Remarks by Mathias Cormann,

Secretary-General, OECD

Paris, 13 June 2021

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Prime Minister Johnson, colleagues,

We all agree that ambitious and effective global action on climate change is a must.

More and more countries are committing to global net zero by 2050 at the latest, which is great.

The challenge is how to turn those commitments into outcomes and to manage the transition to net zero in an environmentally effective, economically responsible and publicly supported way that will not leave people behind.

That efforts in individual jurisdictions must contribute to an overall reduction in global emissions, not just shift emissions from one area to other parts of the world.

We need a unity of purpose, but also genuine open-minded global cooperation to secure our overall objective.

We should not just accept, but embrace the fact that different countries and regions around the world, with different starting positions and different circumstances have different opportunities to make their best possible contribution to our global emissions reduction mission.

The key is for each to make a proportionate and genuine contribution to the overall global target.

It is critically important then to better track outcomes achieved not just commitments made.

That’s why the OECD just established the International Programme for Action on Climate as a tool to monitor climate policy performance.

Transparent reporting of climate policy outcomes, based on objectively comparable data in different jurisdictions, including on implicit carbon pricing, will help drive improved performance, because of the scrutiny it will generate and the platform for evidence-based cooperation it provides. It can also help build trust about actual contributions to global emissions reduction efforts made using different policy approaches to cater for different circumstances.

Absent an appropriately comprehensive global agreement to price emissions, countries can and must use all other available policy tools to maximise emissions reduction outcomes.

Policies that provide the right signals and incentives for investment, production and consumption.

From direct public investment through competitive grants schemes, to subsidies, direct support for technology innovation, regulatory standards they all must continue to play their part in accelerating the transition to global net zero.

Benchmarking the comparative effectiveness of climate policies will give the OECD invaluable information to feed into our country specific advice on how to optimise climate outcomes.

The OECD will continue to mainstream our focus on decarbonisation of our economies across all policy areas. We will work with other organisations to commit every ounce of our capability and expertise to help drive an effective climate transition.

Finally, the OECD can play a role in international standard setting and norms for its members and beyond – as we did for BEPS.

This would help maintain a global level-playing field as we decarbonise, without the need to increase tariffs, which we know would hinder rather than support a strong and sustainable recovery.

Working on a common measurement of implicit carbon prices would be an important step to facilitate a cooperative discussion on this.