other:

1. (1) The proposal and negotiated adoption of major new legislative expenditure initiatives for infrastructure projects and programs aimed at subsidizing accelerated technology development, deployment, and diffusion.

2. (2) The proposal and adoption of stringent new energy efficiency standards that would phase in over a fairly short period of time and would be sufficiently demanding to greatly improve efficiency, and in some cases force the adoption of new technology such as electric automobiles and energy efficient light-emitting diode lightbulbs.

3. (3) The proposal and adoption of new pollution standards as justified by improvements in best-available technologies and economic feasibility and as justified by new scientific knowledge about the impacts of specific air pollutants, including carbon dioxide, on human health. Among the predictable impacts of more stringent regulation of various pollutants will be reductions in fuel consumption, shifts from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, and shifts from dirtier (and more carbon-emitting) fossil fuels such as coal to comparatively cleaner fossil fuels such as natural gas.

After rejoining the Paris Agreement early in 2021, in November of that year the United States submitted a new Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) document,Footnote ²⁰ setting the United States’ 2030 target for reduction of net greenhouse gas emissions at between 50% and 52% below 2005 levels. This target, however inadequate for ultimately solving the climate warming problem, is by historical standards quite an ambitious goal. The NDC declared that ‘there are multiple paths to achieve this goal’,Footnote ²¹ but undoubtedly the Biden administration hoped to achieve much of the goals through the successful enactment of two major legislative initiatives, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 and Build Back Better Act, both already being negotiated and debated by Congress.Footnote ²²

A few days after the conclusion of COP 26 in Glasgow, the President was able to sign the first of these acts – which had passed both the Senate and the House with some Republican votes in addition to overwhelming Democratic support – into law.Footnote ²³ Although climate provisions were a relatively minor part of this infrastructure legislation, the Act nevertheless did provide for tens of billions of dollars of new spending on public transportation, charging stations for electric vehicles, climate change resilience improvements for roads and bridges, new clean energy transmission capacities, development of clean energy technologies, and the capping of methane-leaking orphaned gas and oil wells. According to analysis by Jenkins and colleagues,Footnote ²⁴ the likely net greenhouse gas reduction impact of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, below what would have been achieved with the policies already in place in January 2021, will be 9% of the emission reductions needed to achieve the USA’s 2030 goals.

Potentially much more significant for climate policy was the proposed Build Back Better Act, which in the version passed by the House of Representatives would have spent over $550 billion on a wide-ranging package of climate provisions, including clean energy tax credits, reform of oil and gas fees and royalties, and new spending on clean energy research and development, home and industrial energy efficiency, rail transportation, zero-emission vehicle infrastructure, zero-emission government vehicle fleets, support of state, local and nonprofit climate and pollution reduction efforts, the commercialization and deployment of new technologies, methane pollution control, climate resilience and mitigation workforce development, and support of rural energy access, efficiency, transition, and infrastructure. If the House-passed version of the Build Back Better Act had become law, Jenkins et al. estimate it would have achieved a further 82% of the emission reductions needed to achieve the 2030 goals (leaving a 9% gap still to be achieved by other means).Footnote ²⁵

Extensive negotiations through July 2022 did not produce an agreement on a bill that could secure passage in the U.S. Senate. Negotiations dragged out and foundered mainly over tax and social spending provisions of the bill that were minimally climate relevant. Finally, agreement was reached among Democrats on a slimmer bill without many of the earlier social spending provisions, renamed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.Footnote ²⁶ It passed the Senate 51:50 with all Democrats voting in favor and all Republicans voting against, and then the revised bill passed the House with again all Democrats in favor and all Republicans opposed. It was signed by President Biden on 16 August 2022. The new, more politically attractive name, was justified by provisions for prescription drug price reforms, a new corporate tax rate, a new excise tax on stock buybacks, and increased spending on tax enforcement. New spending on energy security, climate change, and drought resilience totaled $373 billion, mostly for tax credits, subsidies, and rebates. Jenkins et al. estimate that the Act will result in closing the gap between what current policy would achieve and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to 50% below 2005 levels, for a total reduction by 2030 of 42%.Footnote ²⁷ This estimate was within the 31–44% range of impacts on greenhouse gas emissions estimated by other modelers.Footnote ²⁸ The Act is also likely to have emissions reduction impacts beyond U.S. borders, perhaps by encouraging other countries to greater action but also significantly by making renewable energy technology cheaper for worldwide adoption.Footnote ²⁹

Although the attention of environmental activists, domestic politicians and global political leaders, and policy commentators is always overwhelmingly on legislative initiatives, significant national climate policy change always continues to happen through the vehicle of existing statutory regulatory authority. The Biden administration undertook from its first day an extensive program of executive actions to cancel and reverse Trump regulatory initiatives and to begin the often-lengthy processes of promulgating new climate and other environmental regulations.

An August 2022 summary of Biden administration climate and air pollution regulatory actions counted 26 Trump administration policies as overturned and another 29 targeted for attention, with 25 wholly new policies added.Footnote ³⁰ Other administrative actions taken in such categories as drilling and extraction or infrastructure and permitting are also likely to have climate impacts. Some of these regulatory changes might be expected to have fairly significant impacts over time, such as those addressing much more stringent automotive mileage standards, various efficiency standards for household appliances and lightbulbs, and the stricter regulation of methane from oil and gas wells and landfills. The Biden administration also proposed 40 new policies, including building performance standards, phasing down use of hydrofluorocarbons, a U.S. Army climate strategy, and carbon-free source standards for utilities. The administration further informally announced that it had begun working on several other regulatory policies that would likely require lengthy periods of development to ensure that the ultimate regulation would pass the certain judicial scrutiny to which it will inevitably be subjected. Prominent in this category were new regulation of greenhouse gas emissions by electric power plants, stricter regulation of mercury emissions, and new requirements for the disclosure of the financial impacts of climate warming. After passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden administration officials again promised to undertake new regulatory actions on emissions from vehicle tailpipes, oil and gas wells, and power plants in order to come closer to achieving the 2030 goal of a 50% emission reduction.Footnote ³¹

Neither of the Biden administration’s two big legislative proposals, and none of its executive regulatory initiatives undertaken in the first year, were especially innovative or posed any special challenges for implementation. All involved policy tools that have been deployed many times over decades. The greatest risks to failure lay in the adoption stage, as most if not all are challenged in the courts on their procedural bona fides and in terms of their compliance with substantive authorizing legislation, as judged by a federal judiciary preponderantly appointed by Biden’s Republican predecessors. All formally adopted regulations are potentially reversible under future presidents and congresses, but reversal is politically and administratively difficult. Previous presidents and congresses who were antagonistic to climate policies were able to prevent adoption of some new policies and often were able to slow implementation of existing regulations, but actual reversals were fairly uncommon.

Even if fully supported and embraced by future presidents and congresses, the policy initiatives of the first two years of the Biden administration will not themselves get the United States to meet its 2030 emissions target or enable it to become net-zero carbon emitting by 2050, but they are likely to have more impact than is commonly expected. The actual emissions effect is especially difficult to calculate or predict, as many pollution and efficiency regulations can have indirect effects that end up being more significant than the expected direct effects – for example, source substitution, reduced consumption, and technological innovation all play a role, and in many instances there are interactive, synergistic, and cumulative effects that lead to the abandonment of particular technologies and the transformation of whole economic sectors (such effects are not always in the desired direction, of course, and there may also be evasion, distortion, and noncompliance effects). Many policy actions may have wholly unpredictable consequences in changing the way society and the national and international economy operates. For example, the United States has begun integrating climate issues into financial regulation,Footnote ³² which, given the status of the dollar as the primary global currency, has the potential to have wide-reaching impacts.

The history of pollution regulation is one in which new programs have seldom been as costly as predicted at the time of adoption, sometimes ending up being more effective than projected. For example, in the absence of major national legislative action, greenhouse gas emissions have fallen since 2010 more than what had then been projected if proposed cap-and-trade legislation had been enacted, again because of regulatory actions regarding pollution control and energy efficiency as well as the actions of subnational governments compounded by market drivers. Emissions continued to drop over the four-year term of the Trump administration in spite of its extensive efforts to undercut and rollback pollution and efficiency policies.

It is worth noting and emphasizing again that U.S. climate policy is not made by one national government but rather by an ecosystem of 90,000+ semi-autonomous governments and uncounted private-sector organizations and networks. The national government is by far the largest actor in the U.S. system, and the one government in the U.S. system with the most actual and potential impact, but each of the other 90,000+ governments are policy consequential as well. California, for example, has an economy larger than all but four nations in the world (the United States, the People’s Republic of China, Japan, and Germany) and consequently its climate policies have the potential to make more difference to global greenhouse gas emissions than those of most other countries. Because of its size, Californian policies often establish unofficial national or even international standards, as they affect imports and exports and as businesses and industry find it cheaper to comply with a single standard everywhere. With respect to air pollution from mobile sources (including carbon dioxide), California plays a special role in the U.S. regulatory regime, being the only State allowed to set vehicle emission standards higher than those set by the national government under the Clean Air Act of 1970 (other States are then allowed to adopt the stronger California standards, and some nearly always do so). California has often exercised its exceptional authority, and in the twenty-first century it has done so in advancing the most comprehensive package of climate policies of any State, such as adopting regulations in 2022 banning the sale of gasoline-powered cars by 2035 and adopting legislation allocating 44 billion U.S. dollars to climate spending. Other States have been pioneers in numerous climate-relevant policy areas as well, such as in promoting wind and solar generation and energy efficiency. For example, in August 2022 Massachusetts adopted a sweeping climate and clean energy law focused on transportation, housing, and renewable energy.Footnote ³³ Local governments continue to play active roles both as leaders and followers, particularly in the regulation of land use, new building construction, and local transportation, all of which have tremendous long-term impacts on climate emissions, mitigation, and adaptation. Many cities in the United States have adopted decarbonization plans of varying levels of ambitiousness. For example, the common council of the city of Ithaca, New York, a city of about 30,000 people, has voted to decarbonize every building in the city by 2030. The national government can encourage, nudge, and even subsidize local and state climate policies, but quite often it is State and local policy experiments that eventually are adopted elsewhere and, eventually, nationally.

