Interactions of global climate institutions with national energy policies

Achieving global greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation goals will rest heavily on the performance of national climate and energy policies in Asia. This chapter surveys the climate policy landscape in China, India, Japan and Indonesia to understand the prospects of reaching globally shared climate goals. The survey links the effects of milestone climate and energy policy reforms to key emission drivers identified through a decomposition analysis in each of the four case study countries. Beyond contributing 40% of the world’s CO₂ emissions, these countries are selected to argue a more general point. Although the four countries are formulating policies due to an expanding interest in mitigating climate change, targeted sectors and regulatory approaches differ owing to variations in development levels, resource endowments and policymaking institutions. The chapter therefore illustrates that in the era when climate change is becoming a global imperative, policies will reflect interactions between international agreements pushing for climate policy convergence and national institutional architectures pulling responses in divergent directions.