Do tax incentives for electric vehicles lead to lower carbon emissions and greater employment stability in the auto sector? What are the most effective ways to manage the transition to clean, sustainable energy? How can governments best allocate resources to enforcing anti-deforestation laws?
These are just a few of the questions economists at the University of Toronto are exploring as countries around the world grapple with climate change and other environmental challenges.
The growing focus on climate economics at U of T is also driven by student demand, with studies suggesting as many as 56 per cent of Canadians between 16 and 25 are "feeling afraid, sad, anxious and powerless" about the effects of climate change and their future.
Assistant Professor Jeffrey Sun said he joined the department of economics in the Faculty of Arts & Science last year to be part of a research and teaching community at the forefront of environmental economics.
"You can almost see a new kind of structural climate economics taking shape here, and I could not be more excited to be a part of it," he said at the time.
First-year students can enrol in Economics and Sustainable, Green Development (ECO199) to explore the trade offs between economic development and environmental degradation - from local issues such as soil degradation and deforestation to global challenges like climate change. They will also examine policies intended to address these challenges.
More senior undergraduates can take Environmental Economics and Policies (ECO313) and Energy and the Environment (ECO314), where they learn to incorporate aspects of climate economics, energy economics, urban economics, behavioural economics and other subfields into their work.
By examining environmental topics using economic models, students are challenged to rethink fundamental concepts of the discipline - skills that recent graduates are taking into the workforce.
"One of the lessons I learned from Jeffrey Sun in the environmental economics course is that free markets work when we hold key assumptions, but if we don't have those assumptions, then the free market is not going to give us what we want," says Jessica Schwalb, a recent graduate.
This winter, Christian Spielmann, a visiting professor from the University of Bristol, will teach Special Topics in Economics: Climate Change and Biodiversity (ECO421H1S). The course will focus on current policy debates around the environment and explore what economics can contribute to understanding and addressing environmental challenges.
Experts in the field at U of T range from veteran scholars like Adonis Yatchew, an energy economist, who won the International Association of Energy Economics' award for Outstanding Contributions to the Profession in 2018, to U of T Mississauga-based deforestation expert Eduardo Souza-Rodrigues and Christoph Semken, one of the department's most recent hires. Semken's recent research applies methods and models from environmental, behavioural and applied economics.
U of T recently hosted the inaugural Toronto Meeting on the Economics of Climate Change (TMEC). Organized by Sun and Semken along with Professor Stephan Heblich, the meeting was global in scope and brought together researchers in diverse areas from institutions across North America and Italy.
"We managed to bring together people who work on the economics of climate change at every level, from global integrated assessment modelling to figuring out how to frame and implement carbon pricing programs in Canada," says Sun. "In so doing, we managed to have a conversation whose comprehensiveness and practicality is unmatched, not just in Canada but globally. It's exactly the sort of thing we need to be able to tackle this crisis with expertise and perspective."
Semken, too, was struck by the breadth of research presented.
"The lively discussions with presenters, policymakers, faculty and students will undoubtedly inspire new research ideas and solutions to the climate crisis."
