Political Science > Environmental Policy

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Gregor Schwerhoff and Mouhamadou Sy
The 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference reinforced already existing pressure to transition away from fossil fuels, in particular for the most polluting source, coal. We use a comprehensive dataset on bank loans for coal projects to shed light on which type of banks continue to finance coal and how coal phase-out commitments affect coal financing. We find that coal financing is becoming increasingly concentrated, partly in banks with a very high coal exposure. We also find that many coal loans have maturities much shorter than the remaining lifetime of coal assets, thus exposing equity holders of coal assets to the risk of a more difficult loan rollover. An econometric analysis shows that countries with a strong commitment to coal phase-out, fixed in national law for example, receive less coal financing. Using an instrumental variable, we identify this effect as causal.
Jean-Marc Fournier, Tannous Kass-Hanna, Liam Masterson, Anne-Charlotte Paret, and Sneha D Thube
We quantify cross-border effects of the recent climate mitigation policies introduced in Canada and the U.S., using the global general equilibrium model IMF-ENV. Notably, with the substantial emission reductions from Canada’s carbon tax-led mitigation policies and the U.S.’ Inflation Reduction Act, these two countries would bridge two-thirds of the gap toward their Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) goals. While the broadly divergent policies are believed to elicit competitiveness concerns, we find the aggregate cross-border effects within North America to be very limited and restricted to the energy intensive and trade exposed industries. Potential carbon leakages are also found to be negligible. A more meaningful difference triggered by policy heterogeneity is rather domestic, especially with U.S. subsidies increasing energy output while the Canada model with a carbon tax would marginally decrease it. This analysis is complemented by a stylized model illustrating how such divergence can affect the terms of trade, but also how these effects can be countered by exchange rate flexibility, border adjustments or domestic taxation.