About the project
Net Zero+ provides analysis and insights for governments looking at the whole climate picture: driving a rapid and resilient transition to net-zero while building resilience to physical climate impacts.
Improving economic resilience has become a key priority for governments as they have grappled with recent turbulent events, such as Covid-19 and the far-reaching effects of Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine.
At the same time, the climate crisis is becoming ever more urgent. Unchecked, climate change will pose a significant and escalating threat to global economic and social stability, in particular if irreversible “tipping points” are triggered.
Key themes include:
- Making the net-zero transition not only fast but also resilient and durable, including by “future proofing” transition strategies against diverse potential disruptions.
- Modelling the macroeconomic effects of net-zero strategiesand implications for public finance.
- Putting people at the centre of the transition, addressing the many social implications of a rapid transition towards net-zero emissions.
- Understanding climate-system tipping pointsand their implications for near-term policy.
- Building systemic resilience to climate impactsand adapting to climate change.
The project: Four modules
This module focuses on framing the increasingly urgent climate crisis in the context of the current international economic and social circ*mstances. It includes better characterising and integrating the non-linear impacts of climate change, such as climate tipping points, into policy planning, as well as focusing on systems approaches to designing policies.
This module focuses on the policies needed to accelerate the transition towards net-zero emissions, while making sure the transition is itself resilient to changing economic, social, technological and environmental conditions. This includes new modelling and analysis that will examine the implications of macroeconomic, fiscal and budgetary policies for accelerating progress towards net-zero.
This module focuses on opportunities to build systemic resilience to the impacts of climate change. It builds on work on understanding the risk of losses and damages from climate change and contributes new analysis on developing strategies to build climate resilience in key systems such as food production, cities and in the financial system.
The International Programme for Action on Climate (IPAC) is a major OECD initiative aiming to deliver the tools and information needed to monitor and support country-specific actions towards net-zero emissions and climate resilience. In its initial phase, IPAC is embodied within the horizontal project and provides an important, data-driven tracking component, complementing the rest of the project’s analysis.
Net Zero+ publications and papers
Find OECD reports, working papers and policy briefs on climate change produced under the Net Zero+ project.
Find out more
12 steps for governments to build climate and economic resilience...
1. Limit overshoot beyond 1.5°C
Faced with threat ofclimate tipping points, do everything possible to limit overshoot beyond 1.5°C – faster reductions and shape of the pathway matters.
2. Ensure spending for crisis relief
Ensure spending forcrisis relief and economic stimulusis aligned with climate goals and sufficiently targeted.
3. Future-proof climate strategies
Make climate strategies as “future-proofed” as possible, stress-testing using strategic foresight techniques and anticipating bottlenecks to the transition: e.g., on public finance, cost-of-capital, energy and materials supply, skills, innovation.
4. Focus on entire systems
Focus policy making on the systems level, rather than considering individual components or outcomes, to accelerate transition and improve systemic resilience.
5. Tailor policies depending on the context
Get the climate policy basics right, including a mix of price-based and other instruments tailored to regional, national and local contexts and greening of public governance.
6. Mainstream climate change adaptation
Mainstream climate change adaptation throughout national policy processes and exploit synergies between interlinked mitigation and adaptation policy objectives, while minimising trade-offs.
7. Address public finance implications
Address public finance implications of transition through careful fiscal planning, assessing direct and indirect effects of policies and transition to net-zero aligned tax instruments.
8. Accelerate innovation
Accelerate innovation through a mission-oriented, outcome-based approach to drive the whole innovation cycle. Target support measures for earlystage innovation and R&D.
9. Assess impacts and communicate with the public
Carefully assess direct and indirect distributional impacts of climate policy; consider multiple options for revenue recycling and employ effective, accurate, clear, and easily accessible communication with the public about how policies work.
10. Identify skills gaps
Support new employment patterns by ensuring reasonable labour market flexibility and mobility while promoting job quality and protecting workers; identify skills needs and bottlenecks and prioritise up- or re-skilling.
11. Align mitigation and adaptation goals
Better align financial system policies with both climate mitigation and adaptation goals, including improved market practices, alignment of core investment policies, use of responsible business conduct tools, and harnessing the double role of the insurance sector as both investor and insurance provider.
12. Align development and climate objectives
Embed a global approach that recognises the interlinkages between climate and development transitions, drawing on all levers of development co-operation support to converge on a ‘common approach’ that aligns development and climate objectives.
Watch our video on 12 steps for governments to accelerate climate action
Read the Net Zero+ Report and Policy Highlights
The key findings of theNet Zero+ report have been distilled into a short summary, which highlights key messages and summarises relevant findings from each of the reports three substantive parts. This overview draws on the full breadth of the OECD’s multidisciplinary expertise, and synthesises policy recommendations for accelerating resilient action on climate change, including 12 steps that governments can take to build climate and economic resilience.
Read the report
Download the Policy Highlights
Governance and cross-cutting expertise
OECD country governments are guiding the project via a leadership group comprised of senior officials from across the OECD’s wide range of policy committees.
Combined with the multidisciplinary policy expertise housed across the organisation, this maximises the unique value of OECD’s all-of-government reach.
The project also benefits from a dedicated high-level External Advisory panel made up of high-profile international leaders.
High-level External Advisory Panel
Amal Lee Amin
Director, Climate Change, CDC
Peter Bakker
President and CEO, World Business Council for Sustainable Development
Sharon Burrow
Former General Secretary, International Trade Union Confederation
Vibha Dhawan
Director General, The Energy and Resources Institute
Sandrine Dixson-Declève
Co-President, Club of Rome
Kirsten Dunlop
CEO, Climate-KIC
Zaheer Fakir
UAE Climate Change Special Envoy
Connie Hedegaard
Former European Commissioner for Climate Action
Rachel Kyte
Visiting Professor of Practice, Oxford University; Dean Emerita of The Fletcher School at Tufts University
Martin Lees
Chair, OECD-IIASA Strategic Partnership on Systems Approaches
Mariana Mazzucato
Professor of the Economics of Innovation and Public Value, University College London
Ann Mettler
Vice President, Europe, Breakthrough Energy
Helen Mountford
President and CEO, ClimateWorks Foundation
Lord Nicholas Stern
IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government, London School of Economics
Hans-Jörn Weddige
Group Coordinator Energy, Climate and Environment Policies, ThyssenKrupp
Ji Zou
CEO and President, Energy Foundation China
Programme outputs
See all
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Report
A Territorial Approach to Climate Action and Resilience
6 December 2023
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Working paper
Building systemic climate resilience in cities
30 October 2023
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Working paper
Public finance resilience in the transition towards carbon neutrality
2 June 2023
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Report
Climate Tipping Points
2 December 2022
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