Publications

Betz, R., Michaelowa, A., Castro, P., Kotsch, R., Mehling, M., Michaelowa, K., & Baranzini, A. (2022). The Carbon Market Challenge: Preventing Abuse Through Effective Governance (Elements in Earth System Governance). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009216500

Fankhauser, Kotsch, Srivastav. (2020). The readiness of industry for a transformative recovery from COVID 19. Global Sustainability, 3, E37. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2020.29

Many countries are committed to emerge from COVID 19 on a more sustainable environmental footing. Here we explore what such a structurally transformative recovery would mean for the manufacturing sector of 14 major economies. We find that all countries have zero-carbon growth opportunities post-COVID and comparative advantages in some sectors, but industrialised countries and the East Asian economies, especially South Korea, appear best positioned, thanks a push in low-carbon innovation that predates the pandemic.

McCoy, Kotsch (2021). Quantifying the distributional impact of energy efficiency measures. The Energy Journal, 42 (6). doi: https://doi.org/10.5547/01956574.42.6.dmcc

The distributional impact of the low-carbon transition is an increasingly important topic both for academics and policymakers. Quantifying where the costs and benefits fall can provide greater insight into the equity and cost-effectiveness of government policies, and improve our understanding of household investment decisions. This paper provides new evidence on the distribution of returns from energy efficiency measures both over time and across household-type. A range of econometric techniques are applied to a database of over four million households over an eight year period to quantify heterogeneity, persistence and how these factors impact the relative cost-effectiveness of measures. Results suggest that more deprived households experience lower energy savings, the difference persists over time, and that significantly heterogeneity may be present across levels of deprivation and income deciles that can not be explained by differences in baseline consumption. Measures have been largely cost-effective but savings are much lower than previous policy evaluations using ex-ante estimates would suggest.