Policy makers have become increasingly concerned about what the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) describe as ‘negative option marketing’. These are marketing deals that contain the following feature:
a term or condition that allows a seller to interpret a customer’s silence, or failure to take affirmative action, as an acceptance of an offer.
For example, companies such as Amazon, Apple, Spotify and Netflix may offer students a 3-month free trial or 3-month introductory offer (at a special lower price) for movie and music streaming services. However, many of these subscription contracts contain an example of negative option marketing – auto renewal clauses.
Problems with auto-renewal contracts
The inclusion of an auto-renewal clause means that if a customer fails to cancel the subscription at the end of the three-month period, the subscription automatically reverts to its full price. The full-price contract then continues to roll-over indefinitely unless the customer takes a pre-specified action to terminate the deal. Inattentive consumers could end up paying subscription prices that far exceed their willingness to pay.
Auto-renewal contracts are not just an issue with free trials/introductory offers. Some people may purchase subscription contracts at the full price and then forget about them. These consumers could end up paying fees for months after they have effectively stopped using the service.
Another potential problem with the use of auto-renewal contracts, is businesses deliberately making the cancellation process more complex than it needs to be. In many cases it takes just one click to sign up for the subscription, but multiple clicks through a series of menus to cancel. Some businesses do not provide consumers with the option to cancel online and, instead, they are forced to phone a number that is often very busy.
Effects on consumer welfare
To what extent do these problems caused by auto-renewal reduce consumer welfare? What evidence do we have?
Research by Citizens Advice found that just over one in four people (26 per cent) had signed up to a subscription by accident. 58 per cent of this group forgot to cancel a free trial, while 21 per cent did not realise that the free trial would automatically roll-over to a full-price subscription. This seems to be a particular issue for those on low incomes with 46 per cent of people on Universal Credit signing up to a subscription by accident.
Analysis by the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) has tried to estimate the value of these unwanted subscriptions. The study found that consumers spent £602 million on unwanted subscriptions where a free or reduced-price trial had been rolled over to the full price. The same study also found that £573 million was spent on subscriptions that people had forgotten about.
One in five people in the Citizens Advice study who tried to cancel a subscription found the process difficult. The DBT estimates that cancellation difficulties led to £382 million being spent on unwanted subscriptions.
UK Government response
In response to these findings, the government introduced the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill into Parliament in April 2023.
Provisions in the Bill seek to standardise the information that businesses must provide consumers before they sign up for subscription contracts. For example, in the future, firms will have to display prominently (a) any auto-renewal provisions, (b) whether the price increases after a specified period, (c) details about how consumers can terminate the contract and (d) cooling-off periods.
The Bill also stipulates that businesses will have to provide consumers with reminders when a free/reduced-price trial period is about to end and/or a subscription is about to renew automatically. They must also make it easy to exit contracts and remove any unnecessary steps.
The government initially considered an additional measure that would force businesses to provide consumers with the option to take out any subscription without auto-renewal.
Citizens Advice strongly supported this policy. They argued that not only should consumers be given the choice, but that auto-renewal should not be the default i.e. people would have to opt-in to auto-renewal subscriptions.
However, after the consultation process for the Bill, the government decided against introducing this additional measure. Businesses have also argued that the other elements of the policy are too prescriptive.
Articles
Government documents
Questions
- Outline some theories from behavioural economics that might help to explain why people sometimes end up with unwanted subscriptions.
- Discuss some of the potential benefits of auto-renewal subscriptions for both consumers and firms.
- Using behavioural economic theory, explain some of the potential disadvantages for businesses of using auto-renewal subscriptions.
- When businesses deliberately make the cancellation process more complex than it needs to be, it is referred to as an example of ‘sludge’. Explain the meaning of ‘sludge’ in more detail, referring to some different examples in your answer.
- What difference do you think it would make to the number of people signing up for auto-renewal subscriptions if you had to opt-in as opposed to opting out? Explain your answer.
- Another policy would be to force firms to cancel subscription contracts if there is evidence that consumers have not used the service for a long period of time. Discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages of this measure.
- Explain what are meant by ‘dark patterns’. How may the choice architecture on some sites actually hinder consumer choice?
Imagine a situation where you are thinking of buying a good and so you go to an e-commerce marketplace such as Amazon, eBay, Etsy or Onbuy. How confident are you about the quality of the different brands/makes that are listed for sale on these digital platforms? How do you choose which product to buy? Is the decision strongly influenced by customer reviews and rating?
