The European Commission maintains that the European Green Deal has a crucial social component that will ensure nobody is left behind during the transition to a new energy system. This is particularly challenging when it comes to carbon taxation or emissions trading models, such as the EU’s ETS, which are well-known to disproportionately affect the least well-off in society.

Our project, “Distributional Impacts of Carbon Pricing in CEE”, aims to measure the precise incidence of carbon taxation models in Central and Eastern Europe and ensure that the optimal social measures are taken to complement these climate policies. Through continuous consultations with domestic and regional stakeholders, we aim to deliver a cutting-edge model of carbon pricing and its distributional effects, which could guide decision-makers in the upcoming years.

On 15.11.2022, the project's preliminary results were disseminated to decision-makers in Romania, including representatives of the Ministry of Energy and the National Authority for Energy Regulations. After one year of intensive work focused on designing a quantitative model that incorporates both the macro-structural components of the regional economies and the micro-dynamics of energy consumers, we had a particularly engaging series of discussions that confirmed our analysis and provided avenues for improving our next wave of results.

Following the success of the national event hosted by EPG, ideas into energy is planning to host its own event on the 10th of February 2023, where we will aim to improve our understanding of the impact of carbon pricing in Germany and CEE through engagement with relevant stakeholders.