This event held on 18-19 September 2013 at the OECD is part of a series of seminars, organised by the OECD and the IEA, which aims to promote dialogue and enhance understanding between a wide range of experts on technical issues in the international climate change negotiations. The agenda, presentations and list of participants are now available.

Carbon taxes and emission trading systems are the most cost-effective means of reducing CO2 emissions, and should be at the centre of government efforts to tackle climate change,according to a new OECD study.

This event held on 18-19 March 2014 at the OECD is part of a series of seminars, organised by the OECD and the IEA, which aims to promote dialogue and enhance understanding between a wide range of experts on technical issues in the international climate change negotiations. The agenda, presentations and list of participants are now available.

Have you ever wondered who was paying to recycle that plastic bottle you just threw away?

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is increasingly recognised worldwide as an efficient waste management policy to help improve recycling and reduce landfilling of products and materials. This Forum took place on 17-19 June 2014, in Tokyo, Japan, to identify key challenges and opportunities for further developing EPR policies.

This workshop focused on putting priorities into practice in OECD countries. Country-specific prioritisation, sectoral approaches, mainstreaming tools including questions on public sector finance and research needs were all topics covered during the two days of the workshop.

The paper reviews a number of commercial and public data sources to examine their potential for increasing coverage and understanding of the volume and characteristics of private climate finance beyond renewable energy projects. Such information is needed to assess progress towards the global transition to low-carbon, climate-resilient economies.

This event held on 16-17 September 2014 at the IEA is part of a series of seminars, organised by the OECD and the IEA, which aims to promote dialogue and enhance understanding between a wide range of experts on technical issues in the international climate change negotiations. The agenda, presentations and list of participants are now available.

Advanced economies are pushing up carbon emissions, traffic congestion and air pollution by under-taxing company cars and diesel fuel, according to new OECD research.

The world is facing unprecedented stresses, and we are going to need an unprecedented response. We’re doing our best to help create that response at the OECD.

Held on 27-28 November 2014, the forum focused on four areas that can contribute to more integrated policy making. Topics for discussion included the need to understand long-term impacts of the nexus on growth; ways to improve coherence between national, regional and local planning and priorities; the importance of promoting private sector investment in the nexus; and....

Challenging free trade orthodoxy is a heavy lift in our political culture; anything that has been in place for that long takes on an air of inevitability. But, critical as these shifts are, they are not enough to lower emissions in time. To do that, we will need to confront a logic even more entrenched than free trade–the logic of indiscriminate economic growth.

Governments are under-utilising taxation as a tool to curb the environmental consequences of energy use, foregoing revenue and weakening their attack on the principal source of greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change and air pollution, according to new OECD analysis.

Taxes are potentially among the most effective ways of cutting pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, but they are currently – with very few exceptions – underused; and even where used, they are frequently designed in a sub-optimal way.

Participants to the Arrangement on Officially Supported Export Credits have agreed new rules on official support for coal-fired power plants, including restrictions on official export credits for the least efficient coal-fired power plants, the OECD announced today.

Despite a relatively good performance on several points compared to other countries, there is still scope for improving the effectiveness of Israel’s taxation policy from an environmental perspective.

Paris is a beautiful city but has an ugly problem with air pollution. Using 2 wheels to get to work, one becomes acutely aware of this insidious addiction to cars, and the “essence” of the problem, DIESEL.

This paper presents the first empirical analysis of the macroeconomic relationship between environmentally related taxes and inequality in income sources. The analysis also investigates whether this relationship differs between countries which have implemented environmental tax reforms (ETRs) and ones which have not.

Countries that implement stringent environmental policies do not lose export competitiveness when compared against countries with more moderate regulations, according to a new OECD study that examines trade in manufactured goods between advanced and emerging economies.

The OECD will convene its 6th Workshop on Regional trade agreements and the environment on 10 June 2016, at the OECD Headquarters. The focus of the workshop will be on chapters of regional trade agreement (RTAs) that are concerned mainly with issues other than the environment, such as market access, investment, or government procurement, TBT, regulatory coherence or dispute settlement.

Anyone else feeling exhausted by all this drum humming about air pollution? Indeed it appears the fumes won’t be dissipating any time soon as we consider the extent to which tyre and brake rubbish exacerbate the problem.

OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría announced today at the One Planet Summit in Paris the launch of the “Paris Collaborative on Green Budgeting”, a strategic initiative to assess and drive the alignment of national budgetary processes with the Paris Agreement and other environmental goals.

Taxes are effective at cutting harmful emissions from energy use, but governments could make better use of them. Greater reliance on energy taxation is needed to strengthen efforts to tackle the principal source of both greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, according to a new OECD report.

Extended producer responsibility is a policy approach that aims to increase waste recovery and recycling. Extended producer responsibility systems aim to make producers responsible for the environmental impacts of their products throughout the product chain, from design to the end-of-life phase. This report focuses on free-riding of producers or retailers, which the fast expansion of online sales in recent years has been exacerbating.

This event focused on the implication of COP24 outcomes and the implementation of the Rulebook, as well as on upcoming work on unresolved issues such as Article 6. Discussions covered Common Tabular Format (CTF) for climate finance and tracking progress towards the mitigation targets and updating and implementing NDCs, with a particular attention to the power sector and carbon markets.

Mr. Angel Gurría, Secretary-General of the OECD, will be in Mexico on 2-3 May 2019 to present the 2019 OECD Economic Survey of Mexico.

This paper provides a concrete example of how policy analysts can use empirical programme evaluation studies to perform ex-post assessments of environmentally related tax policies. A number of studies credibly identify causal effects of environmentally related tax policies, but do not necessarily provide all the information needed to fully inform the policy-making process.

Based on an in-depth literature review and responses to a survey among OECD member countries, this paper discusses the use of flexibility mechanisms in environmental regulations. The literature on these issues is limited, but it is clear that some such mechanisms can have important environmental and economic impacts.

Taxing polluting sources of energy is an effective way to curb emissions that harm the planet and human health, and the income generated can be used to ease the low-carbon transition for vulnerable households. Yet 70% of energy-related CO2 emissions from advanced and emerging economies are entirely untaxed, offering little incentive to move to cleaner energy, according to a new OECD report.

This paper presents the results of an ex post evaluation of the impacts of a vehicle tax reform in Ireland, by carrying out a full social cost benefit analysis of a vehicle tax reform and shows that whilst successful in improving the fuel economy of new passenger cars, it may have caused unintended effects (increased proliferation of diesel vehicles in the passenger car fleet).

Type “Christmas and environment” into Google and you will get page after page of tips on how to have a sustainable festive and holiday season. Topics from the Christmas tree to sustainable gift-giving to eco-friendly Christmas food to holiday cards to gift wrapping, there is no shortage of news articles, websites and blogs providing useful advice on how to reduce the environmental footprint of the holiday period.