While the impact of the global climate change policy differs from industry to industry, its effect on economic development is clearly growing. Energy-intensive sectors (especially steel, cement and aluminium) and power generation sector are by nature most susceptible to the impacts of the "climate regime".
A difficult policy area, climate change measures must address the need for both environmental and economic efficiency. Because they are at the start of the value added chain, the sectors transfer the costs they pay for reducing greenhouse gas emissions on the entire economy. To address that, countries across the world are developing new industry specific climate policy instruments. Termed as the "sectoral approach" these concepts may be instrumental in shaping the future climate change policies. The benefits of sectoral cooperation with public and private sector collaboration include technology transfer and promotion of R&D.
The private sector is already working to promote intra-sectoral cooperation in an effort to share the workload in reducing greenhouse emissions. The initiatives launched in the steel, cement and aluminium sector form a good starting point for further development of cooperation with government support.