Publications

In recent years, financial regulators have encouraged financial actors to take account of “climate risks” in order to ensure both financial stability and the efficient functioning of markets, the two traditional objectives of regulation. This risk-based approach is an important first step, but will it be enough to deliver on climate objectives?

In recent years, financial regulators have encouraged financial actors to take account of “climate risks” in order to ensure both financial stability and the efficient functioning of markets, the two traditional objectives of regulation. This risk-based approach is an important first step, but will it be enough to deliver on climate objectives?

In this op-ed published in a French economic newspaper, Benoit Leguet, director of I4CE, considers that the French Government must plan over the long term the necessary financing for climate change mitigation and adaptation, by instituting a public finance programming law for climate. France has set itself climate objectives, it must clarify what means it will devote to them.

As part of the EUKI-supported project “Landscape of climate finance: Mainstreaming climate finance in the CEE region”, I4CE supported the Polish think-tank Wise Europa in the elaboration of a Landscape of climate finance in the sector of energy retrofitting of existing buildings in Poland.

I4CE and its partners make available, free of charge, to interested local authorities a methodology to evaluate local budget under the prism of climate issues. It is a transposition of Green Budgeting approaches, such as the one carried out on national French budget, to the budgets of local authorities.

While France must adapt to the unavoidable consequences of climate disruption, it is necessary to monitor the financial resources that the State devotes to it. However, as the Senate's Foresight Delegation pointed out in 2019, the issue of financing adaptation is characterised by a lack of clarity on the level of needs and the amounts allocated.

Climate Action and Sustainable Development are two parts of the same challenge and must be addressed together. Both adopted in 2015, the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development frame a set of global objectives that are deeply connected.

The public institutions that regulate and supervise private finance will talk a lot about climate change in the coming months. The European taxonomy that allows economic actors to identify activities that are favorable to ecological transition or the "climate stress tests" of the Banque de France and ACPR are just some of the issues they will have to deal with and that we invite you to follow. I4CE has synthesized for you the "climate calendar" of financial regulation in a graphics.

A few days after the publication of France's 2021 budget bill, and before any debates in parliament, the government released an environmental assessment of it. This assessment, often referred to as the "green budget", is an important step forward for the transparency of public action, according to Marion Fetet and Sébastien Postic from I4CE. Nevertheless, they suggest improvements to be made to the scope of the budget analyzed or to the classification of certain expenditures. And they call for making the green budget a real tool for greening the budget.

Few green budgeting initiatives have led to concrete reforms or revisions of priority investments. How can we move from simple theoretical exercises to concrete action for the environment? This is the question asked by Sébastien Postic of I4CE, Oskar Lecuyer of AFD and Jennifer Doherty-Bigara of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

2 billion euros: this is the amount that the French government will bet on hydrogen until 2022 as part of its recovery plan. An amount that will increase to reach 5.7 billion by 2030. I4CE invited researchers Jean-Pierre Ponssard from Polytechnique/CNRS and Guy Meunier from INRAE, both members of the Energy & Prosperity Chair, to analyze France's "hydrogen plan".

The French government has just officially unveiled the content of its €100 billion recovery plan, part of which is dedicated to the fight against climate change.

Foreword from Pierre DUCRET, Chair ...

An international consortium of 14  expert organisations, including I4CE, has launched the "Energy Policy Tracker" website to track Covid-19 recovery packages from a climate and energy perspective. Initial results show that until now, G20 countries have granted much more aid to fossil fuels than to clean energies. What about France? Louise Kessler, Director of I4CE's Economics Programme, looks back at the government policies already adopted in France as well as those that are still at the announcement stage.

Decisions taken in response to the COVID-19 crisis today will lock in the world’s development patterns for decades. With policy decisions made on a daily basis, information about how public money is being spent can be hard to follow. That is why a consortium of 14 expert organizations came together to track energy-specific responses by G20 governments.

To accelerate and deepen this work, the new European Commission will adopt a renewed Sustainable Finance Strategy.  As the public consultation to define the future directions of this strategy draws to a close, Julie Evain from I4CE points out three challenges to be met in order to integrate climate issues into the financial sector.

Ian Cochran and Alice Pauthier explain why even with COVID19, public financial institutions (PFIs) must continue their important work on aligning their activities with climate and sustainability goals – and how their progress may be key to ensuring that the response to the crisis is both just and green.

One of the main elements of the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for the 2021-2027 exercise is the shift of part of the funding towards an obligation to achieve environmental results. Is that an expensive development? Environmentally effective? In order to answer these questions, this I4CE study analyses numerous mechanisms, more or less oriented towards performance obligation.

In spite of its "greening" during the previous programming period, the Common Agricultural Policy has had very little impact on greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector, even though they must be halved by 2050. And the CAP's two flagship instruments on environmental issues - green payments under the first pillar, and agri-environmental and climate measures (AECM) under the second - have come in for strong criticism.

The pandemic caused by Covid 19 has triggered a major economic crisis. The emergency treatment of this crisis relied heavily on massive recourse to fiscal and monetary instruments already widely used during the 2008 crisis. But financial regulation was also mobilized to ease or alleviate prudential constraints in order to preserve bank financing for economic players, especially those most affected by the crisis. This illustrates the different facets of the use of financial regulation: primarily intended to ensure the efficient functioning of financial markets and financial stability, it can also be used with economic policy objectives.