Can Green Transition Only Thrive with Price Stability?

Ginn, William and Saadaoui, Jamel and Salachas, Evangelos (2025): Can Green Transition Only Thrive with Price Stability?

Abstract

We investigate how the European Central Bank (ECB) and the US Federal Reserve (Fed) re-spond to climate-related shocks, assessing whether the green transition can advance without compromising price stability. Using data from 2000 to 2025 and employing time-varying local projection (TVP-LP) models, we examine the monetary policy reactions to both physical and transition climate risks. Our results show that physical shocks, such as extreme weather events and natural disasters, exert stronger and more inflationary effects on monetary policy than tran-sition shocks related to decarbonization and climate policy. The ECB systematically tightens policy in response to physical shocks, viewing them as supply-side disturbances that threaten price stability, while the Fed’s response is more state-dependent and event-driven, loosening policy during crises like Hurricane Katrina but tightening in the post-COVID inflationary peri-od. For transition risks, both central banks show subdued reactions until 2015, after which the ECB increasingly interprets them as inflationary, whereas the Fed remains more cautious and output oriented. A one standard deviation physical risk shock raises the shadow rate by about 30 bps in the EA and 20 bps in the US after 20 months. These findings reveal that climate shocks have become an integral part of monetary transmission, shaped by mandates and macro-economic context, underscoring the need for price stability to enable the green transition.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Climate Risks, Monetary Policy, ECB; Fed, Time-varying Local Projections, Price Stability.
• Subjects: E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics > E5 - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit > E52 - Monetary Policy; E - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics > E5 - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit > E58 - Central Banks and Their Policies; Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics ; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q5 - Environmental Economics > Q54 - Climate ; Natural Disasters and Their Management ; Global Warming; Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics ; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q5 - Environmental Economics > Q56 - Environment and Development ; Environment and Trade ; Sustainability ; Environmental Accounts and Accounting ; Environmental Equity ; Population Growth

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