This complex and rich institutional landscape certainly complicates climate policy adoption and implementation (and the critical study of it),Footnote ³⁴ but it also has its strengths. Ultimately successful climate governance, like environmental governance in general in the conditions of the Anthropocene, must be created by those it addresses, applicable equally to all, capable of learning from (and adapting to) experience, rationally grounded, and internalized by those who adopt and experience it.Footnote ³⁵ The very complexity of the U.S. political system leaves room for substantial realization of some of these normative principles in subnational and nongovernmental governance, to degrees that may ultimately make a positive difference in the successful institutionalization and implementation of meaningful climate governance.

5.4 Predicting United States Climate Policy: Doing the Right Thing Will Require the Right Kind of Crisis

It is a safe prediction that the United States’ annual net direct emissions (ignoring emissions happening elsewhere in the processes of producing and transporting products to the United States) will continue to decline, even as both its population and the economy continue to grow for a few more decades. A tripling or quadrupling of the slow rate of emissions decline of the past 30 years, which something like the Inflation Reduction Act has the potential to accomplish, might get the United States closer to achieving its 2030 goals, but not to a level of net zero emissions by 2050, much less to the negative net emissions levels urgently needed to help stabilize the global average temperature increase at close to 1.5°C or 2.0°C. Bolder policies leading to more substantial transformations (‘doing the right thing’) are no more likely to emerge as a consequence of more and better science, or more education, or international diplomacy, or bigger marketing campaigns, or many kinds of catastrophic disasters, than has been the case in the last 35 years.Footnote ³⁶

A disaster or a pending danger does not necessarily become a policy turning point, or lead to a moment of decisive change that qualifies as a crisis, or inevitably open a policy window.Footnote ³⁷ ‘We need crises big enough to terrify us, but not ones so grave that they destroy our ability to change.’Footnote ³⁸ A climate event or story will not terrify Americans unless it unambiguously has an immediate impact on them, and ‘them’ has to include the large swath of Americans inclined to deny the reality and severity of climate warming and human causation of it, and it must also include the even larger portion of Americans currently unwilling to accept substantial changes in their way of life in order to markedly reduce emissions. What is needed is the right kind of crisis. Something that dramatically kills millions of people somewhere else, such as Kim Stanley Robinson imagines in his novel The Ministry for the Future,Footnote ³⁹ would not create a crisis in the United States any more than the daily deaths of tens of thousands around the world already does. Probably neither would a catastrophe in a global commons, such as dying oceans. Even disasters profoundly affecting many Americans might not precipitate a policy crisis if the impacts are not immediate, the causes are not obvious, and the burdens are not borne primarily by those inclined to resist policy change. So, for example, the continuing rise of ocean levels, increased frequency and severity of storms, extinction of charismatic species, and the further dispersion of pathogens are unlikely to lead to policy crisis. The crisis that might precipitate doing the right thing probably has to be something that equally or disproportionately affects the middle and southern parts of the United States – those regions most resistant to doing anything about climate emissions. Possibilities include killer heatwaves or even more intense and widespread droughts and wildfires in climate policy-resistant regions of the country, events that already are much more likely than even experts imagined only five years ago. When disasters of such enormity do occur, they will transform both the physical and political landscapes in ways that will make doing the right thing much more likely, albeit too late to prevent some very bad consequences.

This is the glimmer of hope in a bleak and dismal picture. But if a crisis in the next few years should result in the United States committing to sweeping climate policy action, there is reason for guarded optimism that future policy will be implemented effectively and quickly. Implementation will be less problematic in the United States than would be the case in many other places. The United States can be expected to draw on its latent but substantial capacity for innovation, experimentation, flexibility, decentralization, self-organization, and rapid transformation.Footnote ⁴⁰ After all, underlying the aphorism that Americans will do the right thing after trying everything else is Americans’ not entirely inaccurate perception of themselves as enterprising, determined, pragmatic, and well-intentioned, all characteristics that can serve the cause of transformative policy implementation once a near-consensus is reached that makes policy adoption – and predictable successful implementation – actually possible.

5.5 Conclusion

In the face of its international reputation for intransigence and foot-dragging on climate warming policy, combined with its deserved reputation for profligate fossil fuel consumption, the United States has actually reduced its greenhouse gas emissions since 1990. Unlike most other rich countries, for the United States both population and GDP growth has been substantial over those three decades, so the decline in emissions per capita and per unit of GDP has been marked. Continued compounded muddling, consisting of stricter national administrative regulation of energy efficiency and pollution control, new State and local government initiatives, further nongovernmental governance developments, and market-driven economic responses, are together likely to support extending the current trends of reduced energy intensity and reduced greenhouse gas emissions over the next few decades, perhaps even to accelerate it. These trends are partly a consequence of continuing implementation of general policy commitments to energy efficiency and pollution control that the United States made decades ago. There is every reason to believe that the United States will be equally effective in implementing any new bold commitment to stopping climate warming, should it ever make that commitment as a nation. But a United States commitment to doing the right thing – whether conceived as doing what it would take to achieve the level of zero net emissions by 2050, or to accomplish the even more draconian reductions needed to soon halt global temperature rise – is unlikely in the absence of something that causes coalescence of a new normative political landscape in the United States. That something will have to be clear and present enough, and impactful enough, in enough of the right places on enough of the right people, to create the conditions for a normative consensus to emerge that can last long enough to support establishment and institutionalization (initial implementation) of bold, painful, system-transformative climate policies. It is worth remembering that even this much would only be a step toward achieving sustainable ecological governance in the conditions of the Anthropocene.Footnote ⁴¹

6.1 Introduction

The Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region is a distinct geographic, economic and cultural area with a place in the climate change landscape. With an area of 30 million square kilometers,Footnote ¹ LAC possesses a population of 650 million people and 46% of forested land area.Footnote ² According to Statista, the LAC gross domestic product (GDP) is approximately 4.8 trillion U.S. dollars,Footnote ³ with Brazil and Mexico, respectively, the largest Portuguese- and Spanish-speaking countries in the world, accounting for 54% of the population and 59% of GDP.Footnote ⁴ According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL), LAC has a population of around 660 million people,Footnote ⁵ a GDP of $5.2 trillion,Footnote ⁶ and a GDP per capita of $7,931.Footnote ⁷

Latin America and the Caribbean comprehends countries located in four geographical areas: North America (Mexico), the Caribbean (with 21 countries), Central America (7 countries) and South America (13 countries).Footnote ⁸ That adds up to 42 countries, which coincides with the World Bank’s definition.Footnote ⁹

The most comprehensive definition results from the United Nations (UN) Department of Economic and Social Affairs ‘regional groupings’ used for the Sustainable Development Goals Indicators. It divides LAC into three sub-regions with 49 States or territories, some of them contested:Footnote ¹⁰ the Caribbean (with 26),Footnote ¹¹ Central America (with 8),Footnote ¹² and South America (with 15).Footnote ¹³

A more restrictive definition of LAC comes from considering the 33 members of the Latin American and Caribbean Community of States (or CELAC: Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil,Footnote ¹⁴ Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Dominica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay and Venezuela.Footnote ¹⁵

Here, CELAC is preferred as the best proxy for LAC for several reasons. First, because it is a formal grouping with a commitment to unity and integration, both economic and political, based on shared historical and cultural similarities and common challenges. Second, because its reach is comprehensive of all LAC countries. Third, because it pursues coordinated strategies to tackle common problems in the region (and beyond) such as threats to democracy, corruption, organized crime, violence, poverty, inequality, and climate change. And finally, because it provides a platform for its Member States to advance common interests at the UN and in other multilateral fora,Footnote ¹⁶ including the CELAC–EU summits.Footnote ¹⁷

Latin America and the Caribbean is a highly unequal region with low economic growth.Footnote ¹⁸ Although income inequality has decreased in the past 30 years, LAC remains one of the most unequal regions in the world,Footnote ¹⁹ the highest, indeed, except for Sub-Saharan Africa.Footnote ²⁰ This situation was exacerbated by COVID-19 and LAC suffered from the most significant economic setbacks (as against the world’s other regional groupings),Footnote ²¹ with a 6.7% decrease in GDP in 2020, although in 2021 it grew again by 6.8%. At any rate, GDP per person in real terms has barely grown for the past 30 years.

Furthermore, the problem of low economic growth per capita seems even more serious when seen in conjunction with the situation of high inequality alluded to above. As of 2020, LAC’s Gini coefficient sat at 0.50.Footnote ²² Its poverty rate reached 33%, with just over 13% of the population living in circumstances of extreme poverty.Footnote ²³

Unfortunately, income inequality in a region rich in resources, youth, territory, and economic activity is only one of several symptoms that reveal a greater problem. Organized crime, violence, corruption, the gray economy, nepotism, and lack of opportunities are also signs of a region yet to mature politically. Fundamental freedoms, democratic representation, an open public sphere, the balance of powers, and the rule of law need to become prevalent so that those symptoms may recede and the new environmental challenges affecting the region can be mitigated through successful climate policies. Against this background, this chapter assesses the impact of climate change on LAC and countries’ nationally determined contributions (NDCs) in the region in order to determine LAC’s potential to tackle global climate change.

