Comparing the European Union Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, the Clean Competition Act, and the Foreign Pollution Fee Act Milan Elkerbout, Ray Kopp, and Kevin Rennert Report 23-18 December 2023 Comparing the European Union Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, the Clean Competition Act, and the Foreign Pollution Fee Act A About the Authors Milan Elkerbout is a fellow at RFF working on international climate policy and on European climate policies to decarbonize energy-intensive industries in particular. He has worked extensively on the European Union’s emissions trading system (EU ETS), its various reforms, and its role in decarbonizing industry. Elkerbout has led policy research on green steel, carbon capture and carbon removals, carbon leakage, climate clubs, as well as the EU’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, energy crisis, and US Inflation Reduction Act. He has also written on industrial and innovation policy, the trade-climate policy nexus, and supranational governance, and has worked with policymakers, industry, civil society, and academia. Elkerbout has a background in European political economy. Between 2014 and 2023, he was working for CEPS, a policy think tank in Brussels, as a research fellow and head of its climate program. From spring 2019, he spent a year as a visiting fellow at IVL Stockholm as part of the Mistra Carbon Exit research program. Raymond Kopp is a senior fellow at Resources for the Future (RFF). He holds PhD and MA degrees in economics and an undergraduate degree in finance. He has been a member of the RFF research staff since 1977 and has held a variety of management positions within the institution. Kopp’s interest in environmental policy began in the late 1970s, when he developed techniques to measure the effect of pollution control regulations on the economic efficiency of steam electric power generation. He then led the first examination of the cost of major U.S. environmental regulations in a full, general equilibrium, dynamic context by using an approach that is now widely accepted as state-of-the-art in cost-benefit analysis. During his career Kopp has specialized in the analysis of environmental and natural resource issues with a focus on federal regulatory activity. He is an expert in techniques of assigning value to environmental and natural resources that do not have market prices, which is fundamental to cost-benefit analysis and the assessment of damages to natural resources. Kopp’s current research interests focus on the design of domestic and international polices to combat climate change. Kevin Rennert is a fellow at RFF, where he first joined as a visiting fellow in 2017. Prior to his arrival at RFF, Rennert served as deputy associate administrator for the Office of Policy at the US Environmental Protection Agency. Leading up to his appointment in the Office of Policy, he worked as senior advisor on Energy for the Senate Finance Committee. In that role, Rennert advised the committee’s Chairman, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), on a wide range of topics related to clean energy, efficiency, and policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. From 2008 to 2014, he worked on energy and climate legislation as senior professional staff for the Senate Energy Committee. In that capacity, Rennert led the development of the Clean Energy Standard Act of 2012 (S. 2146), a presidential priority that would use market mechanisms to double the amount of electricity generated in the US from low or zero carbon sources by 2035. In 2010 and 2011, Rennert also taught graduate courses in energy policy as adjunct faculty in the Department of Strategic Management and Public Policy at George Washington University. Resources for the Future i About RFF Resources for the Future (RFF) is an independent, nonprofit research institution in Washington, DC. Its mission is to improve environmental, energy, and natural resource decisions through impartial economic research and policy engagement. RFF is committed to being the most widely trusted source of research insights and policy solutions leading to a healthy environment and a thriving economy. The views expressed here are those of the individual authors and may differ from those of other RFF experts, its officers, or its directors. Sharing Our Work Our work is available for sharing and adaptation under an AttributionNonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license. You can copy and redistribute our material in any medium or fo