High-Level Commission on Carbon Prices
At the invitation of Ségolène Royal (former Co-Chair) and Feike Sijbesma, current Co-Chair of the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition (CPLC) High Level Assembly, Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate in Economics, and Lord Nicholas Stern, have accepted to chair a new High-Level Commission on Carbon Prices comprising economists, climate change and energy specialists from all over the world, that will help spur successful implementation of the Paris Agreement. The Commission will be supported by the CPLC, an initiative supported by the World Bank Group.
The Commission’s objective is to identify indicative corridors of carbon prices which can be used to guide the design of carbon pricing instruments and other climate policies, regulations, and measures to incentivize bold climate action and stimulate learning and innovation to deliver on the ambition of the Paris Agreement and support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Such price corridors may differ by sector and jurisdiction and will be adjusted over time as we learn more about climate change and the effectiveness and costs of different measures and technologies to tackle it. As part of its deliberations the Commission will also consider, the “social cost of carbon” – representing the environmental, health, economic, and social damages to the world from carbon pollution.
Defining such corridors could have a strong political and policy impact, contribute to a vision of how we can rapidly de-carbonize our economies while meeting the Sustainable Development Goals, and be used to:
incentivize learning, research and developments, innovation
foster rapid economic transition
assess and prioritize investments in infrastructure and other projects
channel finance toward low-carbon development projects
disclose true economic costs of, and discourage, carbon-intensive projects (and in some cases other negative externalities such as air pollution and congestion)
design interrelated climate policies and regulations, and carbon pricing instruments.
The work of the Commission will build on work that has already been done by other stakeholders on carbon pricing and climate policies.