When a customer is choosing what to buy it raises an interesting question: to what extent can the true quality of the different goods/services be observed at the time of purchase? Although perfect observability is highly unlikely, the level of consumer information about a product’s true quality will vary between different types of transaction.
For example, when consumers can physically inspect and test/try a product in a shop, it can help them to make more accurate judgements about its quality and condition. This poses a problem for online sellers of high-quality versions of a good. Without the ability to inspect the item physically, consumers may be unsure about its characteristics. They may worry that the online description provided by the seller deliberately misrepresents the true quality of the item.
Consumers may have other concerns about the general reliability of online sellers. For example, in comparison to buying the product from a physical store, consumers may worry that:
- They will have to wait longer to receive the good. In many cases, when consumers purchase a product from a high-street store, they can walk away with the item and start using it straight away. When purchasing on line, they may end up waiting weeks or even longer before the product is finally delivered.
- It will be more difficult to return the product and get a refund.
- They are more likely to come across fraudulent sellers who have set-up a fake website.
This greater level of uncertainty about the true characteristics of the product and the general reliability of the seller will have a negative impact on consumers’ willingness to pay for all goods. This impact is likely to be particularly strong for high-quality versions of a product. If consumers’ willingness to pay falls below the reservation price of many sellers of high-quality goods, then the market could suffer from adverse selection and market failure.
Are there any within-market arrangements that could help deal with this issue? One possibility is for sellers to signal the quality of their products by posting consumer ratings and reviews. If consumers see that a product has many positive ratings, then this will increase their confidence in the quality of the product and so increase their willingness to pay. This could then reduce both levels of asymmetric information and the chances of adverse selection occurring in the market,
There is survey evidence that many people do read consumer reviews when choosing products on line and are heavily influenced by the ratings.
The problem of fake reviews
However, when consumers look at these reviews can they be sure that they reflect consumers’ honest opinions and/or actual experience of using the good or service? Firms may have an incentive to manipulate and post fake reviews. For example, they could:
- Deliberately fail to display negative reviews on their website while claiming that all reviews are published.
- Use internet bots to post thousands of automated reviews.
- Take positive reviews from competitors’ websites and post them on their own website.
- Pay some customers and/or employees to write and post 5-star reviews on their own website.
- Pay some customers and/or employees to write and post 1-star reviews on their competitors’ websites.
- Set up a website that they claim is independent and use it to provide positive endorsements of their own products.
If the benefits of this type of behaviour outweigh the costs, then we would expect to see fake reviews posted on websites. If their use becomes widespread, then the value of posting genuine reviews will fall. The market may then settle into what economists call a ‘pooling equilibrium’.
What evidence do we have on the posting of fake reviews? Given their nature, it is difficult to collect reliable data and there are large variations in the reported figures. One recent study found evidence of fake reviews being purchased and posted for approximately 1500 products on Amazon.
Can consumers screen reviews and identify those that are more likely to be fake? The following are some tell-tale signs.
- Products that receive a large number of very positive reviews over a short period (i.e. a few days). There are then long periods before the product receives another large number of positive reviews.
- A high percentage of 5-star reviews. Two, three and four start reviews are more likely to be genuine.
- Reviews that specifically mention a rival firm’s products.
- Reviewers who have given very high ratings to large number of different products over a short period of time.
- Reviews that include photos/videos.
Competition authorities around the world have been investigating the issue and the Competition and Markets Authority has announced plans to introduce new laws that make the purchasing and posting of fake reviews illegal.
Articles
Questions
- Outline different types of asymmetric information and explain the difference between adverse selection and moral hazard.
- Using a diagram, explain the impact of uncertainty over the quality of a good on consumers’ willingness to pay.
- Will consumers always face greater uncertainty over quality when purchasing goods on line rather than visiting the high street? Discuss your answer making reference to some specific examples.
- Using diagrams, explain how a market for high-quality versions of a good might collapse if there is asymmetric information. Using price elasticity of supply, explain the circumstances when the market is more likely to collapse.
- Discuss some of the benefits and costs for a firm of purchasing and posting fake reviews.
When building supply and demand models, the assumption is usually made that both producers and consumers act in a ‘rational’ way to achieve the best possible outcomes. As far as producers are concerned, this would mean attempting to maximise profit. As far as consumers are concerned, it would mean attempting to achieve the highest satisfaction (utility) from their limited budget. This involves a cost–benefit calculation, where people weigh up the costs and benefits of allocating their money between different goods and services.