6.2 The Impact of Climate Change on Latin America and the Caribbean

Latin America and the Caribbean has suffered the impacts of climate change at a level disproportionate to the amount of emissions it produces. Figure 6.1 shows that in the past 30 years only Sub-Saharan Africa has emitted less carbon. Data from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean,Footnote ²⁴ the United States Environmental Protection Agency,Footnote ²⁵ and Climate Watch indicate that LAC produces less than 10% of global greenhouse emissions.Footnote ²⁶ This is corroborated by the sixth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report.Footnote ²⁷

Figure 6.1

Global emissions by geographical region.

Source: EPA, Climate change indicators.

Numerically, the comparison between regions is laid out in Table 6.1. While the figures may be different when emissions beyond carbon dioxide are considered,Footnote ²⁸ the basic assessment remains.

However, the effects of climate change are being and will continue to be strongly felt in the region. Recent reports by the World Meteorological Organization show how significantly LAC is being affected by climate change.Footnote ²⁹

Sea levels in 2020 along LAC coastlines rose above the world average. Roughly a third of the population in LAC live by the coast, with an estimated 6–8% living in areas that are at high or very high risk of being affected by coastal hazards. Temperatures in the North Atlantic Ocean were warmer than usual. The sea level in the Caribbean has been rising at a slightly higher rate than the global average.Footnote ³⁰

Glaciers in the Andes between Argentina and Chile continued to melt, with temperatures rising and rainfalls diminishing commensurately. In Guatemala, climate change contributed to the loss of nearly 80% of the corn harvest. In Haiti, some four million people faced food crises. Between 1998 and 2020, the impacts of climate change have cost more than 312,000 lives and affected over 277 million people in LAC.Footnote ³¹

The average temperature in the 30 years to 2021 increased by 0.2%, twice as much as in the previous three decades. Glaciers in the tropical Andes have lost at least 30% of the area they had in the 1980s, and the figure is closer to 50% for some glaciers in Peru. Chile’s central region faced its 13th consecutive year of drought, while parts of Brazil, Paraguay, and Bolivia faced their worst drought since 1944. Sea levels, flooding, and hurricanes all reached extraordinary increases. Deforestation of the Amazon grew by 22% compared to 2020 levels. Of the 175 natural disasters occurring between 2020 and 2022, 88% had a meteorological, climactic, or hydrological cause.Footnote ³²

These effects, although caused only fractionally by LAC, constitute a strong motivation for the region to join efforts towards the achievement of Paris Agreement goals. Such efforts will have a greater impact the larger the emitters who undertake them.

Within the 33-country region, 90% of emissions can be attributed to just 10 Member States, and 77% of emissions to only 5 of them (see Table 6.2). Without trying to detract from or diminish the importance each country has in climate action in this region, due to space constraints, emphasis throughout this chapter falls on those States that pollute the most and which can therefore make the largest contribution towards the global goal.

Table 6.3 presents the latest available information and is therefore taken here as reference in singling out the biggest emitters in the region. Analysis on these 10 countries can provide an accurate approximation to the whole region’s situation, as they account for over 90% of emissions.

6.3 Laggards, Heroes, and Zombies

Climate policy implementation to meet Paris Agreement commitments is still incipient in LAC, with some of its countries serving as models, some as laggards and the rest positioned somewhere in between. As advanced above, experience of the effects of climate change has prompted countries to join the Paris Agreement efforts. Such efforts will be more impactful the larger emitters those countries are. At least some of the largest emitters are taking the challenge seriously.

Like most other countries who signed the Paris Agreement, LAC States have submitted their NDCs to the UN’s NDC Registry.Footnote ³³ The complexity of comparing NDCs from different LAC countries can be appreciated in a recent study published by CEPAL.Footnote ³⁴ Although comprehensive and a good overview of the situation in the region, it does not facilitate a clear comparison of NDCs between countries, as the way and perspective in which each of them presents their proposed courses of action to achieve Paris Agreement objectives may differ from one to the other. For instance, Brazil takes 2005 levels as a reference to measure the evolution of its emissions whereas Mexico uses 2000 as a benchmark. Similar considerations apply to the corresponding UN Registry.Footnote ³⁵

Other sources such as Climate Action Tracker showcase countries’ commitments against the common goals of the Paris Agreement in general terms, but only for a selection of States and not always by reference to a volume of emissions. For LAC, for instance, the analysis leaves out Venezuela, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, and Trinidad and Tobago, each of them in the list of the 10 largest emitters (see Table 6.3), while it includes Costa Rica,Footnote ³⁶ whose CO₂ emissions in 2019 represented less than 0.2% of the LAC’s total and just under 0.02% of the global figure.Footnote ³⁷

The Joint Research Centre for Policy Report of the European Commission aggregates its own Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) and complements it with other sources such as the International Energy Agency. EDGAR ‘offers an alternative that complements national inventories and has advantages in terms of producing timely emissions estimates that are comparable across countries’ and provides a good basis for the analysis presented in Section 6.3.Footnote ³⁸

Overall, few countries in LAC have taken climate action seriously, among them Colombia and Chile.Footnote ³⁹ The most noticeable laggards have so far been Brazil and Mexico, the region’s two largest economies, with the largest populations and the highest amount of greenhouse emissions. Their situation can be explained in large part by the coming to power of two populist presidents (right wing in Brazil; left wing in Mexico) who have stalled any commitment and, in the case of Mexico, actually reversed progressive policies that had already been set in law under a previous president. The situation in Brazil might improve if the newly elected president can implement the environmental features of his election platform as of 2024, which includes protection of the Amazon, a halt on deforestation and the fulfilment of Paris Agreement goals.Footnote ⁴⁰

The largest fossil fuel CO₂ emitters in the LAC region in 2019 were Brazil and Mexico, with emissions of 1.3% and 1.2%, respectively (as a share of the world’s total). In the same year, Russia, India, United States, and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in order accounted for 4.6%, 7.8%, 14.5% and 27.9% of global emissions.Footnote ⁴¹

At a Leaders Summit on Climate convened by U.S. President Joe Biden in April 2021, Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro claimed that his country would achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.Footnote ⁴² True, this pledge may have been motivated by the international pressure to end deforestation that Brazil had been under.Footnote ⁴³ However it was not clear how the goal would be achieved. President Sebastián Piñera committed to decarbonize Chile‘s energy matrix by 2040, achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, and become the most efficient green hydrogen producer in the world. Colombian President Iván Duque reiterated commitments to a 51% emissions reduction by 2030 and a long-term target of carbon neutrality by 2050. He highlighted some of the measures that Colombia has taken to achieve its targets, including a clean energy transition that will achieve 14% clean electricity by August 2022, the largest fleet of urban and cargo transport in the region, and a reforestation effort that aims to plant 180 million trees by August of 2022. Mexico’s President Andrés López did not commit the country to any particular goal,Footnote ⁴⁴ and only promised vague actions in reducing crude oil production (despite recent oil discoveries), to generate cleaner energy through hydroelectricity (even though the laws introduced by his government on electricity have actually reversed any progress made by previous governments), and to plant trees on a million hectares in the country.

With the election of Lula as a president, the situation for Brazil – and indeed for LAC, given Brail’s prominence in the whole region – will change. The Amazon (60% of which is located in Brazil) possesses half of the remaining tropical rainforests in the world. Years of unchecked deforestation under Bolsonaro cannot be undone. And Lula is receiving a divided country, a Congress dominated by the opposition and other challenges. Still, his track record as a former president and his post-victory speech point to ‘a strong commitment to preserving the Amazon, protecting Indigenous people’s rights and reaching a zero-deforestation target’.Footnote ⁴⁵

Table 6.4 shows the 10 largest LAC emitters according to the European Commission. This is a result similar to the one for 2020 (Table 6.3) with small variations in the order,Footnote ⁴⁶ but still the same countries in the list of the 10 largest emitters. As together they account for over 90% of emissions in the region, a brief analysis of their NDCs can provide a fairly good approximation to the situation of LAC as a whole.

Ahead of the Climate Change Conference in Glasgow (COP26) in 2021 the UN calculated, based on the latest NDC pledges available from most of the 193 Parties to the Paris Agreement, that our planet was headed towards a 13.7% increase in global greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 in comparison with 2010. The IPCC estimated that, in order to keep the rise in temperature on Earth to only around 1.5°C, global emissions need to decrease 45% by 2030.Footnote ⁴⁷ How then should we assess the performance of individual countries, and in particular the LAC’s 10 largest emitters, in that context?

