Carbon Pricing: Has It Worked and What Comes Next?

Carbon pricing has long been recognized as a textbook economic policy response to address the externality of pollution. There are now carbon pricing mechanisms in place in around 70 national and subnational jurisdictions, and many others are heading towards implementation. However, carbon pricing alone might not be sufficient to achieve the necessary carbon reductions, and direct quantity restraints may be needed.

At the same time, the voluntary carbon market is acting as a global mechanism for offsetting carbon emissions and is set to grow significantly. Ensuring integrity in this market is an important challenge, impacting emissions reductions investments over coming decades.

In this webcast, our panelists will delve into these complex issues and explore the multifaceted solutions required. We will gain insights into carbon pricing mechanisms and the voluntary carbon market, including:

• How successful implementations of carbon pricing have encouraged a reduction in carbon emissions;
• Where carbon pricing has fallen short and why policies that target the supply of carbon emissions have become imperative; and
• The interplay between the voluntary carbon markets and corporate decarbonisation, government regulation, and compliance markets.

Speakers

Paul Fischer

Economist and Chair, London Bullion Market Association

Paul Fisher is an economist who served at the Bank of England for 26 years including five years on the MPC and two as Deputy Head of the PRA. He works and writes on climate-related financial policy and is currently a member of the UK Green Technical Advisory Group and a Fellow at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. He is a visiting professor at Warwick, where he teaches central banking and the London Institute for Banking and Finance, where he teaches sustainable finance.

William McDonnell

Chief Operating Officer, Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market

William is COO for the ICVCM, the new global governance body to set and enforce threshold quality standards for the voluntary carbon market. Prior to that he had a 25-year career in financial services. Most recently he was Group Chief Risk Officer and member of the Group Executive Committee for RSA Insurance Group plc for 7 years, responsible for Risk, Assurance and Compliance groupwide. Prior to RSA he held roles at HSBC Investment Bank, Aviva, the UK Financial Services Authority and Deloitte. 

William is a leading voice on climate risk in the financial sector, having served as a member of the ClimateWise Council and of the UK’s Climate Financial Risk Forum, and as chair of the Emerging Risks Initiative of leading global insurers, publishing a major climate study ‘The Heat is on – Insurability and Resilience in a Changing Climate’.  

Anna Asikainen

Executive Director and Team Lead Sustainability and Climate Risk, UBS

Anna is an Executive Director and Team Lead Sustainability and Climate Risk at UBS, a position she recently took on. Previously, she held a series of Director-level roles at UBS relating to sustainability and climate risk. Prior to joining UBS, she worked as a consultant for South Pole, focused on sustainable finance and climate risks and opportunities. Her previous roles include Commercial Director of Carbon Markets at MexiCO2 and Program Director and Lecturer at Tecnológico de Monterrey. Anna holds a M.S. in Economics from Aalto University School of Business in Helsinki, Finland and a B.S. in International Business from Helsinki School of Economics.

Jo Paisley

President, GARP Risk Institute

Jo has worked on a variety of risk areas at GRI, including stress testing, operational resilience, model risk management and climate risk. Her career prior to joining GARP spanned public and private sectors, including working as the Director of the Supervisory Risk Specialist Division within the Prudential Regulation Authority and as Global Head of Stress Testing at HSBC.