For consumers to act rationally, the following assumptions are made:
- Consumer choices are made independently. Their individual choices and preferences are not influenced by other people’s, nor do their choices and preferences impact on other people’s choices.
- The consumer’s preferences are consistent and fixed.
- Consumers have full information about the products available and alternatives to them.
- Given the information they have and the preferences they hold, consumers will then make an optimal choice.
Black Friday can be seen as a perfect occasion for consumers to get their hands on a bargain. It is an opportunity to fulfil a rational need, for example if you were needing to replace a household appliance but were waiting until there was a good deal before committing to a purchase.
The assumption that people act rationally has been at the forefront of economic theory for decades. However, this has been questioned by the rise in behavioural economics. Rather than assuming that all individuals are ‘rational maximisers’ and conduct a cost–benefit analysis for every decision, behavioural economists mix psychology with economics by focusing on the human. As humans, we do not always behave rationally but, instead, we act under bounded rationality.
As economic agents, we make different decisions depending on our emotional state that differ from the ‘rational choice’ assumption. We are also influenced by our social networks and often make choices that provide us with immediate gratification. Given this, Black Friday can also be viewed as a great opportunity to fall prey to irrational and emotional shopping behaviours.
Black Friday originated in the USA and is the day after Thanksgiving. During this annual shopping holiday, retailers typically offer steep discounts to kick off the holiday season. The Black Friday shopping phenomenon is less than a decade old in the UK but it’s now an established part of the pre-Christmas retail calendar. Between 2010 and 2013, Black Friday gradually built up momentum in the UK. In 2014, Black Friday became the peak pre-Christmas online sales day and many online retailers haven’t looked back.
Arguably, from a behavioural economist’s perspective, the big problem with Black Friday is that all the reasons consumers possibly have to partake can be largely illusory. Consumers are bombarded with the promise of one-off deals, large discounts, scarce products, and an opportunity to get their holiday shopping done all at once. However, on Black Friday, our rational decision-making faculties are tested, just as stores are trying their hardest to maximise consumers’ mistakes.
There are many ‘behavioural traps’ that consumers often fall into. The following two are most likely to occur on Black Friday:
- Scarcity and loss aversion. Shoppers may fear that they will miss out on the best sales deals available if they don’t buy it now. Retailers commonly spark consumers’ interest by highlighting limited stocks available for a limited time only, which raises the perceived value of these goods. This sense of scarcity can further trigger the need to buy now, increasing the ‘Fear of Missing Out’. Consumers therefore need to ask themselves if they are really missing out if they don’t buy it now? And is the discount worth spending the money today, or is there something else I should be spending it on or saving for?
- Sunk cost fallacy. Once consumers have started to invest, they often struggle to close out investments that prove unprofitable. On Black Friday, customers have already made the initial investment of getting up early, driving to the shops, finding parking and waiting in a queue, before they have purchased anything. Therefore, they will be inclined to buy more than they initially went for. It is important therefore to think about each purchase in isolation.
This year, however, there is also the added complication of the rising cost of living. Whilst this may deter some consumers from unnecessary, impulse purchases, some consumers are using Black Friday as an opportunity to stock up on expected future purchases, hedging against likely price rises over the coming months.
It is thought that more consumers will be looking for a combination of high quality but low price to make sure their purchases are affordable and can last for a long time. According to PwC, many consumers have closely monitored their favourite brands in anticipation that big-ticket electronics, more pricey winter wear or Christmas stocking fillers will be discounted. Consumers are also in search of bargains more than ever given rising inflation. This would suggest a shift in attitude, meaning consumers will be more aware of what they cannot afford rather than giving in to emotional temptation brought on by Black Friday.
Retailers are fully aware of the cognitive biases that surround Black Friday and take full advantage of them. ‘Cyber Monday’ follows right after Black Friday, giving retailers an extra opportunity for them to keep those ‘urgent’ or ‘unmissable’ sales going and increase their revenues.
Black Friday is one of the biggest shopping days of the year. However, the way retailers approach it is growing increasingly mixed. Stores such as Amazon, Argos, Currys and John Lewis have started offering Black Friday deals much earlier in the month, leading some to refer to the event as ‘Black November’. Other stores, such as M&S and Next, didn’t take part at all this year.
