PMI Regional Programs
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Program Overview
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Countries across Europe and Central Asia (ECA) face growing pressure to decarbonize amid persistent development challenges, including high energy intensity, fiscal constraints, exposure to energy price shocks, air pollution, and limited access to climate finance. While interest in explicit carbon pricing is increasing—driven partly by EU accession processes and the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM)—many countries continue to rely on fragmented and often distortionary implicit carbon pricing through fuel taxes, subsidies, and regulated prices. Institutional capacity, analytical tools, and coordinated policy frameworks to design and implement credible carbon pricing remain uneven across the region, delaying reforms and limiting the ability of governments to use carbon pricing as a development, competitiveness, and revenue instrument.
Objectives & Activities
The objective of the ECA PMI Regional Program is to support country progress on carbon pricing implementation by delivering shared regional solutions to common implementation challenges. The Regional Program will support governments in evaluating, designing, and sequencing explicit carbon pricing policies that align with development objectives such as growth, fiscal sustainability, competitiveness, energy security, and access to climate finance, while also responding to external pressures such as CBAM and evolving EU climate frameworks. By addressing cross-cutting regional issues collectively, the program aims to strengthen peer learning, reduce duplication of effort, and help countries move more efficiently from policy design toward implementation.
Activities
The PMI Regional Program is structured around two complementary activities:
- A capacity building stream delivers regional, subregional, and country level trainings to strengthen policymakers’ understanding of carbon pricing, CBAM exposure, MRV requirements, and linkages with international carbon markets, supported by applied analytical tools and peer learning.
- A technical assistance stream provides targeted country level and regional analytics to support early stage policy formulation, including assessments of carbon pricing options, CBAM exposure, total carbon prices, MRV gaps, and strategies for integrating carbon pricing with carbon crediting.
Together, these components are designed to create a pipeline from shared learning to concrete policy action and deeper country engagement.