A study from the Institute of the Americas reveals useful insights to answer the question. Unfortunately, the study leaves Venezuela out,Footnote ⁴⁸ but includes the other nine. Table 6.5 presents a summary of findings relevant to this chapter, extracted mostly from the country ‘NDC Scorecards’ provided by Miranda.Footnote ⁴⁹

On the bright side, two ‘heroes’ among the region’s largest emitters are Colombia and Chile. Ahead of COP26, held in November 2021, Colombia updated its NDC to aim for a 51% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 compared to its 2014 emissions level, a reduction of black carbon emissions by 40%, and a net-zero target of 2050. Its NDC is among the most ambitious in LAC and highly aligned with the country’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2050. Colombia is one of the few countries in the region on track to achieve its Paris Agreement pledges. Its NDC includes massive landscape reforestation and restoration projects, including an initiative to plant 180 million trees by 2022, an Active Transport and Travel Demand Management program to increase the share of trips made by bicycle above 5% in all Colombian cities by 2030, and a pilot Emissions Trading Scheme started in 2018 to be ready for implementation by 2025. It also envisages more stringent vehicle emission standards for road transport as well as reductions in agricultural burning, and switching to more efficient technologies for heating and cooking. Building Back Greener indicates a 26% recovery spending from the country’s total spending, of which just under 28% has been green recovery spending according to the UN Environment Programme’s COVID-19 Recovery Tracker for LAC.Footnote ⁵⁰ In 2022, Colombia matched COP27, exceeding expectations. The goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 is accompanied by more than mitigation measures and adaptation targets which include limiting the gross annual deforestation rate to a maximum of 50,000 ha by 2030, and the commitment to generate carbon budgets in 2023. It also contains a commitment to strengthen and develop carbon pricing mechanisms, plus guidelines for the implementation of the NDCs at both sectoral and territorial levels.Footnote ⁵¹

Chile brought an updated NDC program to COP26, which included limiting its total annual greenhouse gas emissions at 95 megatons (Mt) of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO_2-e) by 2030; setting an ‘emissions budget’ limit of 1,100 Mt of CO_2-e between 2020 and 2030, and reaching peak emissions by 2025. To achieve its NDC, the policy emissions pathway includes the Unconventional Renewable Energy Law; a carbon tax; an action plan to achieve electrification for 40% of the private vehicle fleet and 100% of public urban transport by 2050; and a National Green Hydrogen Strategy to provide clean fuel to decarbonize key sectors. Chile is also formulating a Climate Change Framework Law to engrain carbon neutrality commitments in domestic legislation by 2050, along with financing measures and economic instruments. The government also announced in 2020 that the retirement of coal-fired power plants would be achieved 15 years ahead of schedule.Footnote ⁵² In 2022 Chile’s commitment to the Paris Agreement ahead of COP27 remained. Its NDC contains a social pillar with commitments on which the implementation of the NDC must rest to guarantee a fair transition and sustainable development in the country. Comprehensive measures that integrate both adaptation and mitigation include circular economy, land use, land-use change and forestry, and ocean commitments. This NDC also stands out for having an ambitious unconditional goal in absolute terms, with Chile one of the few countries in LAC with a carbon emissions budget for the 2020–2030 period, in the light of its commitment to becoming carbon-neutral by 2050. Chile’s NDC is based on a comprehensive evaluation of mitigation measures and an analysis that provides clarity in terms of goals and the economic impact on society to facilitate acceptance and implementation.Footnote ⁵³

In 2022 the UN Development Programme (UNDP) has undertaken initiatives such as the Regional Snapshot to explore NDCs of countries in the region, their ambition, progress, and feasibility,Footnote ⁵⁴ in order to support progress towards the attainment of the Paris Agreement goals: containing the rise in global temperature to less than 2°C and as close as possible to 1.5°C in comparison with ‘pre-industrial’ levels.Footnote ⁵⁵

6.4 A Flurry of Initiatives towards Common Goals

Latin America and the Caribbean faces serious challenges moving forward. On the one hand, it is already experiencing the impacts of the planet’s warming in a noticeable, and at times irreversible, way. Poor governance, weak rule of law and fragile democratic structures hold back its economic and social progress. The design, implementation, and upkeep of effective and sustained climate policies is in jeopardy too. There is no easy solution. On the other hand, there are reasons for hope. Current and future efforts by LAC countries have as a background the region’s large youth population, its increasing middle class, its vast natural resources, and its considerable economic growth potential.

In 2020 the majority of the population in LAC was aged between 5 and 29 years old, with the largest age group being 20–24 years old.Footnote ⁵⁶ Figure 6.2 provides some perspective: LAC’s proportion of youth vis-à-vis the general population is comparable to Central and Southern Asia’s and only inferior to Africa.Footnote ⁵⁷ In 2021, LAC’s proportion of persons under 15 was 24%.Footnote ⁵⁸

Figure 6.2

Between 20% and 30% of LAC’s population is 14 years old or less, making it a region with high youth potential. ‘Youth Index’ Percentage of Under-Fifteens (2018).

Source: World Bank, Population ages 0–14 (% of total population), 2021 (based on data from the United Nations Population Division), https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.0014.TO.ZS?end=2021&start=2021&type=shaded&view=map.

Latin America and the Caribbean possesses 57% of the primary forests in the world – storing some 104 gigatons of carbon and hosting between 40% and 50% of the world’s biodiversity, and a third of all plant species.Footnote ⁵⁹ Not only are forests important to sequester atmospheric carbon, they also help to regulate hydrological cycles, stabilize landscapes, and contribute to soil and water conservation in fragile ecosystems.Footnote ⁶⁰ The region holds 23% of the world’s total forested areas.

6.5 Conclusion

Like other areas of the world, LAC is experiencing the impacts of climate change and, while Chile and Colombia have effectively implemented viable NDCs in line with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and Paris Agreement, most LAC States have not. LAC response matters not so much for the size of its emissions but especially for its potential to act as a net carbon sink. Indeed, according to JP Morgan, the LAC’s sequestration potential places it as a leader in the carbon credit market.Footnote ⁹⁴ LAC’s natural resources, young population, and economic capacity provide reasons for hope – ‘great expectations’ – about its future.

Due to cultural, geographical, and historical commonalities, LAC has sat at the juncture of an array of initiatives and networks pushing for integration at different levels and with diverse center points since the nineteenth century. The most comprehensive of those initiatives is CELAC, although others, such as MERCOSUR and Pacific Alliance, are more developed in their degree of cooperation.

The level of integration matters, as more of it will help the region tackle the big problems individual countries cannot face by themselves. This is evident in the case of climate policy. While due to space constraints only the largest emitters have been analyzed to a certain degree, action, motivation, solidarity, and best practices are needed from all 33 States. And there is much that large emitters lagging behind in meeting their Paris Agreement commitments can learn from low emitters who are exemplary in climate policy, such as Costa Rica.

Although the level of progress towards the achievement of Paris Agreement goals may be modest so far, recent changes in the political landscape in Brazil provide room for optimism,Footnote ⁹⁵ as do the partnerships the region is establishing with parts of the world that are more advanced in climate policy such as Europe. However, the key takeaway is that the political atmosphere and framework under which LAC operates is as important as the policies themselves if the region is to progress in climate action terms (as well as in other aspects such as economic growth, income equality and regional integration). Due to its high levels of inequality and social unrest, the key challenge to implementing climate policies in LAC will be the strengthening of a political atmosphere where human rights, the rule of law, and democratic values prevail.

Climate policies need a cooperative legal framework where the law is created through transparent and democratic processes and enforced, once approved, through an independent judicial system and checks on the executive. Freedom of information and expression are also essential to promote debate in the public sphere, fostering respect for all citizens and their freedom and fair and free elections of representatives. A framework where democracy, the rule of law, balance of powers, and human rights prevail would provide stability, predictability, and a foundation for sound, clear, legitimate, and sustained climate action. This atmosphere is not a given in LAC and must be created, maintained and enhanced through deliberate and persistent cooperation.

7.1 Introduction

China started its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013. Over the last eight years, the BRI has been taken up by some 140 countries. The BRI was launched in 2013, has officially involved 146 countries as of March 2024,Footnote ¹ and is a network focusing on connectivity.Footnote ² This emphasis on connectivity includes not only constructing networks for physical inter-regional connections of transport, communications, and energy infrastructure, but also the emergence of intangible connections through policy co-[operation, information exchange, and deeper involvement by connecting non-state actors through project financing, project implementation, and operational management.

While the BRI will enhance the economic development of these countries, such an aspiration may also clash with sustainability goals. As the largest infrastructure and development project in human history, the BRI presents risks and opportunities for ecosystems, economies, and communities.Footnote ³ This is because the major projects, in particular energy projects, have been a mixture of renewable energy projects as well as fossil fuel investment. In 2015, the countries along the Belt and Road (B&RCs), excluding China, constituted 23% of the world’s GDP, as well as 28% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.Footnote ⁴ These data suggest that B&RCs may be locked into fossil fuel dependency for the coming decades.Footnote ⁵ Moreover, upgrading transportation infrastructure in environmentally sensitive areas may also present risks for vulnerable ecosystems.Footnote ⁶

It has also been pointed out that these challenges can be turned into opportunities for environmental stewardship if China and its partners develop the BRI within the framework of strategic environmental and social assessments with high environmental standards.Footnote ⁷ However, such a proposal for environmental stewardship can only stay as an ideal policy objective if no concrete measures are taken to implement it. There have been studies on the stringency of China’s environmental policies along the BRI.Footnote ⁸ However, things have evolved fast recently, in particular after China’s domestic decarbonisation policy framework was established in 2021 (see Section 7.4). The latest domestic decarbonisation policies since 2020 indicate a reorientation of priorities and a new interpretation of what a green Belt and Road means for China and the world. This chapter critically examines 11 green Belt and Road policies relevant to the ‘green’ connotation from 2013, when the BRI was first proposed, to the latest policy in early 2022. It focuses on the questions of what ‘green’ means in China’s green Belt and Road, how its priorities have evolved, and what sort of implementation measures have been put in place.

The term ‘green’ is an appealing term that is positively related to environmental benefits and improvement, and it has been used not only by China to build the green Belt and Road, but also by the European Union (EU) in the European Green Deal (‘Green Deal’). Many countries have also issued various types of green industrial policies at the national level. Therefore, what ‘green’ means in these policies and guidelines needs to be contextualised. In most cases where a policy is framed as a ‘green’ policy, the imperative to address climate change is only one aspect of a broad positive environmental impact. In the Chinese context, there is a clear evolutionary trajectory for priorities as concerns the total of 11 green Belt and Road policies from 2013 to 2022. The following sections will analyse how the ‘green’ priority has evolved in this decade and relevant shortfalls by dividing them into three stages.

