An international research team has unveiled the first comprehensive global evaluation of 1,500 climate policy measures from 41 countries across six continents.

The findings reveal a sobering reality: many policy measures have failed to achieve the necessary scale of emissions reductions.

Only 63 cases of successful climate policies, each leading to average emission reductions of 19%, were identified. The key characteristic of these successful cases is the inclusion of tax and price incentives in well-designed policy mixes.

“Our findings demonstrate that more policies do not necessarily equate to better outcomes. Instead, the right mix of measures is crucial. For example, subsidies or regulations alone are insufficient; only in combination with price-based instruments, such as carbon and energy taxes, can they deliver substantial emission reductions.”