ABSTRACT
Concerns for economic development have always been central to debates on the impact of climate change policy. In the period that led to the Paris Climate Summit in December 2015, climate change policy became predominantly framed as being positive for business and even necessary for economic growth. This was a fundamental shift from the framing of climate policy as an economic burden to distribute, which had dominated the international negotiations until the Copenhagen Summit in 2009. Both the European Union (EU) and Chinese governments took an active part in the construction of this new paradigm, which laid down the ideational foundations of the adoption of the Paris Agreement. The Paris Conference of the Parties (COP) and the follow-up Marrakech COP in 2016 1 have promoted the vision of a future of high-tech, low-carbon prosperity, actively supported by substantial parts of the business community. Governments and businesses have proclaimed that they want to bring about a global low-carbon industrial revolution to invigorate global growth. This new framing interrogates the relationship between industrial policy and global multilateral climate governance, which was endorsed in the Paris Agreement as structurally decentralised, networked and based on individual countries’ plans.
