About Us
Climate Strategies is an international organisation that convenes networks of leading academic experts around specific climate change policy challenges. From this it offers rigorous, independent research to governments and the full range of stakeholders, in Europe and beyond.
Our mission is to assist governments in solving the collective action problem of climate change. We aim to connect leading applied research on international climate change issues to the policy process and public debate, raising the quality and coherence of advice provided on policy formation. To effectively communicate insights into climate change policy, Climate Strategies works with decision-makers in governments and business, particularly, but not restricted to, the countries of the European Union and EU institutions.
A bridge between the research sector and applied policy analysis, Climate Strategies acts in ways that can help governments to manage the complexities both of assessing the options, and of securing a degree of international and stakeholder/public consensus around them. Our core capacity is therefore to convene projects and give them impact in the international and business communities.
Established in April 2006 by 6 leading climate policy researchers, as a network organisation, our structure is unique, in that it will not produce consultancy reports to government or business. Rather, in consultation with a range of stakeholders, it brings together established independent experts to help focus their knowledge on particular dimensions of the international climate change problem. This flexible structure - not relying on full time in-house researchers but rather convening established researchers from different institutions to address specific applied questions - means that Climate Strategies can deliver fruits of extensive academically-based research across a wide range of topics, much faster than with normal academic research cycles. In this way our research achieves far greater impact than is normal with academic research, or indeed consultancy. Its quality control and review procedures, public orientation, and multi-domestic base derived from working with institutions in many different countries, gives us greater intellectual objectivity and political credibility at an international level.
Climate Strategies to date
In its rapid development since 2006, Climate Strategies has already made significant impact on the development of international policy responses to climate change. Our work on allocation issues in the EU ETS, informed by our unique blend of internationally networked research engaging with relevant decision processes, provided crucial input to the EC decisions on Phase II allocation.
Our 2007 research projects provided important input to both the design proposals for the post 2012 EU ETS, the wider debate about competitiveness and carbon leakage and our assessment of the international Kyoto project mechanisms.
Our long-standing engagement with the EU ETS culminated with both internal distribution and wide press coverage of our report on ‘Role of Auctioning’ of emissions allowances in October 2008, the day before the EU Parliamentary Committee voted in support of the EU post-2012 package. Other key outputs on the Global Carbon Mechanisms and South-North cooperation were published in the run-up to and at the Poznan COP. Input to the Beijing Conference on Climate and Technology Transfer, and a post-Poznan meeting co-hosted by the Japanese Ambassador at the Embassy in London in December 2008 marked Climate Strategies’ expanding work beyond the EU’s borders in support of the international negotiations.
During 2009 we continued to produce world-class academic research that made impact with policy makers and our growing relevance to policy makers was illustrated through increased international government funding. Key highlights and achievements for Climate Strategies in 2009 included finalising key research on CDM Post 2012, Linking of Emissions Trading Schemes, Tackling Leakage and International Support for Domestic Action; acknowledgement for our contribution to the UK Government’s ‘Global Carbon Trading’ report in July 2009, and the synthesis of our European-based research into the widely-publicised report ‘Climate Policy and Industrial Competitiveness: Ten insights from Europe on the EU Emissions Trading System’, published by the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
In the post-Copenhagen landscape, Climate Strategies has a busy and expanding agenda for 2010. Our current work programme includes a broad-based analytical project on Competitiveness and Leakage issues, the continuation of the major ‘Sectoral Approaches’ project and continued work on ‘Climate Innovation Centres’ – a project being led out of India with global contributions, which promises to yield some fascinating results with outputs due this year. Other projects for 2010 include projects on ‘Carbon pricing for low-carbon investment’, ‘Analytic Support for Target-Based Negotiations’ (working with Project Catalyst and others), work on the ‘Institutional framework of global carbon markets’ and a big study on the ‘Decarbonisation of the European power sector’. We are also hoping to cover more financing-related issues in 2010.
