Your intrepid hosts take on two papers – including William Nordhaus' 'Climate Clubs: Overcoming Free-riding in International Climate Policy' – that consider whether climate clubs are our best hope to supercharge global climate action.
Your intrepid hosts start this week’s rollicking rollercoaster by recounting the annual rending of clothes and gnashing of teeth that arises from AEMO’s Gas Statement of Opportunities, affectionately(?) known as the GSOO! How worried should we be about the market operator’s forecast on next year’s demand and longer term outlook on the supply of fossil gas? You may be shocked that there were differing perspectives out there in energy land (including some very sensible suggestions from friend of the pod Tristan Edis)!
A shout out to Thomas Longden, one of the authors of last pod’s paper on hydrogen production emissions and costs, who reached out to us - Hi! - and pointed us in the direction of a handy explainer they’d written up on the paper in The Conversation. Well worth a read, however this plug should not be taken as encouragement for Summeruperers to defect from the pod and seek other handy explainers!
Speaking of defectors, you wouldn’t be doing too great in the world of Bill’s Angels if the Norhausian thesis on climate clubs had made its way to the climate zeitgeist. We are indeed speaking of the eminent, illustrious, notorious economist and father of integrated assessment models (yep those pesky IAMs), William Nordhaus, whose 2015 paper Climate Clubs: Overcoming Free-riding in International Climate Policy your intrepid hosts tackle this week. Luke and Frankie sleep-walked into Tennant’s trap on this one, as well as another, far more sensible, paper on climate clubs, Climate clubs: politically feasible and desirable? written by Robert Falkner, Naghmeh Nasiritousix and Gunilla Reischl. And because we really are that tragic we also unpack the G7’s recent announcement of a climate club, its terms of reference and our best feelpinions on how that might go!
Frankie’s One More Thing is a neat bit of analysis from the IEA on the record fall in fossil gas demand in Europe in 2022. Weather, renewables growth, electrification and behaviour change all get a guernsey!
Luke’s One More Thing is the EU parliament’s recent passing of an amendment to the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive to up the ante on renovation rates and performance of the EU’s poorer performing building stock. Woot! Off to trilogues it goes, however not without some controversy in the form of a carve out for ‘renewable gas-ready’ boilers.
Tennant’s One More Thing is the Productivity Commission’s 5-year Productivity Inquiry report, Advancing Prosperity. Or more specifically, volume 6 of this 1,000 page monster, Managing the climate transition. Expand the Safeguard? Rubbish other policies? Tennant has thoughts!
And that’s all from us this week Summerupperers! We shall see you next time and until then, please keep tweeting your thoughts to us at @LukeMenzel, @TennantReed and @FrankieMuskovic and if you would like to weave some golden threads through our back catalogue, give us your feelpinions or suggest papers to read we are always here for that - hit us up at mailbag@letmesumup.net.