One month after the conclusion of COP28, we want to discuss the bottlenecks in international climate finance and their underlying root causes.

Scorching heatwaves, violent storms and dying ecosystems leave no room for delay in a green transition. Still, governments worldwide – including Germany – fall short of their climate pledges.

Technological innovation and better management can bring about growth that is both inclusive and compatible with efforts to address the world’s climate emergency. Ufuk Akcigit focuses on innovation and its various drivers, noting that making the biggest productivity gains requires radical changes in the way of working. He will talk about how green R&D incentives can complement tools such as carbon taxes to achieve a climate neutral industry much more rapidly and how well-designed interventions can help an economy grow.

The OECD will launch the analytical results of its Quantifying Industrial Strategies (QuIS) project. Based on a new methodological framework, this project inventories industrial policy expenditures, in a homogenous and harmonised manner. This has allowed for country-specific analysis and cross-country benchmarking, which the OECD will release publicly for this conference.

This presentation argues that reducing the costs of carbon-free technologies so that they become fully competitive with their high-carbon alternatives should be a primary objective of climate policy and that Science, Technology, Innovation and Industrial policies are critical to reaching this goal.

What are the tools that the ECB aims to use to tackle climate change? With leading experts in the field, we will discuss these questions and explore how the ECB could support green investments despite high inflation.

Fighting global warming and strategically restructuring our economic system requires a massive investment of financial capital. There is a huge “green investment gap”, and even in the case that enough financial capital is provided, in which form should this be done? In this webinar, we have invited leading experts to discuss how finance can best play its role in driving change and avoiding greenwashing. We will explore risk and asset pricing, time horizons and information, and what barriers to change exist.

The European Union has decided to become climate-neutral by 2050, which would make it the first climate-neutral continent in the world. However, the member states have different abilities to finance the public investments needed to fund this green transition. The pandemic has even increased these differences. The big question looming over the Union’s plans is: who will pay for it, and how?

In part 6 of our series of events on green growth and degrowth, we discuss the role of creative destruction for greening growth, and whether slowing growth can also help mitigate climate change.

In 2019, the European Commission launched the “European Green Deal”, a comprehensive policy package aimed at achieving “no net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050”. The Green Deal openly advocates for green growth: “Europe’s new growth strategy” claims that it will be possible to decouple “economic growth […] from resource use”. Of course, this is not without criticism from green-growth sceptics. In part 5 of our event series on green growth and degrowth, we want to discuss how bold and future-proof Europe’s Green Deal really is. Is the European Green Deal as ambitious as it claims and enough to keep the EU within the limits of the Paris climate agreement? Or does it perpetuate ideas responsible for climate change in the first place?

Decarbonizing the economy is necessary to reach the Paris Climate goals. While regulatory incentives like a price for C02 come to everyone’s mind fast, many do not think about the actual work, which businesses have to do to become carbon neutral. How can we create sustainable businesses by reducing C02 emissions? What can businesses already do in the current political environment to become more sustainable? What regulatory changes are needed for a co-existence of businesses with the environment?

How can we decarbonize our economy? The first two events of this series explored diverse ideas and approaches for tackling this question, ranging from Green to Post- to Degrowth. This third event brings them together to establish commonalities and differences, clarify misunderstandings, and to start building bridges for the fight against climate change and the shared goal: paving the way toward a truly sustainable future. After all, whether Green, Post-, or Degrowth, they all aspire toward this same goal and a good life for all. The urgency and dimension of the task at hand calls for overcoming differences and joining forces, wherever possible. There is no time to waste!

How can we decarbonize our economy? Proponents of Postgrowth and Degrowth approaches argue that it will not be possible to decouple economic growth from ecological impacts. Contrary to the logic of Green Growth, they call for abandoning the political fixation on GDP growth and propose alternative economic models for a sustainable future economy. In this second event, we give the floor to leading experts from Postgrowth and Degrowth economics, to present different concepts from this vibrant scholarly field.

How can we decarbonize our economy? This is the question we discuss with our guests. The kick-off event opens the first part of the series. Academic proponents of Green Growth will present their arguments and ideas for what they believe is needed to make developed economies green. It is about the narrative of climate-sensitive transition based on green innovation, sustainable investments, decarbonization, and the academic research behind it.