This report analyses the county-level impacts of increasing the carbon tax and gradually phasing out peat and coal from electricity production.

This study finds that a carbon tax could have some adverse impacts on GDP, inequality and household income. However, the impact is limited and could be reduced by using a well-designed revenue recycling scheme. The results come from research using the ESRI's environment, energy and economy (I3E) model for Ireland.

This research finds that simultaneously removing seven fossil fuel subsidies would have a modest adverse effect on real GDP and household income. However, it would have a sizeable impact on reducing economy-wide emissions. Increasing the carbon tax at the same time as removing the subsidies would slightly increase the adverse economic impact but lead to a more substantial decline in emissions. The results are based on research using the ESRI's Environment, Energy and Economy (I3E) model for Ireland. The research was funded by the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment.

This paper investigates the economic and environmental impacts of an incremental increase in the rate of Irish carbon tax. For this analysis an intertemporal computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, namely Ireland Environment-Energy-Economy (I3E), is developed. This model allows for the investigation of industry level impacts as well as economy wide impacts by explicitly modelling sectoral interlinkages. We examine two potential future paths of carbon tax increases and the impacts of recycling carbon tax revenues through a lump sum transfer to households. Our results show that LPG, diesel and gasoline prices will be impacted most with increases of up to 10% in 2020 compared to a baseline scenario. The energy and transport sectors will be hit the hardest with losses of up to 4% of value added in 2020. Households face higher overall prices, with an up to 2.4% increase in the CPI in 2020 which lowers household real disposable income by 0.24% in 2020. Though income increases as prices rise, households consume less and save more in the medium-run. Driven by this decline in real private consumption, real gross domestic product declines, though at a negligible rate of 0.4% in 2020. Overall emissions in 2020 fall by 18% compared to the baseline. However, this is still far short of EU targets.

New research from the ESRI analyses how the COVID-19 crisis will impact upon the Irish economy and environment. It finds that Irish GDP is expected to decrease by around 13 per cent in 2020 as a result of the economic disruptions caused by the COVID-19 crisis. From an environmental perspective, economy-wide CO2 emissions are expected to decrease by 9.5 per cent this year. However, this reduction is short-lived as the low current energy prices increase energy demand and emissions rise again in 2021.

This paper calculates and compares the level of Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions using a production-based accounting (PBA) method and a consumption based accounting (CBA) method. The PBA attributes GHG emissions resulting from production processes to the country in which the production takes place. CBA attributes these emissions instead to the country which consumes the goods produced. Our results show that emissions as calculated by the CBA method are 69% higher than when calculated applying a PBA method. This reflects that the global carbon footprint of Irish consumption is higher than what is reflected in our current PBA calculations. The main cause of higher CBA emissions is the import of goods for household consumption. Climate policies in Ireland focus on reducing PBA emission and would need to include measures to address CBA emissions to ensure Ireland's global carbon footprint is limited.

Climate change is considered the biggest environmental challenge facing the world. The expected concomitant economic impacts of climate change are substantial, where the African continent is expected to be particularly vulnerable. Research is needed to support the development of sound climate policies in Africa. This paper develops a new Integrated Assessment Model -AD-AFRICA- which allows a comprehensive analysis of climate change impacts and adaptation in Africa. The AD-AFRICA model divides Africa into five regions and includes seven specific climate change impacts. The effects of the Paris agreement Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) and the below 2 degrees target are investigated. The results show that though the INDCs reduce impacts, reaching the goal of the agreement will further reduce impacts by almost 1.6 % of GDP (588,731 US$ Billion). This highlights the importance of re-examining the level of INDCs. Furthermore, our results show that health and tourism impacts are highest and that different regions in Africa are more vulnerable to different climate change impacts depending on their level of development and regional characteristics. Finally, the withdrawal of the US from the Paris Agreement would result in an additional climate change burden of around 87 US$ Billions to Africa.

This paper examines the economic and environmental impacts of the adoption path of electric vehicles (EVs) and home retrofitting in the form of heat pumps (HPs) projected in the recent Climate Action Plan (CAP21) for Ireland. This analysis assumes the level of carbon tax follows the path committed by the Irish government in June 2020 and in the CAP21; reaching C100 per tonne of CO2 in 2030 and includes a government subsidy for HPs. The results show that an increase in the carbon tax has substantial impacts on emission reduction, and EV adoption and HP installations can further reduce emissions but to a lesser degree than the carbon tax increase. Compared to a carbon tax alone, the wide-scale adoption of EVs and HPs boost the economy and employment. This boost leads to a rebound effect, where emissions increase slightly in other sectors of the economy. The results prove the importance of simultaneous use of carbon taxation and electrification of transport and home heating, where carbon taxation increases the benefits of adopting low carbon technologies and adoption reduces the costs of carbon taxation.