State-Owned Enterprises: No Climate Success Without Them with Philippe Benoit

Policy makers, academics, and others have devoted significant effort over the past three decades to considering how best to incentivize private businesses and households to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. There has been much less discussion about how best to incentivize state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to do so. Yet when it comes to energy sector GHGs, these state companies are among the world’s leading emitters. In the aggregate, they emit more energy sector GHGs than any country except China, and in China, they are responsible for more than half of all energy emissions.  They are also major providers of low-carbon alternatives, notably in the electricity sector.

While much of the discussion surrounding SOEs is often about how to reform and even replace them, in practice, they are and will remain major actors driving emissions, particularly in many of the larger emerging economies. Many SOEs, however, often face incentives and market conditions that differ from private businesses, differences that point to the need for a tailored set of climate tools to engage them in climate action.

Philippe Benoit will discuss the role of SOEs in driving GHG emissions, examine the effectiveness of market-oriented solutions such as carbon taxes in changing SOE behavior, and explore other options to engage these companies that build off their distinctive features.