1. Financial reporting,
sustainability information and
assurance
Paris Collaborative on Green Budgeting
Peter Welch
Senior Advisor, OECD
Paris,18 April 2023 Photo by Kelly:
https://www.pexels.com/photo/to
p-view-photo-of-solar-panels-

2. Are we on track? According to the European Environment Agency
Greenhouse gas emissions Member State targets
2
The EU met its 2020 targets on greenhouse gas emissions…

3. 3
The EU added a fourth 20 % target: using 20 % of the budget for climate action
Most of the discrepancy related to agriculture
To a significant extent, this involved tagging existing spending programmes with a potential climate impact
There is a political decision that 30 % of the EU
agricultural budget is to be used for “Greening”.
This does not lead to a commensurate change in
behaviour…
Areas of natural constraint v wetlands
Contributions of MSs
Spending v commitments v budgets

4. 4
Different approaches
The ECA benchmarked EU
approaches to tagging against
some national systems – notably
France.
It found areas where France
performed its assessment of climate
impact better.
These differences explain a small
part of the overall discrepancy
between the EC and ECA
quantification of the climate share of
the EU budget.

5. 5
The EEA gives a great deal of the credit to the ETS…
> Achievements in GHG emissions reductions since 2005 vary
at the sectoral level. Emissions in the EU-27 covered by the
EU Emissions Trading System (ETS), which mainly covers
the energy supply and industry sectors, were 37% below
2005 levels in 2021.
This is not a spending
measure – tagging will not
cover it…

6. 6
IPCC estimates
If Parliamentary
time is the metric,
there is really no
debate…
According to the IPCC

7. 7
IPCC extract: cost-efficiency
Are we financing the right activities?

8. Challenges and conclusions
> Would it be helpful to have more transparency on
Green taxes?
> Can we afford to tag spending as green where it
has a small impact on carbon emissions?
> How will climate change affect public sector
assets?
> How do we coordinate the roles of account
preparers, environmental agencies and
statisticians?
Challenges Conclusions
8
There are lessons to be learned in terms of
measuring the buck…
…but we really need to measure the bang
…and answer the question “are we on
track?”