Ultimately, Consumers can use insights from behavioural economics to empower them to make more rational decisions in such circumstances: ones that better align with their individual budgets. Nevertheless, the Black Friday sales mania can trigger our deepest emotional and cognitive responses that lead to unnecessary spending.
Articles
Video
Questions
- Discuss what is meant by the term ‘rational consumer’. Is it a useful generalisation about the way consumers behave?
- Discuss what is meant by the term ‘rational producer’. Is it a useful generalisation about the way firms behave?
- What is cost–benefit analysis? What is the procedure used in conducting a cost–benefit analysis?
- In addition to scarcity and loss aversion and the sunk cost fallacy, are there any other reasons why consumers may not always act rationally?
- Are people likely to be more ‘rational’ about online Black Friday purchases than in-store ones? Explain.
International wholesale gas prices have soared in recent months. This followed a cold winter in 2021/22 across Europe, the bounceback in demand as economies opened up after COVID and, more recently, pressure on supplies since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the resulting restricted gas supplies from Russia. The price of gas traded on the UK wholesale market is shown in Chart 1 (click here for a PowerPoint). Analysts are forecasting that the wholesale price of gas will continue to rise for some time. The higher price of gas has had a knock-on effect on wholesale electricity prices, as gas-fired power stations are a major source of electricity generation and electricity prices.
In the UK, domestic fuel prices were capped by the regulator, Ofgem. The cap reflected wholesale prices and was designed to allow electricity suppliers to make reasonable but not excessive profits. The cap was adjusted every six months, but this was been reduced to three months to reflect the rapidly changing situation. Prices are capped for both gas and electricity for both the standing charge and the rate per kilowatt hour (kWh). This is illustrated in Chart 2 (click here for a PowerPoint).
The effects of the cap were then projected in terms of a total annual bill for a typical household consuming 12 000 kWh of gas and 2900 kWh of electricity. Chart 3 shows the typical fuel bill for the last four price caps and, prior to the mini-Budget of 23 September, the projected price caps for the first and second quarters of 2023 based on forecasts at the time of wholesale prices (click here for a PowerPoint). As you can see, wholesale gas and electricity prices account for an increasing proportion of the total bill. The remaining elements in cost consist of profits (1.9% assumed), VAT (5%), operating costs, grid connection costs and green levies (around £153). The chart shows that, without government support for prices, the price cap would have risen by 80.6% in October 2022 and was projected to rise by a further 51% in January 2023 and by another 23% in March 2023. If this were to have been the case, then prices would have risen by 481% between the summer of 2021 and March 2023.
This was leading to dire warnings of extreme fuel poverty, with huge consequences for people’s health and welfare, which would put extra demands on an already stretched health service. Many small businesses would not be able to survive the extra fuel costs, which would lead to bankruptcies and increased unemployment.
Future wholesale gas prices
Energy market analysts expect wholesale gas prices to remain high throughout 2023, with little likelihood that gas supplies from Russia will increase. Some European countries, such as Germany, have been buying large amounts of gas to fill storage facilities before winter and before prices rise further. This has added to demand.
The UK, however, has only limited storage facilities. Although it is not an importer of gas from Russia and so, in one sense, storage facilities are less important at the current time, wholesale gas prices reflect international demand and supply and thus gas prices in the UK will be directly affected by an overall global shortage of supply.
What would have been the response to the projected rise in gas prices? Eventually demand would fall as substitute fuels are used for electricity generation. But demand is highly inelastic. People cannot readily switch to alternative sources of heating. Most central heating is gas fired. People may reduce consumption of energy by turning down their heating or turning it off altogether, but such reductions are likely to be a much smaller percentage than the rise in price. Thus, despite some use of other fuels and despite people cutting their energy usage, people would still end up spending much more on energy.
Over the longer term, new sources of supply of gas, including liquified natural gas (LNG), may increase supply. And switching to green energy sources for electricity generation, may bring the price of electricity back down and lead to some substitution been gas and electricity in the home and businesses. Also improved home insulation and the installation of heat pumps and solar panels in homes, especially in new builds, may reduce the demand for gas. But these changes take time. Chart 4 illustrates the situation (click here for a PowerPoint).
Both demand and supply are relatively inelastic. The initial demand and supply curves are D1 and S1. Equilibrium price is P1 (point a). There is now a fall in supply. Supply shifts to S2. With an inelastic demand, there is a large rise in price to P2 (point b).
