IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/envlaw/v34y2022i1p25-52..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Carbon Border Adjustment Measures: A Straightforward Multi-Purpose Climate Change Instrument?

Author

Listed:
  • Alice Pirlot

Abstract

Carbon border adjustment measures (CBAMs) are instruments that can be used to mitigate climate change, but also have a positive impact on trade, climate leadership and even public finance. In this article, I challenge the view that they can serve as straightforward multi-purpose instruments. In a first step, I analyse each of the purposes that can be achieved through CBAMs and explain their underlying differences. In a second step, I discuss their legal design and explain how CBAMs’ design features affect the types of purposes that they can achieve. I apply this two-step analytical framework to the European Union context, where a proposal for a regulation establishing a CBAM has been published by the European Commission in July 2021. I demonstrate that the design of the EU CBAM is inconsistent with the Commission’s main objectives of promoting fair competition and climate mitigation in line with the Paris Agreement. The EU CBAM proposal is primarily an instrument of climate leadership.

Suggested Citation

  • Alice Pirlot, 2022. "Carbon Border Adjustment Measures: A Straightforward Multi-Purpose Climate Change Instrument?," Journal of Environmental Law, Oxford University Press, vol. 34(1), pages 25-52.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:envlaw:v:34:y:2022:i:1:p:25-52.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jel/eqab028
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michael A Mehling & Geoffroy Dolphin & Robert A Ritz, 2024. "The European Union's CBAM: averting emissions leakage or promoting the diffusion of carbon pricing?," Working Papers EPRG2416, Energy Policy Research Group, Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.
    2. repec:ags:aaea22:335697 is not listed on IDEAS

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:envlaw:v:34:y:2022:i:1:p:25-52.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/jel .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.