7.2 Environmental Protection Tangentially Mentioned in Belt and Road Initiative Policies (Stage I)

7.3 Building a Green Belt and Road (Stage II)

7.4 Belt and Road Initiative Climate Policies after 2020 (Stage III)

Climate change is among the most significant existential threats to human beings in our time. A response to this threat requires a strong State to change the direction, speed, and scale of innovation in world capitalism, and China is among the most possible contenders to catalysing this governance of survival.Footnote ²⁹ Indeed, the year 2020 witnessed China’s enhanced commitment to decarbonisation. Chinese Paramount Leader Xi Jinping announced at the UN General Assembly in September 2020 that China would increase its nationally determined contribution, adopt stronger policies and measures, strive to reach peak carbon emissions before 2030, and strive to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.Footnote ³⁰ This significant statement represents a long-term ambition and priority for China, one of the largest carbon emitters in the world, to jointly address the global challenge of climate change with other jurisdictions. From the first half of 2021, Chinese BRI investment, for the first time in eight years, did not include any coal-fired energy projects. In September 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced at the UN General Assembly debate that ‘China will step up support for other developing countries in developing green and low-carbon energy, and not building new coal-fired power projects abroad.’Footnote ³¹ Both announcements are the most significant decisions that China has made concerning its climate policies domestically and along the Belt and Road to date.

To reach carbon neutrality from the emissions peak, it is expected to take some 60 years for the EU and 45 years for the United States, while China is aiming to achieve carbon neutrality from its emissions peak in just 30 years. The substantial challenge of the short time frame between carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals within 30 years means China needs to take strong policy support and undertake significant efforts in the years to come.Footnote ³² Xie’s remarks were made in the context of China’s preparation for a ‘1+N’ policy framework to achieve national carbon targets. Specifically, the framework takes a coordinated approach to adopt a high-hierarchical Working Guidance for Carbon Emissions Peaking and Carbon Neutrality in Full and Faithful Implementation of the New Development Philosophy (‘Working Guidance 2020’),Footnote ³³ the Action Plan for Carbon Emissions Peaking before 2030 (‘Action Plan 2030’),Footnote ³⁴ and a series of policy measures in 10 major fields to accelerate climate transition and innovation. The overarching opinion was issued to set clear targets and division of responsibilities among central ministries and to help local governments to understand the hierarchy of the goal of carbon peak and carbon neutrality and compile their respective carbon emissions peaking plan before 2030. The major measures include: (1) optimising the structure of China’s energy mix, and controlling and reducing the production and use of fossil energy such as coal; (2) promoting industrial optimisation and upgrading; (3) promoting energy-saving and low-carbon buildings and facilities; (4) building a green and low-carbon transportation system; (5) developing a circular economy; (6) promoting green and low-carbon technological innovation; (7) developing green finance; (8) introducing supporting economic policies and reform measures; (9) establishing and improving the carbon market and carbon pricing mechanism; and (10) encouraging and pursuing nature-based solutions. This structure was later consolidated by the Action Plan 2030 with minor changes. While a detailed discussion of the domestic Chinese policies for decarbonisation is beyond the scope of this article, these policies shape the domestic understanding of ‘green’ and underpin a series of green Belt and Road policies issued after 2020. In this ‘1+N’ policy framework, climate policy along the Belt and Road is an important component. Policies to facilitate decarbonisation have been emphasised by overarching policies. For instance, working guidance has emphasised the need to accelerate the development of a green trade system, to promote the trading of green products that are high-quality, high value-added, and technologically advanced. It also proposed that China improve its export policies by strictly regulating exports of energy-intensive and high-emission products. Nonetheless, it is not yet clear how this export restriction will be implemented in reality.

The Action Plan 2020 has reiterated that China will adhere to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities as well as the principle of equity. China will uphold multilateralism, safeguard the UN-centred international system, and encourage all parties to fulfil both the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement. It will also take an active part in the negotiations on greenhouse gas emissions reduction in international aviation and shipping and strengthen co-operation with B&RCs on green infrastructure, green energy, and green finance. China is committed to making overseas projects more environmentally sustainable, developing a BRI energy partnership characterised by green development and inclusiveness, and expanding the export of new energy technology and products (per Sections 7.4.1 and 7.4.2).

7.5 Conclusion

This chapter has analysed Chinese policies related to building a ‘green’ Belt and Road, with the focus on the evolving meaning of ‘green’ manifested in these policies. It finds that in the early stages of the Belt and Road (2013–2017), environmental issues were only tangentially mentioned in relevant Belt and Road policies. Starting in 2017, China began to explicitly promote the concept of the ‘green’ Belt and Road. However, policies at that stage still focus on interpreting ‘green’ as an extension of building ecological civilisation and promoting the practices of implementing the philosophy of green development beyond China and focusing on areas of exchange of regulatory information, enhancing environmental protection, controlling pollution and waste, and conserving biodiversity. The major change in policy direction started with China’s announcement of its carbon neutrality and carbon emissions peaking targets in 2020, and its decision to stop financing new coal-fired power projects in 2021. In addition to basically declaring the importance of the response to climate change, policies at this stage, in the form of guidance for overseas enterprises and mandates to domestic regulators, focus on the operationalisation of China’s positions. Concrete proposals have thus been made for key emission-intensive and toxicity-intensive industries, for the entire life cycle of project management, and in the form of mandating Chinese banks and enterprises quitting new coal-fired power projects.

Two issues of China’s green Belt and Road policy discussed in this chapter may benefit from further research in the future. The first is the position of China on encouraging Chinese enterprises operating overseas to abide by higher Chinese or international environmental laws and standards if the host country does not have the relevant standards in place. This position was reiterated in the most recent policies (Green Development Guidelines 2021; Environmental Protection Guidance 2022; Green Belt and Road Opinions 2022). International investment law so far has not yet established any practices that a country imposes its domestic environmental standards on outbound investment and EU bilateral treaties only include a requirement of ‘non-lowering’ vis-à-vis existing environmental standards. The remaining question is whether and how China will turn such encouragement into legal obligations. If Chinese financers and enterprises do follow the guidelines, how to guarantee that gains from climate mitigation are safeguarded for a project is the next problem to solve. Otherwise, alternative financing sources would be sought to continue the traditional high-emission pathway, as in the Zimbabwe case.

Second, it is understandable that most Chinese policy objectives for building a green Belt and Road reflect a projection of its domestic politics. In particular, Chinese domestic climate commitment since 2020 has brought significant changes both in its position on prioritising climate policy in greening the Belt and Road and China’s exit from financing new coal-fired power stations overseas. There are still drawbacks to such an approach when it comes to setting a target for a green Belt and Road. The Green Belt and Road Opinions 2022 set the green Belt and Road targets in 2025 and 2030 as a projection of domestic climate targets. There are significant similarities between the framing of such objectives and the objectives in the ‘1+N’ policy framework. However, given that the green Belt and Road also needs joint efforts from the B&RCs, a genuine understanding of the challenges facing climate change are needed, especially by the least-developed countries, the small island States, and the vulnerable communities in these countries, including their concerns and struggles about electricity shortage, employment opportunities associated with high-emissions industries, the imperative of fighting against poverty, and the capacity to respond to climate change. Based on these understandings, more inclusive and transitional justice-oriented targets could then lead to deeper co-operation between China and the B&RCs to build a green Belt and Road and align it with the targets set in the Paris Agreement.

8.1 Introduction

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is especially vulnerable to the existential threat posed by climate change, despite the fact these countries are by no means the largest emitters. Intensified rainfall variability and greater aridity converge on a region divided by institutions and ideology, conflict which renders climate action virtually impossible.Footnote ¹

Environmental degradation has exacerbated underlying tensions of transboundary climate governance, as concerns rise over future water demand and supply. The aim of transboundary water management is to allocate water use to ensure maximum benefits to all users, while maintaining healthy ecosystems.Footnote ² Climate change has increased uncertainty over water availability and intensified the demand side of water management, resulting in higher costs for water infrastructure and increased competition between users. This environment of uncertainty discourages States from joining international environmental agreements and making credible commitments to climate action. States have been forced to take unilateral actions to protect critical water resources, often to the detriment of other States’ supply.

River basins reflect the transboundary nature of climate hazards, which do not discriminate between basin states or across borders. Overuse of water resources causes irreversible damage to ecosystems, which in turn affects all aspects of human life, particularly food and water security. Farming communities are disproportionately impacted by climate-induced water scarcity and ecosystem degradation. Increased uncertainty over resource availability thus has direct socioeconomic effects on States, limiting their politics to more immediate concerns of resource provision. Although effective water policy and resource management is critical to climate adaptation and economic development, water access in MENA is constrained by dominant paradigms of hegemony and power. These inherent power inequalities define the contours of climate policy design in the region.

The status of ecosystems and water supply is critical to reversing the effects of climate change. Ecosystem conservation facilitates adaptation through nature-based solutions for pluvial flood protection and water quality improvement. It also allows for mitigation, through carbon storage in the soils of wetlands. Untreated water produces excess greenhouse gas emissions, generated by the decomposition of organic matter. If ecosystems are conserved to function at optimum natural capacity, with adequate water supply, the environment is as best equipped as possible to respond to the effects of climate change. Water access also optimises agricultural productivity, thereby generating increased income for farming communities, which can then be used for further investments to build resilience against future shocks to the natural environment.

Water governance is thus the critical node of climate adaptation and mitigation in MENA, a region defined by transboundary water use and agricultural production. Shifting regional geopolitics and the compounding vulnerabilities of global warming and sea-level rise have produced an environment that is primed for consensus on water and climate action. With interests aligning like never before, these conditions give MENA a valuable opportunity to make strides towards achieving Paris Agreement targets and adapt their environment to the disproportionate effects of climate change. In this chapter we highlight the importance of politics in shaping climate policy design and implementation. Climate ambitions in MENA are inseparable from efforts to achieve consensus on water conflict. We demonstrate this with the case studies of the riparian States of the Nile River Basin, and Israel and Palestine vis-à-vis the Jordan River basin.

