International technology-oriented agreements to address climate change

By H. Coninck, C. Fischer, Richard G. Newell, T. Ueno. 2008

201 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Much discussion has surrounded possible alternatives for international agreements on climate change, particularly post-2012. Among these alternatives, technology-oriented agreements (TOAs) are perhaps the least well defined. We explore what TOAs may consist of, why they might be sensible, which TOAs already exist in international energy and environmental governance, and whether they could make a valuable contribution to addressing climate change. We find that TOAs aimed at knowledge sharing and coordination, research, development, or demonstration could increase the overall efficiency and effectiveness of international climate cooperation, but are likely to have limited environmental effectiveness on their own. Technology-transfer agreements are likely to have similar properties unless the level of resources expended is large, in which case they could be environmentally significant. Technology-specific mandates or incentives could be environmentally effective within the applicable sector, but are more likely to make a cost-effective contribution when viewed as a complement to rather than a substitute for flexible emissions-based policies. These results indicate that TOAs could potentially provide a valuable contribution to the global response to climate change. The success of specific TOAs will depend on their design, implementation, and the role they are expected to play relative to other components of the policy portfolio.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Environmental Engineering, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a81e1ec930c17ca40bb8c339d10ad7ebe38d21e8

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Citations in the corpus

The role of markets and policies in delivering innovation for climate change mitigation (2010, background): “International technology-oriented agreements also have the potential to play an important role in the architecture of an international climate change policy (Newell, 2009b; de Coninck et al., 2008; Justus and Philibert, 2005).”
Energy, the Environment, and Technological Change (2009, background): “Similarly, de Coninck et al. (2008) examine the conceptual arguments and specific options for technology-oriented climate agreements aimed at knowledge sharing and coordination, R&D, demonstration, and deployment.”
The politics of renewable energy policies: The case of feed-in tariffs in Ontario, Canada (2013, background): “However, the exact details of this technology-centered approach would determine its effectiveness (De Coninck et al., 2008).”
International Technology Transfer, Climate Change, and the Clean Development Mechanism (2011, background): “Since 1991, theGEFhas invested almost $2billion in climate changeprojects, ofwhich 90%has gone to energy efficiency, renewable energy, GHG reduction, or sustainable transportation (de Coninck et al. 2008).”
Policy-Induced Environmental Technology and Inventive Efforts: Is There a Crowding Out? (2015, background): “Moreover, environmental policy programs often include public R&D support, for instance, via direct subsidies (Newell 2007; de Coninck et al. 2008).”
The architecture of the global climate regime: a top-down perspective (2010, background): “…of R&D are a potentially useful adjunct to climate policy in general, the conclusion in the literature is that without strong driving goals the rate of introduction of new technology will be too slow to meet stringent climate protection goals (de Coninck et al., 2008; de Coninck, 2009).”
Connect the dots: managing the fragmentation of global climate governance (2013, unknown): “…and policy development across certain types of technologies, such as the (now-defunct) Asia-Paciﬁc Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (APP) and the Renewable Energy and Energy Efﬁciency Partnership (REEEP) (van Asselt 2007; de Coninck et al. 2008; Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen and van Asselt 2009).”
The Effect of Local and Global Learning on the Cost of Renewable Energy in Developing Countries (2016, methodology): “Our quantitative approach and the focus on mitigation cost complements existing conceptual and qualitative work on the topic (Benioff et al., 2010; Bhasin, 2013; de Coninck et al., 2008; Ockwell and Mallett, 2012).”