New Climate Economy – unlocking the inclusive growth story of the 21st Century

We provided empirical inputs to the New Climate Economy 2018 Global Commission Report “Unlocking the Inclusive Growth Story of the 21st Century”.

The aim of the modelling exercise was to illustrate examples of policies that can simultaneously promote economic growth and reduce the risks of climate change.

Various policies were assessed during the project using Cambridge Econometrics’ macroeconomic modelling approach that identifies both potential emission reductions and impacts on the wider economy.

Aside from levels of GDP and CO₂ emissions, key outputs from the analysis include labour market impacts, distributional impacts (for some regions where data are available), and other environmental impacts such as changes in air quality and health impacts.

The study finds that ambitious action across key economic systems – energy, cities, food and land use, water, and industry – could:

• Generate over 65 million new low-carbon jobs in 2030, equivalent to the entire workforces of the UK and Egypt today combined
• Avoid over 700,000 premature deaths from air pollution compared with business-as-usual in 2030
• Subsidy reform and carbon pricing alone could generate an estimated US$2.8 trillion in government revenues per year in 2030 – equivalent to the total GDP of India today – funds that can be used to invest in urgent public priorities

For the full report please see New Climate Economy.

The technical report will be available for download soon.

To find out more about the modelling used in the report please contact Dora Fazekas.