Identifying Products with Climate and Development Benefits for an Environmental Goods Agreement

caling-up renewable energy as a means to address climate change will require addressing impediments to the global diffusion of sustainable energy goods and services. Trade policy can contribute in this regard by lowering barriers to market access for sustainable energy goods and services. In 2012, APEC members took a decisive step in agreeing to voluntarily lower import duties to no more than 5 per cent on a set of 54 product groups of environmental goods, including a number of clean energy goods and services.This paper presents an overview of trade among the G14 as well as key non-G14 economies in the 54 product sub-categories included in the APEC list. It also analyses additional climate-related products, derived largely from earlier ICTSD research that could potentially be added for subsequent inclusion in the EGA. The paper presents a preliminary analysis of trade flows and tariffs for this non-exhaustive list of climate-relevant products and components. Finally, it puts forward proposals on measures needed to make the EGA negotiations more transparent and facilitate better estimates of global trade flows in environmental goods.