Climate policy confidence indicator: final report to CCCEP

The CCCEP Policy Innovation fund supported a project to explore the feasibility and perceived usefulness of an indicator of confidence in climate change policies. This final report presents the analysis that was undertaken by the project team, the outcomes of a workshop, and highlights ongoing steps to further develop the work. A stakeholder workshop was held to inform the proposed indicator. This took place on November 18th 2015 at UCL (see the annexes for a list of participants, and for the slides presented at the workshop by the project team). Prior to the workshop, a discussion paper was developed and circulated to participants. This report first provides the background and rationale of the idea itself, and examines why an indicator of confidence in policy might be useful. Section 3 then examines key issues relating to the scope and focus of such an indicator, and illustrates the views of stakeholders that participated in the project workshop on these issues. Sections 4 and 5 examine existing attempts or methods for measuring confidence or policy uncertainty in climate and energy fields, and in other related fields, and draws lessons for how a better climate policy confidence indicator might be developed. A summary of the methodological options for developing an indicator is presented in section 6, while section 7 draws conclusions and highlights next steps. Throughout the report, the perspectives of stakeholders consulted during the workshop are provided in text boxes.