Many well-intended climate-energy strategies are ineffective in the absence of serious environmental regulation. This holds, among others, for direct support of clean energy, voluntary energy conservation, technical standards on a limited set of products, unilateral stringent carbon pricing, and awaiting peak oil as a climate strategy. All of these suffer from "escape routes" that indirectly increase CO 2 emissions and thus make the original strategy ineffective. On the other hand, environmental regulation alone may lead to a myopia-bias, stimulating early dominance of cost-effective technologies and a focus on incremental innovations associated with such technologies rather than on radical innovations. Although adopting a partial viewpoint keeps the analysis simple, we urgently need a more inclusive systems perspective on climate solutions. This will allow the formulation of an effective climate policy package that addresses the various escape routes. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.
CITATION STYLE
van den Bergh, J. C. J. M. (2012). Effective climate-energy solutions, escape routes and peak oil. Energy Policy, 46, 530–536. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2012.04.022
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