Carbon Pricing and the 2015 Climate Agreement
A Symposium in Preparation for the UN Secretary General’s Climate Summit 2014
Emissions markets are already operational from Europe to California to China, and many countries are likely to include market programs in pledges for the new international climate agreement in Paris in 2015. Over 60 countries and regions are currently using or seriously considering carbon markets and pricing instruments to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, according to a recent World Bank report.
This panoply of actions is laudable, but it presents challenges for business if systems are disparate and disconnected. How can international policy encourage market systems to grow, mature, and link together? How might emerging systems fit together in a coherent system that enables large-scale change fueled by major investment in new technology? And what does the 2015 agreement need to do to facilitate, rather than impede international linkage?
The Harvard Project on Climate Agreements is leading new research into international market architecture for the Paris 2015 Agreement, in collaboration with the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA). This research is focused on policy linkage as a potentially important element of an emerging bottom-up international system to address climate change—linkage not only between emissions-trading systems (ETSs), but among ETSs, tax systems, and non-market regulatory systems (“heterogeneous linkage”). The research is highly relevant to the ongoing UNFCCC negotiations.
3:00 Welcome and Introductions
- Dirk Forrister, President and CEO, IETA
3:10 Pricing Carbon: Trends and Lessons from California, China, and Europe
- Connie Hedegaard, European Commissioner for Climate Action
- Mary D. Nichols, Chairman, California Air Resources Board
- Joseph Martens, Commssioner of the New York State Department of Environmental
Conservation
- Tang Jie, Vice Mayor of Shenzhen, People’s Republic of China
- Amber Rudd, Parliamentary Under Secretary for Climate Change, United Kingdom
3:50 Carbon Pricing, Linkage, and the 2015 Agreement
- Robert Stavins, Director, Harvard Project on Climate Agreements
The Harvard Project on Climate Agreements and IETA will release an Executive Summary of a paper on this topic that will released prior to COP 20 in Lima, Peru.
4:10 What are the essentials for markets in the 2015 Agreement?
- Amy Ericson, US President, Alstom
- Steve Lennon, Group Executive Sustainability, Eskom
- Jim Rogers, Former CEO, Duke Energy*
- Anna Lindstedt, Ambassador for Climate Change, Sweden
- Anne Chassagnette, Director for Environment and Social Responsibility, GDF Suez
- Ted Roosevelt, Managing Director, Barclays
- David Hone, Chief Climate Change Advisor, Shell
- Nat Keohane, Vice President-International Climate, Environmental Defense Fund
CEOs and senior executives from major industries will discuss their views on carbon pricing, how pricing policies have affected their businesses – and what they hope to see in future domestic and international climate policies. The companies will release Statements highlighting their views.
4:40 Discussion
Government officials and representatives of the private sector will take questions from the audience.
Open to the Media.
The Harvard Club of New York City
27 West 44th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues)