Improving Climate Policies through Better Assessment and Public Acceptance Inclusion

Achieving climate neutrality in the EU and globally requires ambitious and effective climate targets and the ability to implement widely accepted policies. The road to net-zero is hindered by fragmented policymaking, uneven public support, and limited tools to assess climate action’s broader social and political implications. Many existing assessments focus narrowly on effectiveness, overlooking critical dimensions like feasibility and public perception.

In this context, the Horizon Europe project CAPABLE aims to provide recommendations for designing socially and economically acceptable climate policy measures for 2030 and beyond. CAPABLE draws on economics, sociology, political science and psychology to capture climate policy’s multidimensional outcomes and implications.

This CAPABLE capacity-building workshop will share project findings for effective and acceptable climate policies at the European level. Organised online by the European University Institute (EUI) with contributions from leading experts in the CAPABLE consortium, it will focus on climate policies, their effectiveness and their acceptability. The lectures will be complemented with extensive question-and-answer sessions and some testimonials from practitioners.

Target audience:

Policymakers from EU institutions, national ministries, environmental agencies, industry executives, consultants, researchers and NGOs.

Learning outcomes:

• Assess the effectiveness of the current and future EU climate policies
• Grasp the potential and limits of different policy assessment methods
• Understand determinants and factors that influence the acceptability of climate policies, and propose policy design features to make policies acceptable
• Have an overview of the acceptability of newly implemented and potential climate policies, including the Fit for 55

Draft programme:

09:00 – 09:10 | Welcome & Introduction

09:10 – 10:40 | Module 1: EU Climate Policies and Their Effectiveness

• Introduction to EU Climate Policies (Simone Borghesi, EUI)
• Policy Assessment: What Works? (Kai Lessmann and Jan Minx, PIK and Marie Raude, EUI)

10:40 – 10:55 | Coffee Break

10:55 – 12:20 | Module 2: Acceptability of Climate Policies

• Determinants of Public Acceptance of Climate Policies: A Multi-disciplinary Overview (Mary Sanford, CMCC/EIEE)
• Social Acceptability and Feasibility of Fit-For-55 Policies (Keith Smith, ETH)

12:20 – 12:45 | Testimonial on science for European climate policies

• Vicky Pollard, DG Climate Action, European Commission

12:45 – 12:50 | Conclusions

A second capacity-building workshop is scheduled on Thursday 27 November afternoon with a focus on climate policies at the local level. Click here to learn more about it.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101056891.