Over two or three years, there is a modest fall in demand (as described above) to D2 and a modest rise in supply to S3. Price falls back somewhat to P3 (point c). Over a longer period of time, these shifts would be greater and the price would fall further.
Possible policy responses
What could the government do to alleviate the problem? Consensus was that the new Conservative Prime Minister, Liz Truss, and her Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, would have to take radical measures if many households were to avoid severe hardship and debt. One proposal was to reduce VAT on domestic energy from 5% to zero and to cut green levies. Although this would help, it would make only a relatively small dent in people’s rising bills.
Another proposal was to give people cash payments to help with their bills. The more generous and widespread these payments, the more costly they would be.
One solution here would be to impose larger windfall taxes on oil and gas producers (as opposed to retailers). Their profits have soared as oil and gas prices have soared. Such a move is generally resisted by those on the right of politics, arguing that it could discourage investment in energy production. Those on the centre and left of politics argue that the profits are the result of global factors and not because of wise business decisions by the energy producers. A windfall tax would only take away these excess profits.
The EU has agreed a tax on fossil fuel companies’ surplus profits made either this year or next. It is also introducing a levy on the excess revenues that other low-cost power producers make from higher electricity prices.
Another proposal was to freeze retail energy prices at the current or some other level. This would make it impossible for energy suppliers to cover their costs and so they would have to be subsidised. This again would be very expensive and would require substantially increased borrowing at a time when interest rates are rising, or increased taxation at a time when people’s finances are already squeezed by higher inflation. An alternative would be to cap the price North Sea producers receive. As around half of the UK’s gas consumption is from the North Sea, this would help considerably if it could be achieved, but it might be difficult to do so given that the gas is sold onto international markets.
One proposal that was gaining support from energy producers and suppliers is for the government to set up a ‘deficit fund’. Energy suppliers (retailers) would freeze energy prices for two years and take out state-backed loans from banks. These would then be paid back over time by prices being capped sufficiently high to cover costs (which, hopefully, by then would be lower) plus repayments.
Another policy response would be to decouple electricity prices from the wholesale price of gas. This is being urgently considered in the EU, and Ofgem is also consulting on such a measure. This could make wholesale electricity prices reflect the costs of the different means of generation, including wind, solar and nuclear, and would see a fall in wholesale electricity prices. At the moment, generators using these methods are making large profits.
The government’s response
On September 23, the government held a mini-Budget. One of its key elements was a capping of the unit price of energy for both households and firms. The government called this the Energy Price Guarantee. For example, those households on a variable dual-fuel, direct-debit tariff would pay no more than 34.0p/kWh for electricity and 10.3p/kWh for gas. Standing charges are capped at 46p per day for electricity and 28p per day for gas. These rates will apply for 2 years from 1/10/22 and should give an average annual household bill of £2500.
Although the government has widely referred to the ‘£2500 cap’, it is the unit price that is capped, not the annual bill. It is still the case that the more you consume, the more you will pay. As you can see from Chart 3, the average £2500 still represents an average increase per annum of just over £500 per household and is almost double the cap of £1277 a year ago. It will thus still put considerable strain on many household finances.
For businesses, prices will be capped for 6 months from 1 October at 21.1p per kWh for electricity and 7.5p per KWh for gas – considerably lower than for domestic consumers.
The government will pay subsidies to the retail energy companies to allow them to make sufficient, but not excess, profit. These subsidies are estimated to cost around £150 billion. This will be funded by borrowing, not by tax increases, with the government ruling out a windfall tax on North Sea oil and gas extracting companies. Indeed, the mini-Budget contained a number of tax reductions, including scrapping the 45% top rate of income tax, cutting the basic rate of income tax from 20% to 19% and scrapping the planned rise in corporation tax from 19% to 25%.
Articles
Data
Questions
- Why are the demand and supply of gas relatively inelastic with respect to price?
- Why are the long-run elasticities of demand and supply of gas likely to be greater than the short-run elasticities?
- Find out how wholesale electricity prices are determined. Is there a case for reforming the system and, if so, how?
- Identify ways in which people could be protected from rising energy bills.
- Assess these different methods in terms of (a) targeting help to those most in need; (b) economic efficiency.
The Climate Change Pact agreed by leaders at the end of COP26 in Glasgow went further than many pessimists had forecast, but not far enough to meet the goal of keeping global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. The Pact states that:
limiting global warming to 1.5°C requires rapid, deep and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions, including reducing global carbon dioxide emissions by 45 per cent by 2030 relative to the 2010 level and to net zero around mid-century, as well as deep reductions in other greenhouse gases.
