Emissions pathways after COVID-19 will be shaped by how governments’ economic responses translate into infrastructure expansion, energy use, investment planning and societal changes. As a response to the COVID-19 crisis, most governments worldwide launched recovery packages aiming to boost their economies, support employment and enhance their competitiveness. Climate action is pledged to be embedded in most of these packages, but with sharp differences across countries. This paper provides novel evidence on the energy system and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions implications of post-COVID-19 recovery packages by assessing the gap between pledged recovery packages and the actual investment needs of the energy transition to reach the Paris Agreement goals. Using two well-established Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) and analysing various scenarios combining recovery packages and climate policies, we conclude that currently planned recovery from COVID-19 is not enough to enhance societal responses to climate urgency and that it should be significantly upscaled and prolonged to ensure compatibility with the Paris Agreement goals.
After COP 21, with the adoption of the Paris Agreement in December 2015, the outlook for carbon pricing policies has been widened. While the agreement does not directly establish a global carbon pricing, the provisions accounted for in Article 6 have the potential to increase international cooperation in favor of greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation through market mechanisms. The Brazilian Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) considers the use of such mechanisms, though the configuration of the Brazilian climate policy does not specify the economic instruments for carbon pricing. When examining the recent evolution of GHG emissions in Brazil, the already achieved reduction in deforestation sheds light on the need to address GHG mitigation in other sectors, such as industry. Therefore, this paper analyzes the impacts of carbon pricing on the Brazilian industry in terms of sectorial value added (VA), emissions intensity, international trade exposure, and the risk of carbon leakage. Results indicate that, considering a price of carbon of US$10/tCO 2 , the cost of reducing emissions from 35% to 45% (same range of the Brazilian NDC) could represent an impact of 0.3% to 3.7% on sectorial VA. However, results for emissions intensity and international trade reveal medium to high carbon leakage risks for all analyzed industrial sectors.
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