Why it’s so hard to tell which climate policies actually work
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. NATIONAL CLIMATE policies are a relatively recent invention. In 1997, according to the Grantham Institute, a think-tank at the London School of Economics, there were 60; by 2022 the number had risen to almost 3,000.
Their effectiveness has proved almost impossible to measure. In August, an international research group published the first global evaluation of climate policies in Science, a journal. The study, which looked at around 1,500 policies implemented in 41 countries between 1998 and 2022, found that just 63 could be linked to sizeable reductions in emissions.
The successful policies shared some similarities. Taxation was generally effective; so was mixing different interventions. In Britain, for example, the researchers reckoned that a range of policies introduced in the 2010s—including a minimum carbon price for power producers, the phase-out of coal plants and stricter rules about air pollution—achieved a 40% cut in emissions from the electricity sector.
Combined, researchers reckoned the 63 success stories reduced emissions by up to 1.8bn tonnes of carbon dioxide, more than the combined net total of Britain, France and Germany in 2023. That is commendable. But it is barely a sixth of what is needed to stop global temperatures from rising beyond 2°C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century.
There is little evidence to suggest that the remaining 1,400 or so worked. That does not mean they were total failures. For one thing, the study in Science looked only at near-term effects; for another, the lack of available data meant significant sectors (such as agriculture) as well as vast regions (like most of Africa) were excluded.
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