Climate policy integration beyond principled priority: a framework for analysis

Countries aiming to achieve ambitious international and national climate objectives need to integrate climate considerations into all sectoral policies. This contribution argues that since climate change is a diffuse and complex challenge, Climate Policy Integration cannot simply be modeled after the well-established principled priority of Environmental Policy Integration but requires a separate analytical framework. It distinguishes four levels of Climate Policy Integration: the EU strategic level, the EU policy-design level, the national strategy-setting and the national implementation level. Options available on the EU policy-design level are traditional single-purpose climate policies and Climate Policy Integration. Type-1 Climate Policy Integration refers to policy areas with inherent co-benefits for climate action such as renewable energy policy, while the mainstreaming approach (type-2) requires incentives or conditionalities such as regulatory support as policies have no inherent co-benefits. A case study on the German climate strategy illustrates Climate Policy Integration on the national strategy-setting level.