So how far would the commitments made in Glasgow restrict global warming and what actions need to be put in place to meet these commitments?
Short-term commitments and long-term goals
According to Climate Action Tracker, the short-term commitments to action that countries set out would cause global warming of 2.4°C by the end of the century, the effects of which would be calamitous in terms of rising sea levels and extreme weather.
However, long-term commitments to goals, as opposed to specific actions, if turned into specific actions to meet the goals would restrict warming to around 1.8°C by the end of the century. These long-term goals include reaching net zero emissions by certain dates. For the majority of the 136 countries agreeing to reach net zero, the date they set was 2050, but for some developing countries, it was later. China, Brazil, Indonesia, Russia, Nigeria, Sri Lanka and Saudi Arabia, for example, set a date of 2060 and India of 2070. Some countries set an earlier target and others, such as Benin, Bhutan, Cambodia, Guyana, Liberia and Madagascar, claimed they had already reached zero net emissions.
Despite these target dates, Climate Action Tracker argues that only 6 per cent of countries pledging net zero have robust policies in place to meet the targets. The problem is that actions are required by firms and individuals. They must cut their direct emissions and reduce the consumption of products whose production involved emissions.
Governments can incentivise individuals and firms through emissions and product taxes, through carbon pricing, through cap-and-trade schemes, through subsidies on green investment, production and consumption, through legal limits on emissions, through trying to change behaviour by education campaigns, and so on. In each case, the extent to which individuals and firms will respond is hard to predict. People may want to reduce global warming and yet be reluctant to change their own behaviour, seeing themselves as too insignificant to make any difference and blaming big business, governments or rich individuals. It is important, therefore, for governments to get incentive mechanisms right to achieve the stated targets.
Let us turn to some specific targets specified in the Climate Change Pact.
Phasing out fossil fuel subsidies
Paragraph 20 of the Climate Change Pact
Calls upon Parties to accelerate … efforts towards the … phase-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, while providing targeted support to the poorest and most vulnerable in line with national circumstances and recognizing the need for support towards a just transition.
Production subsidies include tax breaks or direct payments that reduce the cost of producing coal, oil or gas. Consumption subsidies cut fuel prices for the end user, such as by fixing the price at the petrol pump below the market rate. They are often justified as a way of making energy cheaper for poorer people. In fact, they provide a bigger benefit to wealthier people, who are larger users of energy. A more efficient way of helping the poor would be through benefits or general tax relief. Removing consumption subsidies in 32 countries alone would, according to International Institute for Sustainable Development, cut greenhouse gas emission by an average of 6 per cent by 2025.
The chart shows the 15 countries providing the largest amount of support to fossil fuel industries in 2020 (in 2021 prices). The bars are in billions of dollars and the percentage of GDP is also given for each country. Subsidies include both production and consumption subsidies. (Click here for a PowerPoint of the chart.) In addition to the direct subsidies shown in the chart, there are the indirect costs of subsidies, including pollution, environmental destruction and the impact on the climate. According to the IMF, these amounted to $5.4 trillion in 2020.
But getting countries to agree on a path to cutting subsidies, when conditions vary enormously from one country to another, proved very difficult.
The first draft of the conference agreement called for countries to ‘to accelerate the phasing-out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels’. But, after objections from major coal producing countries, such as China, India and Australia, this was weakened to calling on countries to accelerate the shift to clean energy systems ‘by scaling up the deployment of clean power generation and energy efficiency measures, including accelerating efforts towards the phasedown of unabated coal power and phase-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies’. (‘Unabated’ coal power refers to power generation with no carbon capture.) Changing ‘phasing-out’ to ‘the phasedown’ caused consternation among many delegates who saw this as a substantial weakening of the drive to end the use of coal.
Another problem is in defining ‘inefficient’ subsidies. Countries are likely to define them in a way that suits them.
The key question was the extent to which countries would actually adopt such measures and what the details would be. Would they be strong enough? This remained to be seen.
As an article in the journal, Nature, points out:
There are three main barriers to removing production subsidies … First, fossil-fuel companies are powerful political groups. Second, there are legitimate concerns about job losses in communities that have few alternative employment options. And third, people often worry that rising energy prices might depress economic growth or trigger inflation.
