There is a growing wave of concern for the embodied carbon in traded goods. One manifestation of that concern is large economies such as the USA and the European Union enacting climate-related trade measures, including border carbon adjustment. This paper reviews more than ten climate-related...

There is a growing wave of concern for the embodied carbon in traded goods. One manifestation of that concern is large economies such as the USA and the European Union enacting climate-related trade measures, including border carbon adjustment. This paper reviews more than ten climate-related...

Canada-Renewable Energy presented the WTO Panel and Appellate Body (AB) with a novel Number: at the heart of the dispute was a measure adopted by the province of Ontario whereby producers of renewable energy would be paid a premium relative to conventional power producers. Some WTO Members...

In response to concerns voiced over the trade and competitiveness impact of a range of measures governments might employ in pursuit of the ‘green economy’, this analysis finds the majority domestically focused, with no significant impact on imports or exports, some with potentially positive...

This address to UNCTAD's 49th Trade and Development Board explores what Rio 20 failed to do: move us toward international consensus on what is appropriate state behavior in the pursuit of a green economy. We have a panoply of unilateral measures employed to capture both environmental and...

The EU is considering implementing a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism. To inform the policy decision, we assess eight energy-intensive trade-exposed sectors in depth to distill what their characteristics imply for the shape of an ideal mechanism. The results highlight the difficulty of finding...

This brief aims to highlight some of the difficulties involved in elaborating a working border carbon adjustment (BCA) regime. It demonstrates both the tensions between the various possible BCA objectives and the necessarily imperfect options that are available for bridging the tension between...

One of the key threads in the UNFCCC discussions has been reducing the negative impacts of the implementation of response measures. This paper explores how that might be accomplished by means of trade-related economic diversification policies. It explores the new realities of trade distributed...

An important element of the comprehensive suite of climate and environmental policies advanced under the “European Green Deal” (EGD) is the “Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism” (CBAM). CBAM is a policy safeguard against emissions leakage, that is, the relocation of emitting activities...