The Nile River Basin has long remained salient in the environmental discourse of the MENA region, with its Nile Delta ranked by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as among the most vulnerable in the world to sea-level rise.Footnote ³ The Delta faces grave risks of saline intrusion and pluvial flooding of riverbanks as its attendant population increases exponentially.Footnote ⁴ Unilateral construction of water projects by riparian States in the Nile River Basin reflects distinctive ambitions for regional political power, global prestige and the extreme need for natural resources. Egypt’s monopoly over the Nile River Basin is facilitated by historic foreign backing and consistent non-compliance to co-operative frameworks such as the Nile Basin Initiative, in turn restricting the water access of other riparian States. As such, the climate regime of the basin is defined by State self-interest and enduring natural resource conflict, thereby preventing implementation of longer-term climate strategies which move beyond the more immediate agenda of water allocation. This chapter will explore the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) as a challenge to the water-sharing status quo, and its implications for the hostile political environment of the climate policy of the Nile.

The biophysical impacts of climate change in Israel and Palestine compound an already severely degraded environment in the Levant, which faces an acute shortage of potable water, increased desertification and flooding.Footnote ⁵ The 1995 Oslo II Interim Agreement between Israel and Palestine institutionalised pre-existing inequalities in water allocation, perpetuating and reinforcing the cycle of water scarcity in Palestinian communities. As a result, Palestine must grapple with underdevelopment and continuous water insecurity, which in turn severely endanger its ecosystems and capacity for agricultural production.

In both case studies, climate policy design, implementation and co-operation are influenced by power politics. Pervasive inequalities span multiple levels of governance and territorial tiers. These political complexities define the contours of climate policy. Policy recommendations that do not grasp the breadth and scope of political inequalities will fail to provide sustainable climate solutions. This chapter argues that effective climate policy is not just a matter of designing the ‘correct’ policy instrument or framework. Options such as increasing piping efficiency, introducing water allocations, or using financial levers like extraction charges and conservation subsidies have already been the focus of previous MENA government engagement and study.Footnote ⁶ Co-operation between riparian States, supported by foreign investment and adaptation methodologies of the agricultural and water sectors, will also provide a profitable avenue towards achieving emissions and mitigation targets. The core issue is not a knowledge deficit of effective policy development.Footnote ⁷ Rather, it is how central imbalances in political structures allow certain actors to consistently maximise individual gains and compromise climate policy objectives and application. Addressing unequal power structures holistically is the only way to create equitable and effective water policy.

8.2 Egypt and the Nile Basin

8.3 The Levant

8.4 Prospects

The humanitarian overtones of the DoP provide an example of theoretically ‘good’ policy designed to mitigate risks of conflict. Similarly, the GERD itself epitomises nominally ‘good’ water policy from several perspectives – its approach towards regional economic integration, Nile Basin regime shift and the emphasis it places on links between water politics and climate adaptation measures.Footnote ⁸⁴ The marked lack of institutional mechanisms to enforce compliance with the DoP undermines its potential, however, just as the political environment encourages conflict over basin disagreements despite inherent climate benefits. The GERD, and relations between the three States on the whole, has once again dissolved into a security dilemma.

Low levels of institutional trust and credibility in the MENA region are a unique facet of intra-State relations that prevent co-operation and result in increased costs to governments.Footnote ⁸⁵ The totality of the current policies surrounding the GERD epitomise water relations of the Nile Basin, where a sustainable process is constrained by water scarcity and conflict. Moreover, the preponderant focus on the material aspects of water security neglect to address the issues across both macro and micro levels. The implications of shifting Nile relations for state identity and biological continuity will inexorably influence climate policy moving forward. Consideration of the asymmetry of statecraft and these regional dynamics must be taken into account to address political drivers of policy inefficacies, to create more equitable and sustainable water policy frameworks.

Water security is a fundamental tenet of climate policy and adaptation.Footnote ⁸⁶ The overarching theme across both case studies is centred around how politics pervade essentially every aspect of climate policy, from design through to implementation. While we focus on the MENA region, we can observe similar patterns of politics pervading climate policy elsewhere. For example, in the Australian context, the Water Act 2007 (Cth) – which was enacted to ensure that management of Australia’s largest water resource, the Murray–Darling River Basin, be handled in the national interestFootnote ⁸⁷ – is a nominally robust water-sharing policy on its face, spurring a multi-billion dollar funded implementation plan in 2012.Footnote ⁸⁸ However, contestation over agricultural politics resulted in critical overextraction of the Murray–Darling Basin.Footnote ⁸⁹ Returning to the European perspective, the 2000 Water Framework Directive (WFD) aimed to prevent deterioration of water sources.Footnote ⁹⁰ The original WFD has been criticised for being too complex to apply across the diversity of EU States, yet too soft in its commitments to create sufficient policy action. WFD complexity and ambition has been attributed to environmentalist non-governmental organisation (NGO) lobbying, whereas soft commitments can be directly traced back to the diverging self-interests of EU States.Footnote ⁹¹ The agreements examined in this chapter have revealed similar shortcomings. At the biggest picture policy levels, similar patterns remain. The soft ‘pledge and review’ system of the Paris Agreement (where the main commitment is to submit a new climate target every 5 years) was specifically used to ensure that the United States could join by way of Presidential Executive Order, bypassing the significant and often fatal hurdle of Senate approval.Footnote ⁹² The preceding Kyoto Protocol included binding emissions reductions. Consequently, U.S. ratification was undermined by bipartisan resistance in the U.S. Senate.Footnote ⁹³ Non-participation by the United States is one of the reasons for the Kyoto Protocol’s failure to curb emissions.Footnote ⁹⁴ There is an international theme of broader political drivers, themselves at times an opaque black box,Footnote ⁹⁵ being the critical node of effective policy design and implementation. Even extant literature that emphasises the importance of complexity and intellectual humility still frames the aim of research to ‘serve policy that will reach those most negatively impacted by resource allocation’.Footnote ⁹⁶ Indeed, creating more implementable climate policy recommendations often requires the simplification of social and political complexity. Otherwise, these can result in policies that are blind to existing inequalities. The alternative is to be wholly engaged in the sheer complexity of politicised natural resource management. While this may illustrate a more accurate picture, this risks only providing broad discussions of ‘wicked’, ‘intractable’ problems that are too difficult to meaningfully address. This is a recurring issue with climate policy, which unravels when faced with these definitions.

Similar patterns of politics pervading policy can be seen in MENA’s relatively poor decarbonisation policy. Saudi Arabia, for instance, is a well-known climate laggard in UN climate arenas. However, the underlying politics provide important context. A drastic move away from oil- and fossil-based economies would rapidly affect regional balances of power, potentially flowing into political instability across the MENA region.Footnote ⁹⁷ Reducing emissions cannot be solely framed from the perspective of energy and economics, as is commonly the case in energy literature.Footnote ⁹⁸

For future policy, we emphasise the importance of recognising the broader political context, both at large and small scales. The technical details of policy are important, but can simply reflect and reinforce existing inequalities if treated in a rationalist technocratic vacuum. We therefore recommend that:

1. 1. Policy analysis should start from the political landscape, and identify policy windows that policy amendments or new approaches can be built from.Footnote ⁹⁹ Resolving key political and power imbalances should be prioritised alongside the details of technocratic water management and adaptation.

2. 2. Policy processes, from initial ideation through to implementation, should ensure diverse and equitable representation and engagement.

3. 3. Relatedly, improving bottom-up adaptive capacity is critical. Adaptation relies especially on local context and knowledge.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ This is particularly important when trying to equitably balance the different needs of different communities.

4. 4. Finally, policy should focus on systemic policy packages rather than single policy instruments. The problems that MENA faces are many and complex. The technical complexities of effective mitigation and adaptation are compounded by political divides with decades deep roots intertwined with the legacy of colonial politics.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Effectively addressing adaptation, and broader climate policy, requires multiple complementary policies to hit at multiple points within complex social, political, and environmental systems.

The hosting of UNFCCC COPs in 2022 and 2023, in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), respectively, are hoped to yield important outcomes for international climate policy. The objective of these COPs is to finalise the remaining operational issues required to implement the objectives of the Paris Agreement. Key to this process is the clarification of the information and reporting necessary to conduct the Paris Agreement’s Global Stocktake (a collective review of countries’ progress). While Egypt and the UAE play a diplomatic ‘negotiation chair’ role, the key drivers of outputs are other countries with strong political positions. Transparency and reporting of the Global Stocktake, for instance, is likely to be driven by the PRC and the United States. These are important policy developments at the international level, but are not necessarily important for boots-on-the-ground implementation, especially of complex adaptation policy. UN climate processes have historically marginalised adaptation. Most countries’ Paris Agreement Nationally Determined Contributions focus on mitigation efforts, and international adaptation funding has substantially lagged behind mitigation.Footnote ¹⁰² Policy implementation issues that are critical to effective adaptation policy, like resolved power inequalities or ensuring diverse and equitable representation, will not be resolved by international climate policy platforms.

