Abstract:Increasing material use efficiency is important to mitigate future supply risks and minimize environmental impacts associated with the production of the materials. The policy mix presented in this paper aims to contribute to reducing the use of virgin metals in the EU by 80% by 2050 without significant shifting of burdens to other material resources, environmental impacts, or parts of the world. We used a heuristic framework and a systems perspective for designing the policy mix that combines primary instruments designed to increase material efficiency, recycling and substitution of materials (a materials tax, the extended producer responsibility, technical regulations, and environmental taxes) and supportive instruments aimed to reduce barriers to implementing the primary instruments and to contribute towards the policy objectives (e.g., research and development support, and advanced recycling centers). Furthermore, instruments were designed so as to increase political feasibility: e.g., taxes were gradually increased as part of a green fiscal reform, and border-tax adjustments were introduced to reduce impacts on competitiveness. However, even in such a policy mix design ongoing ex-ante assessments indicate that the policy mix will be politically difficult to implement-and also fall short of achieving the 80% reduction target. Nonetheless, we suggest combining primary and supportive instruments into coherent and dynamic policy mixes as a promising step towards system reconfigurations for sustainability.

Decarbonisation of energy systems requires deep structural change. The purpose of this research was to analyse the rates of change taking place in the energy systems of each Member State of the European Union (EU), and the EU in aggregate, in the light of the EU's climate change mitigation objectives. Trends on indicators such as sectoral activity levels and composition, energy intensity, and carbon intensity of energy were compared with decadal benchmarks derived from deep decarbonisation scenarios. The methodology applied provides a useful and informative approach to tracking decarbonisation of energy systems. The results show that while the EU has made significant progress in decarbonising its energy system. On a number of indicators assessed the results show that a significant acceleration from historical levels is required in order to reach the rates of change seen on the future benchmarks for deep decarbonisation. The methodology applied provides an example of how the research community and international organisations could complement the transparency mechanism developed by the Paris Agreement on climate change, to improve understanding of progress toward low-carbon energy systems.

This paper explores climate-friendly projects that could be part of the COVID-19 recovery while jump-starting the transition of the European basic materials industry. Findings from a literature review on technology options in advanced development stages for climate-friendly production, enhanced sorting, and recycling of steel, cement, aluminium, and plastics, are combined with insights from interviews with 31 European stakeholders in these sectors about the practical and economic feasibility of these technology options. Results indicate that with an estimated investment of 28.9 billion Euros, up to 20% of EU's basic materials could be produced through low-emission processes or additional recycling by 2025 with technologies that are commercially available or at pilot scale today. However, our stakeholder consultation also shows that in order to make these short-term investments viable, six main barriers need to be addressed, namely: (i) the lack of effective and predictable carbon pricing, (ii) the limited availability of affordable green electricity, (iii) the lack of a regulatory framework for circularity, (iv) low technology market readiness and funding, (v) the lack of infrastructure for hydrogen, CO 2 and power, and (vi) the lack of demand for climate-friendly and recycled materials. Based on these insights, the paper proposes elements of a policy package that can create a framework favourable for investments in these technologies; these policies should ideally accompany the recovery package to give credibility to investors that the business case will last beyond the recovery period. Key policy insights:. Technologies for climate-friendly materials production, sorting and recycling can be supported as part of the recovery package but require an enabling policy framework.

Economic systems are connected to the natural environment through a continuous flow of energy and materials. The production of economic wealth implies the use of natural resources and their transformation into goods (bound to become, at least partially, waste in the future), current waste (pollution) and low-valued energy (entropy). The scarcity of natural resources and the negative externalities arising from their use throughout the entire value chain are quite natural motivations for the current policy push towards a more dematerialized and a more circular economy. In this perspective, the EU seems to be approaching a new frontier in environmental policy. The main contribution of this paper is a qualitative assessment of a coordinated set of dematerialization policies, which aim at fostering the socially efficient use (and re-use) of virgin materials at firm level. The policy mix we propose envisages a green tax reform (GTR) with a material tax, which aims at shifting relative input prices in favour of labour and capital, and a policy of funding research and development activities in the area of resource efficiency. In order to support firms in their transition to higher material efficiency, we foresee targeted skill enhancement programmes. Finally, to prevent firms to shift towards less material-intensive production, potentially leading to lower output quality, we complete the policy mix with specific command-and-control measures, aiming at setting minimum quality standards for selected product categories. The qualitative assessment of this mix of policies relies on the four basic criteria of the economic policy analysis (effectiveness, efficiency, equity and feasibility). Since the EU is deeply integrated in the world economy, and it is a net importer of virgin resources, our policy evaluation necessarily takes an open-economy perspective. In this vein, the paper reviews the state of affairs of the major world countries (USA, Japan and China in particular) on this issue, and contextualizes the EU action in a global perspective.

Abstract:Increasing material use efficiency is important to mitigate future supply risks and minimize environmental impacts associated with the production of the materials. The policy mix presented in this paper aims to reduce the use of virgin metals in the EU by 80% by 2050.We used a heuristic framework and a systems perspective for designing the policy mix that combines primary instruments (aimed to achieve the 80% reduction target -e.g. a materials tax, technical regulations and removal of environmentally harmful subsidies) and supportive instruments (aimed to reduce barriers to implementing the primary instruments and to contribute towards the policy objectives -e.g. research & development support, and advanced recycling centers).Furthermore, instruments were designed so as to increase political feasibility: e.g. taxes were gradually increased as part of a green fiscal reform, and border-tax adjustments were introduced to reduce impacts on competitiveness. However, even in such a policy mix design ongoing ex-ante assessments indicate that the policy mix will be politically difficult to implement -and also fall short of achieving the 80% reduction target. Nonetheless, we suggest combining primary and supportive instruments into coherent and dynamic policy mixes as a promising step towards system reconfigurations for sustainability.