The other question with the phasing out of subsidies is how and how much would there be ‘targeted support to the poorest and most vulnerable in line with national circumstances’.
Financial support for developing countries
Transitioning to a low-carbon economy and investing in measures to protect people from rising sea levels, floods, droughts, fires, etc. costs money. With many developing countries facing serious financial problems, especially in the light of measures to support their economies and healthcare systems to mitigate the effects of COVID-19, support is needed from the developed world.
In the COP21 Paris Agreement in 2015, developed countries pledged $100 billion by 2020 to support mitigation of and adaptation to the effects of climate change by developing countries. But the target was not reached. The COP26 Pact urged ‘developed country Parties to fully deliver on the $100 billion goal urgently and through to 2025’. It also emphasised the importance of transparency in the implementation of their pledges. The proposal was also discussed to set up a trillion dollar per year fund from 2025, but no agreement was reached.
It remains to be seen just how much support will be given.
Then there was the question of compensating developing countries for the loss and damage which has already resulted from climate change. Large historical polluters, such as the USA, the UK and various EU countries, were unwilling to agree to a compensation mechanism, fearing that any recognition of culpability could make them open to lawsuits and demands for financial compensation.
Other decisions
- More than 100 countries at the meeting agreed to cut global methane emissions by at least 30 per cent from 2020 levels by 2030. Methane is a more powerful but shorter-living greenhouse gas than carbon. It is responsible for about a third of all human-generated global warming. China, India and Russia, however, did not sign up.
Again, more than 100 countries agreed to stop deforestation by 2030. These countries include Indonesia and Brazil, which has been heavily criticised for allowing large parts of the Amazon rainforest to be cleared for farming, such that the Amazon region in recent years has been a net emitter of carbon from the felling and burning of trees. The pledge has been met with considerable cynicism, however, as it unclear how it will be policed. Much of the deforestation around the world is already illegal but goes ahead anyway.- A mechanism for trading carbon credits was agreed. This allows countries which plant forests or build wind farms to earn credits. However, it may simply provide a mechanism for rich countries and businesses to keep emitting as usual by buying credits.
- Forty-five countries pledged to invest in green agricultural practices to make farming more sustainable.
- Twenty-two countries signed a declaration to create zero-emission maritime shipping routes.
- The USA and China signed a joint declaration promising to boost co-operation over the next decade on various climate actions, including reducing methane emissions, tackling deforestation and regulating decarbonisation.
Blah, blah, blah or real action?
Many of the decisions merely represent targets. What is essential is for countries clearly to spell out the mechanisms they will use for achieving them. So far there is too little detail. It was agreed, therefore, to reconvene in a year’s time at COP27 in Egypt. Countries will be expected to spell out in detail what actions they are taking to meet their emissions targets and other targets such as ending deforestation and reducing coal-fired generation.
Articles
- COP26 ended with the Glasgow Climate Pact. Here’s where it succeeded and failed
CNN, Angela Dewan and Amy Cassidy (14/11/21)
- Good COP, Bad COP: Separating heat from light at the climate summit
Ing, Samuel Abettan, Gerben Hieminga and Coco Zhang (15/11/21)
- COP26: What was agreed at the Glasgow climate conference?
BBC News (15/11/21)
- Five Things You Need to Know About The New Glasgow Climate Pact
The Conversation, Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin (13/11/21)
- Infographic: What has your country pledged at COP26?
Aljazeera, Hanna Duggal (14/11/21)
- Cop26: world on track for disastrous heating of more than 2.4C, says key report
The Guardian, Fiona Harvey (9/11/21)
- Cop26 took us one step closer to combating the climate crisis
The Guardian, Christiana Figueres (15/11/21)
- After the failure of Cop26, there’s only one last hope for our survival
The Guardian, George Monbiot (14/11/21)
- Why fossil fuel subsidies are so hard to kill
Nature, Jocelyn Timperley (20/10/21)
- The COP26 blah blah blah detector
Rappler, Elpidio Peria (16/11/21)
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Questions
- What were the main achievements of COP26?
- What were the main failings of COP26?
- How can people be incentivised to reduce their direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions?
- How is game theory relevant to understanding the difficulties in achieving global net zero emissions?
- Should developing countries be required to give up coal power?
- If the world is to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions, should all countries achieve net zero or should some countries achieve net negative emissions to allow others to continue with net positive emissions (albeit at a lower level)?
