Abstract
BackgroundThis article presents the main findings from a meta-analysis of how climate change mitigation policy evaluations have been undertaken in the European Union (EU) and six of its Member States: Austria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece and the United Kingdom. It aims to provide insights into how policy evaluations are carried out and how those practices might be improved. As a first step, this article reviews the literature on the theory and practice of policy evaluations to guide our methodology and further analysis.ResultsOur sample of 236 policy evaluations in the EU and six Member States covers the period 2010–2016. Compared with the results of a similar meta-analysis carried out covering the period 1998–2007, formal evaluations commissioned by government bodies have been on the rise in 2010–2016. Most evaluations focus on effectiveness and goal achievement and usually forgo a deeper level of reflexivity and/or public participation in the evaluation process. The analysis also reveals the dominance of the energy sector in the sampled evaluations. The article finds that the low number of any policy evaluations in the agriculture, waste or land-use sectors is an area for further investigation.ConclusionsThe exercise of identifying, coding and categorising these evaluations for 7 years helps to provide insights into the potential use of ex-post evaluations in support of future EU legislative proposals and accompanying impact assessments. Having a good understanding on how a certain policy performed particularly according to evaluation criteria might form the basis for more ambitious climate change mitigation policies in the future. Our analysis further shows that it is crucial and urgent to allocate sufficient resources to the coverage of relatively under-represented sectors, such as land use, land-use change and forestry, and waste.
Highlights
This article presents the main findings from a meta-analysis of how climate change mitigation policy evaluations have been undertaken in the European Union (EU) and six of its Member States: Austria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece and the United Kingdom
The five-yearly preparation of Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) by all parties to the Paris Agreement is likely to spur climate policy evaluations, as evaluations can help the EU as a whole and Member States determine what level of ambition is adequate for their future policies
What insights does this meta-analysis provide for policymakers and the broader climate policy evaluation community? First, the meta-analyses discussed in this article and in [6] show that that there is no dearth of climate policy evaluations in Europe
Summary
This article presents the main findings from a meta-analysis of how climate change mitigation policy evaluations have been undertaken in the European Union (EU) and six of its Member States: Austria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece and the United Kingdom. It aims to provide insights into how policy evaluations are carried out and how those practices might be improved. Member States have to report their progress on climate change policies under the EU’s Monitoring Mechanism Regulation [2], while other policy areas such as renewable energy and energy efficiency require Member States to submit national action plans and reports [1,2,3]. These requirements are streamlined into Integrated National Energy and Climate Plans under the new Energy Union Governance Regulation [4]
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