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.

On Friday, October 15, 2021, in connection with the Ministerial meetings of the Swedish-Russian Steering Committee, the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE), the Russian Trade representation and Östkontoret hosted a high-level event on Circular Economy and Innovation. The discussion was introduced by Swedish Minister Anna Hallberg and Russian Minister Denis Manturov who then engaged in a panel discussion with distinguished representatives from leading Swedish and Russian companies.

In connection with the Ministerial meetings of the Swedish-Russian Steering Committee, Anna Hallberg, Swedish Minister for Foreign Trade and Nordic Affairs and Denis Manturov, Minister of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation will introduce a discussion on Circular Economy and Innovation on Friday, October 15 at 14.00.

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.

Working paper: This paper studies the use of financial contracts as bid-coordinating device in multi-unit uniform price auctions.

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.

By Torbjörn Becker and Anders Olofsgård, SITE Working Paper