Topic: Climate Policy Mix: Policy Evaluation, Policy Simulation, and Low-Carbon Transition Pathways

Climate policy has become a central component of the global response to climate change, with emissions trading systems, carbon taxes, border carbon measures, and other policy instruments now covering an increasing share of global emissions. As carbon neutrality objectives become increasingly embedded in regional and national policy agendas, climate governance is evolving toward more coordinated, multi-instrument approaches, in which market-based instruments interact with taxes, certificates, and regulatory standards. Meanwhile, advances in causal inference, policy simulation, and market and emissions data—including quasi-experimental designs, computable general equilibrium and agent-based models, machine learning, and firm-level data—are opening new avenues for more precise assessment of climate impacts, rigorous policy evaluation, and forecasting of emissions and policy outcomes. These developments also provide new opportunities to understand the drivers, mechanisms, and pathways of low-carbon transitions across economies and sectors.

Rigorous counterfactual-based evaluation is therefore essential for determining whether observed emissions reductions reflect genuine mitigation rather than displacement, identifying who bears the associated costs, and assessing whether policy effects persist over time. Combined with structural simulation and machine learning, such approaches can provide more robust evidence on policy effects and interactions among policy instruments, while supporting evidence-based planning for low-carbon transitions, including changes in energy systems, industrial structures, technological innovation, investment, and consumption patterns.

This Special Topic examines climate policy and low-carbon transitions from an integrated perspective, with particular attention to policy coordination, policy evaluation, policy simulation and forecasting, policy impacts and interactions, and low-carbon transition pathways. We welcome original research articles, reviews, perspectives, and case studies that contribute to understanding and accelerating low-carbon transitions through innovative methods, data, and interdisciplinary approaches, including studies of climate policy impacts, technological and structural change, energy and industrial transformation, and sustainable development.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

● Interactions among policy instruments: coordination and sequencing among market-based instruments, fiscal measures, green certificate schemes, efficiency mandates, and administrative targets; potential overlaps and policy interactions across different regulatory frameworks.

● Policy simulation of policy mixes: computable general equilibrium (CGE) and dynamic general equilibrium models, agent-based models, system dynamics and energy-system models, and integrated assessment model (IAM) scenarios; identification of effective combinations of policy instruments for emissions reduction and low-carbon development.

● Ex-post evaluation of climate and low-carbon policies: evaluation of emissions trading systems, green certificates, green power trading, energy-use rights pilots, and other climate policies using DID, event studies, synthetic control methods, and RDD, including identification strategies in settings with overlapping policies.

● Forecasting for climate policy and transition planning: emissions and carbon-peak projections, energy demand and technology deployment forecasting, allowance market supply and demand forecasting, and machine-learning and hybrid forecasting methods under alternative policy and transition scenarios.

● Policy impacts and transmission mechanisms: policy effects on electricity markets, investment, technological innovation, energy consumption, industrial restructuring, and emissions reduction; interactions among policy expectations, market signals, and low-carbon investment decisions.

● Distributional and regional effects of policy combinations: cost incidence, regional equity, competitiveness, carbon leakage, employment effects, and implications for sustainable and inclusive low-carbon development.

● International comparison and policy coordination: comparative analysis of climate policy frameworks, cross-border climate measures, policy alignment, and international cooperation for low-carbon transitions.

● Time consistency, credibility, and transition risks: policy expectations, stranded assets, investment uncertainty, and the credibility and effectiveness of long-term climate and low-carbon transition policies.

● Policy mixes for sectoral decarbonization and low-carbon transitions: power, steel, cement, aluminum, transport, buildings, and other energy-intensive sectors; pathways for energy efficiency, electrification, clean energy deployment, and industrial transformation.

● Macro–micro integrated assessment frameworks: integrated frameworks for evaluating climate policy performance, emissions mitigation, technological change, economic transformation, and low-carbon transition pathways.