A green COVID-19 recovery to save the climate and the economy

New research by Cameron Hepburn, Brian O’Callaghan, Nicholas Stern, Joseph Stiglitz and Dimitri Zenghelis suggests that international economic recovery from COVID-19 must be environmentally-conscious.

Their analysis of possible COVID-19 economic recovery packages shows the potential for strong alignment between the economy and the environment.  They review evidence suggesting that green projects create more jobs, deliver higher short-term returns per dollar spend and lead to increased long-term cost savings, when compared to traditional stimulus packages.

Examples include spending on building efficiency retrofitting, clean R&D spending,  and investment in education and training to address immediate unemployment from COVID-19 alongside structural employment opportunities from de-carbonisation. Meanwhile, unconditional airline bailouts performed the most poorly in terms of size and speed of economic as well as climate metrics.