Climate Policies and Their Effectiveness in Reducing Carbon Emissions: A Critical Review of Empirical Evidence and Determinants of Impact
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.61353/ma.0260441Keywords:
Climate Policies; Carbon Emissions; Carbon Pricing; Policy Effectiveness; Decarbonization; Climate Change MitigationAbstract
This review critically examines the effectiveness of climate policies in reducing carbon emissions by synthesizing empirical evidence on economic, regulatory, and financial mitigation instruments across major economic sectors. It aims to assess documented emission reductions and identify the factors explaining variations in policy outcomes across countries and sectors. The article adopts a structured critical review approach, combining comparative analysis with a thematic synthesis of empirical studies, with particular attention to ex-post and causal evaluations. The evidence indicates that carbon pricing, emissions trading systems, regulatory standards, and investment incentives can achieve measurable emission reductions, although their effectiveness varies with policy design, sectoral characteristics, institutional capacity, and enforcement. Sectoral comparisons reveal substantial differences in mitigation performance, reflecting technological alternatives, infrastructure constraints, and investment and consumption patterns. The findings further highlight the significance of policy interactions, economic and distributional constraints, and the continuity of public commitments. The review concludes that improving climate policy effectiveness requires coherent policy mixes, wider implementation of empirically validated interventions, stronger monitoring and verification mechanisms, and closer alignment between national mitigation outcomes and global emission reduction requirements.
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