The need for urgent climate action and energy transformation away from fossil fuels is widely acknowledged. Yet, current country plans for emission reductions do not reach the requirements to contain global warming under 2°C. What is worse, there is even reasonable doubt about the commitment to said plans given recent history and existing future investment plans into fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure development. This policy brief shortly summarizes the presentations and discussions at the SITE Development Day Conference, held on December 8, 2021, focusing on climate change policies and the challenge of a green energy transition in Eastern Europe.

This year’s SITE Development Day conference will focus on environmental policy in Eastern Europe, with a particular emphasis on global warming, energy transformation, and energy security.

Policy brief: Changes in individual behavior are an essential component of the planet’s effort to reduce carbon emissions. But such changes would not be possible without individuals acknowledging the threat of anthropogenic climate change. This brief discusses the climate change risk perceptions across Europe.

Policy brief: A common presumption in economics is that a carbon tax is regressive – that the tax disproportionately burdens low-income households. However, this presumption originates from early research on carbon taxes that used US data, and little is known about the factors that determine the level of regressivity of carbon taxation across countries.

Policy brief: As the dramatic consequences of climate change are starting to unfold, addressing the intermittency of low-carbon energy sources, such as solar and wind, is crucial. The obvious solution to intermittency is energy storage. However, its constraints and implications are far from trivial. Developing and facilitating energy storage is associated with technological difficulties as well as economic and regulatory problems that need to be addressed to spur investments and foster competition. With these issues in mind, the annual Energy Talk, organized by the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics, invited three experts to discuss the challenges and opportunities of energy storage.

Working paper: Can we improve the potential for information to induce individual climate-change curbing action by focusing on individual types? In this paper Maria Perrotta Berlin, Assistant Professor at SITE, and her co-author try to contribute to the understanding of the persistence and increase of meat eating in the face of mounting evidence on the ills of meat production and consumption by considering the role of selective attention and learning.

Today’s international markets are saturated with overwhelming concerns about issues related to the environment, specifically with issues related to how business intersects with environmental conservation. Consumers are becoming more and more prone to purchase products that consider the environment and sustainability, and they are more willing to pay the premium price tag that comes along with supporting those sustainability efforts. This growing concern has inspired manufacturing firms to develop more effective environmental management practices as they innovate newer and better products.

This year’s SITE Energy Talks – Energy Demand Management: Insights from Behavioral Economics, was devoted to discussing how consumers make energy efficiency decisions and what incentives can be used to change consumer behaviour.

Thomas Sterner, Professor of Environmental Economics at the University of Gothenburg, gave a presentation on technological development, geopolitical and environmental issues in our energy future at SITE Energy Talks, concerning the rapidly increasing level of carbon content, new technological development, the impact of low oil prices and the most promising ways to stop emissions.

On November 5 Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics (SITE) hosted 9th Energy Day - Economic Impacts of Oil Price Fluctuations. Conference presentations on the volatility of oil price forecasts, oil price fluctuations, new climate economy and other topics have been published for everyone interested in the energy field.