Pricing Agricultural Emissions and Rewarding Climate Action in the Agri-food Value Chain

The study was commissioned by the Commission’s Directorate General for Climate Action, and undertaken by Trinomics and its partners the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) and Ecologic, together with the Austrian Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt) and consultancy Carbon Counts. It responds to a 2021 report by the European Court of Auditors, which recommended that the Commission should “assess the potential of applying the polluter-pays principle to agricultural emissions, and reward farmers for long-term carbon removals”.  The study aims to investigate possible ways to price GHG emissions from agricultural activities along the agri-food value chain and to explore how this can be accompanied by providing farmers and other landowners with financial incentives for climate action and carbon farming.