8.5 Conclusion

Integrative and interdisciplinary analyses are critical to climate policy, especially as the environmental stresses and conflicts we discuss are steadily increasing. This chapter identifies common patterns of power dynamics across the Jordan River Basin in Israel and Palestine, and between Egypt, the Republic of the Sudan and Ethiopia as they reflect zero-sum power politics. What is common to both cases is a pervasive influence of deeply entrenched norms of hegemony and State-versus-State perspective of transboundary water politics, which undermine effective climate policies. Under this rubric of power dynamics, truly effective and equitable climate policy is unattainable. The self-reinforcing feedback loop of water stress, political fractures and ineffective climate policy in MENA needs to be addressed. Systemic issues require systemic solutions. Broader shifts in institutions to distribute power and promote regional stability may themselves be understood as good water and climate policy. Addressing underlying political and social inequalities requires moving beyond the technical – beyond the physical science and engineering of water policy. It is a task that deals in power and complex interrelations. Fragmented reductionist policy is a drop in the ocean of deepening water and climate issues. An integrative and interdisciplinary policy approach that considers the broad scope of water and climate politics as it spans territorial and legislative tiers provides the best chance of a more equal future for MENA.

9.1 Introduction

The first overseas trip of any leader is an especially important one. Symbolic exercises as much as anything else, these visits often spell out the foreign policy goals of a new administration. That European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen chose first to visit Ethiopia – the birthplace and seat of the African Union (AU) – is therefore no coincidence. President von der Leyen spelled out the trip’s rationale in a speech alongside AU Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki, declaring that:

This renewed commitment comes at a juncture of significant promise, and profound change, in modern African history.Footnote ² With 2000 heralding the so-called ‘African century’,Footnote ³ the continent now boasts 6 of the world’s 10 fastest growing economies,Footnote ⁴ and is predicted to account for more than half of global population growth between 2019 and 2050.Footnote ⁵ Its young, economically mobile population is complemented by an abundance of natural resources, and an environmental predisposition to renewable energy opportunities like solar and wind power.Footnote ⁶ All of this makes it a most attractive destination for foreign direct investment (FDI). The continent’s unique vulnerability to climate change,Footnote ⁷ relatively low rates of electrification,Footnote ⁸ and high degrees of fossil fuel dependency and energy povertyFootnote ⁹ make such FDI an equally attractive prospect for recipient States.

Set against this investment environment, the European Union (EU) has turned its attention firmly southwards. Under the auspices of the leviathan European Green Deal (Green Deal),Footnote ¹⁰ Europe and its Member States are investing huge sums in Africa’s renewable energy potential, with a view to enabling energy transition on an international scale. Indeed, Africa is central to European efforts to export climate policy and galvanise international norms in its own image. But Europe is not alone. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has similarly noticed Africa’s rise and duly extended billions in funding for major energy projects, albeit spread across fossil fuel, renewable sources, and extractive industry, to support crucial technology supply chains.

This chapter will consider these two approaches, and examine whether, and if so, the extent to which PRC investment priorities are likely to hinder Europe’s climate-focused engagement with Africa, if indeed European engagement is really as positive as EU rhetoric would have us believe. It will begin by charting African engagement with the global climate regime, before surmising the current foundation of Afro-European relations. It will then examine energy co-operation between the two continents in detail, focusing on three European and three African States at the heart of this relationship. In the final section, it will consider the PRC’s investment profile, and interrogate its implications for Africa as against European and Paris Agreement priorities.

9.2 Africa, Europe, and the Global Climate Regime

From the earliest warnings of climate change, Africa has been heralded as uniquely at-risk.Footnote ¹¹ With its agricultural output overwhelmingly dependent upon rainfall, the twin phenomena of drought and desertification alone present a grave existential threat.Footnote ¹² That Africa must also balance imperatives like food security and poverty relief with the estimated US$50 billion cost of climate change adaptation before 2050 only complicates this outlook.Footnote ¹³ Africa’s current position – as an emerging green investment hub, and a voice for climate justice and sustainable development – is a direct result of these pressures, although it has not always been so. To understand modern African climate politics, one must first chart the growth of African climate diplomacy, and the accompanying boom in climate-positive investment across the same period.

9.3 Standing on African Shoulders: Africa and the European Green Deal

Since the Paris Agreement’s entry into force on 4 November 2016,Footnote ⁴² climate-positive European investment has steadily accelerated. Spearheading these investments is the Green Deal, ‘a new growth strategy for our economy, people and planet’, which marks Europe’s most concerted attempt to meet Paris Agreement imperatives, reduce emissions by at least 55% by 2030,Footnote ⁴³ and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.Footnote ⁴⁴ A complete economic transformation has been envisaged, replete with a €65 billion ‘Just Transition Mechanism’ to pivot fossil-fuel dependent regions towards green energy.Footnote ⁴⁵ As President von der Leyen stated in her Earth Day 2021 address:

Far from keeping ambitions within its own frontiers, however, the EU has also directed its attention – and considerable investments – southwards to Africa. First flagged in 2019, the EU has consistently reiterated the importance of prioritising environmental issues in Cotonou’s successor agreement.Footnote ⁴⁷ In particular, it has stressed the importance of the Africa–Europe Alliance in ‘[unlocking] Africa’s potential to make rapid progress towards a green and circular economy’.Footnote ⁴⁸ This has been backed up more recently by what some have called the EU’s new counterweight to the PRC’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)Footnote ⁴⁹ – the €300 billion Global Gateway Infrastructure PlanFootnote ⁵⁰ – which has allocated some €150 billion to Africa to accelerate the continent’s green energy transition.Footnote ⁵¹

9.4 Africa’s Contested Energy Future

Europe is far from alone in identifying Africa’s huge potential as an energy partner. Given the continent’s above-mentioned resource wealth, and the prospects of local investments yielding huge returns as African industrialisation accelerates, its energy future has become subject to something of an international tug-of-war. Central to this contest, alongside Europe, is the PRC. The pressing question is how PRC priorities – both political and economic – will interact with Europe’s climate-positive investment profile and the growing African climate ambition.

9.4.1 People’s Republic of China Investment into Africa

Just as with the recent European diplomatic offensive mounted against African States, the PRC has made no secret of its designs on energy co-operation with the continent. In his opening address to the 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China–Africa Co-operation, PRC Paramount Leader Xi Jinping declared:

[The PRC] will work with Africa to pursue green, low-carbon, circular and sustainable development … We will strengthen exchange and co-operation with Africa on climate change, clean energy, prevention and control of desertification and soil erosion, protection of wildlife and other areas of ecological and environmental preservation. Together, we could make [the PRC] and Africa beautiful places for people to live in harmony with nature.Footnote ¹²⁸

These are not mere abstractions. Since 2000, FDI from the PRC into Africa has risen from US$149 million to some US$3.1 billion in 2020, with a of total US$53 billion invested in that period and an average annual investment of US$4.6 billion since 2010.Footnote ¹²⁹ It is easily the continent’s largest source of overall FDI, more than doubling United States investment in 2019.Footnote ¹³⁰ The truth of Xi’s green sentiments is less resolute, however. As with Europe’s green focus, the targets of PRC investment are demonstrative of similarly longstanding national priorities, chiefly the acceleration of domestic economic growth. From the beginning of Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms, the PRC’s rapid development has been predicated in large part upon construction and industrialisation. While Australian iron ore and coal have underpinned the bulk of this, Africa’s role as an energy and materiel supplier is not insignificant.

Behind construction (just under 29%), mining (just over 26%) was the largest source of PRC FDI into the continent in 2016, with investments in sectors like information technology making up a mere 5%.Footnote ¹³¹ Such is the importance of African extractive industry that when Guinea – a key bauxite supplier – was rocked by a September 2021 coup, the PRC broke with its usually resolute non-interference policy to publicly oppose the interim government,Footnote ¹³² having already seen regime instability complicate resource deals in West Africa and the Sahel.Footnote ¹³³ Alongside iron ore and bauxite imports, one of the PRC’s main focuses is on controlling those elements essential to digital technology. Building on its rare earth mineral monopoly – controlling some 90% of the world’s supply – it has purchased majority shares in South African lithium holdings, as well as mines representing more than half of the DRC’s cobalt mining output, among other pursuits.Footnote ¹³⁴ These linkages will be essential as the PRC’s domestic technology industry continues to grow.

The PRC’s investment profile can by no means be attributed solely to self-interest, however. Funding for continental energy capabilities, alongside infrastructural support, has emerged as a central pillar of BRI-era FDI. Although these investments, like those in mining, have not generally prioritised climate change imperatives, this trend is changing. Of the US$24.361 billion invested in African energy since the conclusion of the Paris Agreement, US$15.4 billion has been put into natural gas, coal, and oil projects, whereas only US$8.961 billion has gone towards renewables.Footnote ¹³⁵ Although only a negligible US$361 million of this has been put towards solar and wind power in that time, the growing stake of hydropower is to be commended, equalling fossil fuel investments between 2000 and 2020 (Figure 9.1).Footnote ¹³⁶

Figure 9.1

PRC energy finance flows to Africa 2000–2020 (constant US$ billions).

Source: Boston University Global Development Policy Center, China’s global energy finance database (2022). www.bu.edu/cgef.

9.4.2 Comparing Europe and the People’s Republic of China

9.4.2.1 European Motivations

For Europe, almost irrespective of the language of ‘sustainable development’ and ‘energy justice’ (although these do factor into the political calculus), investment in Africa is future-oriented. By committing to renewable capabilities in North Africa in particular but across the continent more widely, Europe and its Member States are creating for themselves a massive energy generation capability directly bordering the continent. Coupled with growing investment in interconnector projects like Elmed,Footnote ¹³⁷ and European commitments to hydrogen technology, African renewable energy offers a viable path towards energy security. Ongoing concerns – both political and environmental – over reliance upon Russian natural gas and stigmas surrounding civilian nuclear energy only encourage this (Figure 9.2).

Figure 9.2

Renewable energy finance flows to Africa pre-COVID (2010–2019, constant 2019 US$ millions).

Source: Boston University Global Development Policy Center, China’s global energy finance database (2022). www.bu.edu/cgef.

