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Research project

EIB Climate Chair - EIB Chair on Climate Change Policy and International Carbon Markets

Promoting the transmission of the best climate policy practices through research, teaching and dissemination.

The EIB Climate Chair has received funding from the European Investment Bank.

The EIB Climate Chair serves as a vector for the transmission of best climate policy practices across the world. Given the Paris Agreement’s voluntarist approach, international collaboration will be at the heart of efforts to maximise effect on the one hand and implement a just transition on the other.

Professor Jos Delbeke, PhD in Economics (KU Leuven, Belgium) and former founding Director-General for Climate Action at the European Commission from 2010 until 2018, who is currently responsible for coordinating teaching, training and research activities on climate policy at the STG, was appointed as the EIB Climate Chair in September 2020.


Research pillars

The EIB Chair focusses on effective climate policy design and is built around the following three pillars:

  • Carbon-pricing policies: economists and most businesses recommend using economic instruments to internalise negative externalities in a cost-effective manner. Market-based approaches have become a key element in a wider policy mix, either in the form of taxation, emissions trading, or offsetting emissions. Energy is a key sector. The EU has been at the forefront of energy market reform and has many good and less good examples. Carbon pricing works best in combination with a functioning energy market so as to unleash competition between various low-carbon solutions.
  • Sustainable Finance: the low-carbon transition requires massive investments in new low-carbon equipment. This requires smooth access to large sources of finance to create ‘new’ growth, ‘new’ jobs, ‘new’ markets. Sustainable Finance is dealing with the question of how to redirect financial flows towards climate change and environmental sustainability objectives, on the one hand, while ensuring the long-term resilience of the financial sector on the other.
  • Technological Innovation: technology is needed to significantly reduce emissions from all sectors including from energy intensive industry. Bringing innovative technologies to the market is about much more than R&D activities. It is also about managing political, economic, technological, and financial risk when creating markets for cleaner products and production processes. The current frontier in climate policy is a low-carbon strategy for materials including steel, cement, chemicals, non-ferrous metals, or bio-economy products.

Guiding Principles

Cost-effectiveness: keeping compliance costs down is important both in view of minimising societal and economic disruption but also with a view to maximising emissions reductions.
Distributional issues: the low-carbon transition will have important distributive effects either on income or on shifts in the labour market. These may have a pronounced regional character (e.g., in regions dependent on coal, cars or carbon-intensive industrial clusters). Ensuring a “Just Transition” is becoming a major political issue inside the EU and also worldwide.

Book cover for: Five reflections on clean hydrogen’s contribution to European industrial decarbonisation from 2024 to 2030

Five reflections on clean hydrogen’s contribution to European industrial decarbonisation from 2024 to 2030

After years of record announcements, frantic policy development and the establishment of substantial public support mechanisms, the clean hydrogen sector is nearing an inflexion point. Many clean hydrogen projects have reached the technical feasibility stage, with a global pipeline of clean hydrogen projects totalling nearly 25 million tonnes (Mt) of production by 2030, much of which is in Europe. However, only 4% of those projects reached financial investment decision (FID) in 2023.

Read more Five reflections on clean hydrogen’s contribution to European industrial decarbonisation from 2024 to 2030
Book cover for: Will the EU sustainable finance rules deliver?

Will the EU sustainable finance rules deliver?

In the last few years, the world has seen an unprecedented number of initiatives and actions in the field of sustainable finance. Around the globe, investors, regulators, and financial market participants are intent on changing the financial system to increase the volume of investments aligned with the Paris agreement, while increasing transparency on the impacts of their portfolios..

Read more Will the EU sustainable finance rules deliver?
Book cover for: Why the new climate tech finance boom might end better this time round

Why the new climate tech finance boom might end better this time round

While records amounts of venture capital are being invested in climate tech, we ask the question what is different now as compared to the investment boom of 10 years ago which by and large ended in bust. We find that we are in a better technological position than 10 years ago, mainly due to the success in bringing the cost of solar, wind and batteries down. However, financial barriers to massive deployment of these renewable assets remain..

Read more Why the new climate tech finance boom might end better this time round
Book cover for: Tackling energy price shocks on the road to climate neutrality

Tackling energy price shocks on the road to climate neutrality

This Policy Brief discusses possible measures to deal with the immediate social consequences of high energy prices without undermining the climate targets of the Climate Law and the finalisation of the ‘Fit for 55’ package..

Read more Tackling energy price shocks on the road to climate neutrality
Book cover for: Keeping faith in higher carbon prices as a driver of change

Keeping faith in higher carbon prices as a driver of change

Since 2017, in the expectation of the start of operation of the Market Stability Reserve as of 2019, prices under the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) have been steadily increasing, from around €5 in early 2017 to €25 prior to the onset of the coronavirus epidemic..

Read more Keeping faith in higher carbon prices as a driver of change
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