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On February 28, the US and Israel launched new attacks on Iran targeting primarily the country's leadership, security forces, and missile program.
Hear in-depth conversations with the world’s top energy and climate leaders from government, business, academia, and civil society.
As the conflict in the Middle East enters its 20th day, events on the ground have shifted into a critical new phase marked by direct strikes on core...
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This roundtable is open only to currently enrolled Columbia University students. To register, you must sign in with your UNI. The Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP) at...
External Publications with Tom Moerenhout • March 15, 2022
Fossil fuel subsidies constitute a burden for public finances and contribute to climate change and...
Fossil fuel subsidies constitute a burden for public finances and contribute to climate change and air pollution. Fossil fuel subsidies also distort trade, highlighting a possible role for international trade agreements in promoting fossil fuel subsidy reform. This chapter explores the extent to which WTO subsidy rules can be used to address fossil fuel subsidies. It first discusses the ways in which fossil fuel subsidies may impact on international trade. It then continues to analyse how fossil fuel subsidies are disciplined under WTO subsidy rules, focusing on the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures. Finding that existing rules largely fail to capture fossil fuel subsidies due to legal and political barriers, the chapter discusses several options for WTO Members to better align subsidy rules with the clean energy transition, including strengthening transparency and creating new rules at the WTO, and tackling fossil fuel subsidies through plurilateral and regional trade agreements.
The decline of domestic fossil fuel production in the United States poses serious economic risks for communities that rely on fossil fuel industries for jobs and public revenues. Many of these communities lack the resources and capacity to manage those risks on their own. The absence of viable economic strategies for affected regions is a barrier to building the broad, durable coalitions needed for an equitable national transition to cleaner energy sources.
Models can predict catastrophic or modest damages from climate change, but not which of these futures is coming.
On November 6, 2025, in the lead-up to the annual UN Conference of the Parties (COP30), the Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP) at Columbia University SIPA convened a roundtable on project-based carbon credit markets (PCCMs) in São Paulo, Brazil—a country that both hosted this year’s COP and is well-positioned to shape the next phase of global carbon markets by leveraging its experience in nature-based solutions.
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External Publications with Tom Moerenhout • March 15, 2022