Investing so heavily in African renewable energy also carries major economic potential by ensuring a future supply of ready-made trading partners. As Europe advances the Green Deal and establishes measures like the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM),Footnote ¹³⁸ African States nurtured in its green image will be ideally placed for deeper trading relationships. This goes beyond energy – more prosperous African middle classes, enriched by domestic renewable generation and European investment, will have a greater appetite for goods and services. An underlying hope in some quarters is that by promoting African socioeconomic growth, State stability will improve, thereby lowering or even eliminating their diplomatic advantage over Mediterranean EU States in relation to immigration controls.Footnote ¹³⁹ Although African States are not necessarily victimised by this transaction, the long-term benefits for Europe are much greater.

Lastly, green investment in Africa has an important political function, as a major offensive in the EU’s effort to export its climate policy vision. Seeing itself as a norm-entrepreneur, investment incentivises African States to follow Europe’s lead on issues like emissions trading, carbon accounting, and hydrogen certification, in turn drawing momentum away from international alternatives.

9.4.2.2 People’s Republic of China Motivations

PRC investment in Africa is as equally motivated by future prosperity as Europe, if for different reasons. Where Europe has committed itself to the Green Deal and designs on global climate policy leadership, the PRC has, at least in the short to medium term, committed itself to fossil fuels domestically, having until 2030 to reach its peak NDC-enshrined carbon output.Footnote ¹⁴⁰ As the world’s largest consumer of coal, and second largest of oil, promises of green transition have given way to increasing usage of both after a dip in the mid 2010s. Diplomatic tensions with historic major supplier Australia have necessitated diversification in supply, with Africa helping to partly redress that difference.Footnote ¹⁴¹ Hydrocarbon deposits exemplify this: whilst only accounting for just over 7% of the world’s proven oil reserves,Footnote ¹⁴² predictions of future discovery in Africa have driven greater PRC engagement with States like Angola and South SudanFootnote ¹⁴³ (18% of the PRC’s oil imports having come from Africa in 2020).Footnote ¹⁴⁴

As in Europe, the PRC is also motivated by the economic imperative of building a reliable pool of future trading partners, although one predicated partly upon fossil fuels. Encouraging coal mining and fossil fuel generation has an important advantage in this regard – ease. Where European investment is tied to energy transition, and thereby costly transformative change to things like grid infrastructure, money from the PRC has the benefit of building upon existing systems. This is so even considering the PRC’s 2021 announced cessation of overseas coal-fired power plant funding, which has the potential to vitiate some US$50 billion in global FDI.Footnote ¹⁴⁵ Taking its place in the PRC investment profile is hydropower, which integrates into existing power infrastructure much easier than wind and solar,Footnote ¹⁴⁶ both of which have received negligible funding (Figure 9.1).Footnote ¹⁴⁷ For those African States with low rates of electrification, infrastructural constraints, and limited funding, such ease is hugely appealing.

None of this is to say that claims by figures such as Xi Jinping to ‘promot[ing] the transition to green and low-carbon development’ are totally baseless,Footnote ¹⁴⁸ of course. Alongside hydropower, the PRC is the world’s largest supplier of solar PV technology by some distance,Footnote ¹⁴⁹ and among the leaders in patent filings for renewables.Footnote ¹⁵⁰ Despite the significant environmental and wildlife concerns tied to hydroelectric damming,Footnote ¹⁵¹ projects like the Bui Dam in Ghana have nonetheless complied with environmental and social impact assessments.Footnote ¹⁵² But cynicism remains. Partly, this is due to suspicions that the PRC’s green turn has been equally motivated by a desire to capitalise on United States vacillations, set against a longer-lens view of great power contest. Mostly, however, it stems from a perception that PRC climate action is largely tokenistic. Promises of net zero by 2060 and ceasing coal-fired FDI are caveated significantly by domestic inaction and an emissions profile which has shown almost no sign of shrinking.Footnote ¹⁵³ African natural gas, oil, and extractive coal investments are central to this.

9.4.2.3 Destined for Conflict?

Europe and the PRC are not fundamentally at odds in their pursuits of African climate investment. Both have made significant verbal commitments to green transition domestically and internationally, and demonstrated their intent with funding for major projects across the continent. Where they do diverge is the degree of this commitment, with inevitable consequences for African FDI recipients. On the one hand, Europe is investing on the basis of energy transition and a green future, if more for its own benefit than for that of Africa. On the other hand, the PRC is investing in Africa at least partly to perpetuate fossil fuel supply chains, sustaining its own economic growth while simultaneously nurturing future trading partners. African States are left to choose. Of course, the choice is not wholly balanced – for States like sun- and wind-rich Morocco, or hydrocarbon-rich Nigeria, natural alignment to European or PRC energy philosophies makes choosing easier. It is also by no means mutually exclusive – African States remain equal and sovereign agents, able to freely court investment from both sides as they see fit. But the choice remains.

By choosing to follow the EU’s climate policy philosophy, and accepting investments geared towards energy transition, African States can mitigate the adverse effects of the CBAM on trade and gain increasingly greater access to the common market. This, in turn, disincentivises both fossil fuel energy and – eventually – fossil fuel trading, abstracting these States from deeper PRC engagement in the medium term. Conversely, accepting PRC investments and committing further to fossil fuels makes trade with the EU more difficult, but makes energy and resource trade with the PRC much more lucrative. It also opens the way further for crucial infrastructural support under the BRI, which the EU is unable to match. This divergence is only likely to be exacerbated by growing European climate ambition and the resultant pressure on other international actors to follow suit.

In the result, conflict between the PRC and Europe is not especially concerning as between them. It is in Africa that any adverse effects will be felt, and not just environmentally. As the AGN has repeatedly sought to impress upon the world, climate change is a real and present danger for Africa. The transition to green energy is an inevitable one. As such, those States that choose to meet PRC fossil fuel demands in the short term – that is, before the 2030 NDC emissions cap – stand to suffer the most. In that short term, trade opportunities with Europe and other regions imposing CBAMs will decrease. Continental market integration, which is already relatively weak,Footnote ¹⁵⁴ could suffer as the divide between more and less climate-proactive States grows. Assuming the PRC follows through with its NDC and reduces emissions post-2030, these same States will be left doubly disadvantaged, lacking a ready market for fossil fuels while being left some 10 years behind the rest of the continent in their energy transition.

Regardless of a degree of self-interest, European climate investments in Africa are fundamentally motivated by the aim of achieving Paris Agreement goals through energy transition. Investment is therefore a major vehicle for exporting climate policies to the continent. Whether this will be successful will in no small part depend upon the course charted by the PRC. If its current behaviour – defined by inconsistencies between domestic and international action, and caveats to otherwise significant pledges – persists, African FDI recipients will be left at a long-term economic and environmental disadvantage. Conversely, if these gestures are meaningfully actioned, and accompanied by efforts to curb domestic fossil fuel consumption and incentivise energy transition through FDI, an international ‘race to zero’ might truly begin, with Africa involved from the outset.Footnote ¹⁵⁵

9.5 Conclusion

Africa has made massive progress in the field of climate policy across the last three decades, perhaps more than any other region. From aspirational declarations and programmes in the late 1980s and early 1990s, set against an otherwise disparate body of continental climate policy and action, the AGN has emerged as a major actor in the global climate regime. Spurred in large part by the Paris Agreement, this diplomatic momentum has given way to focused FDI attention, with Africa now sitting at the centre of a crucible of climate investment.

Europe – both supranationally and in its Member States – has been a leading proponent of this investment drive. In its effort to export the Green Deal, establish a viable international green economy, and pioneer the norms upon which that economy is based, Europe has negotiated an array of agreements with African States. While much of this FDI has been directed towards promoting energy transition, such as in Morocco and Kenya, Europe is also ensuring its future energy security by the same token. The renegotiated Cotonou Agreement is expected to further entrench these green ambitions in the continent-to-continent relationship.

The EU is not the only actor seeking to impress itself upon Africa’s energy transition, however. The PRC has made similar inroads, albeit on a different climate footing. Unlike Europe, which is motivated by a desire to pioneer international climate policy, PRC investments are largely focused on securing supply lines and future prosperity. Despite a growing hydro-energy focus, and promising developments such as the decision to cease overseas coal-fired power plant funding, the PRC’s climate ambition is substantially weaker than that of Europe, as evidenced by ongoing support for Africa’s oil, gas, and extractive industries.

As this chapter has sought to explain, to characterise simultaneous European and PRC investments in Africa as ‘competitive’, or as marked by any significant degree of tension, is misguided. Rather, these investments reflect divergent philosophies of energy transition. Where European investment is predicated upon green energy transition, particularly the transformative change inherent in solar PV, wind, and hydrogen, PRC investment is marked by a short-term support for fossil fuels and an inclination towards less disruptive renewable investments like hydropower. The result, whereby PRC investment feeds into a continued hydrocarbon dependence among some African States, presents a major hurdle to European visions of nurturing a green Africa. In offering itself as a short-term harbour for fossil-fuel dependent and economically vulnerable African economies and extending much-needed infrastructure funding under the BRI, the PRC has firmly established itself in the African market. The consequence is that, as long as the PRC’s ambitious climate rhetoric is belied by practical support for fossil fuels and extractive industry, a division will be perpetuated between those African States transitioning to renewables and those remaining reliant on fossil fuels. This divide will only harm Africa’s continental integration and energy transition.

Europe has made clear that it sees Africa as a key partner towards achieving its Paris Agreement goals. The PRC has, at least in much of its rhetoric, espoused similar sentiments. The difference lies in their actions. As long as this discord persists, the long-term disadvantages for those African States which court fossil fuel investments will mount. It will fall to the PRC, and the sincerity of its climate policy commitments, to determine whether European climate ambition will find a willing partner or a halting adversary in Africa.