In the aftermath of the coronavirus crisis, governments must react to rising budget deficits and the need to stimulate damaged economies. At the same time, they need to make “finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development” as set out in Article 2.1.c of the Paris Agreement on climate change. Fossil fuel subsidy (FFS) reform and carbon pricing—putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions through taxation or carbon markets—can both contribute to an overall signal to the market. This webinar will discuss how carbon pricing and subsidy reform can contribute to post-pandemic recovery stimulus measures.

As part of the webinar, we will present findings of the IISD working paper Cutting Emissions for a Post-Pandemic World: Fossil Fuel Subsidy Reform and Carbon Pricing. This study finds that governments continue to simultaneously apply taxes, subsidies, and carbon markets to many sectors of the economy, often for historical, institutional or political reasons. Given their coexistence it is necessary to consider the aggregate effects of these tools and the overall impact of these instruments on financial flows and broader governmental targets. As the world recovers from the COVID-19 crisis and deploys stimulus measures that will shape the economy over the coming decades, understanding these aggregate effects becomes even more crucial. 

Agenda and Speakers

Opening remarks
Jan Wahlberg, Finland’s Ambassador for Climate Change, Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland

Subsidies and carbon pricing: two tools for cutting emissions and sending a strong carbon mitigation signal
Ivetta Gerasimchuk, IISD Senior Policy Advisor
 
Fossil fuel subsidies as a negative carbon price
Andrea Bassi, IISD Senior Associate, Founder and CEO of KnowlEdge SRL, Extraordinary Associate Professor of System Dynamics at Stellenbosch University

Effective carbon pricing post-COVID-19
Jonas Teusch, Economist, OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration

2020 update the Global Carbon Accounts
Sébastien Postic, Institute for Climate Economics, Project Manager—Industry, Energy and Climate

Discussion with panelists
Speakers and Susanne Dröge

Questions from the audience
 

Practical information

Wednesday, May 20 | 8:00 GMT

via Zoom
 

Registration

Please register here

This webinar is initiated by the the Friends of Fossil Fuel Subsidy Reform (FFFsR). The FFFsR is an informal group of non-G20 countries aiming to build political consensus on the importance of fossil fuel subsidy reform.