University of Groningen student wins climate policy thesis prize

Job Taminiau, who recently graduated from the Master’s degree programme in Energy and Environmental Studies at the University of Groningen, has won the ‘CE Delft Scriptieprijs Klimaatbeleid’, a prize for the best Master’s thesis on climate policy worth EUR 2000. CE Delft is an independent research and advice bureau that specializes in innovative solutions for environmental problems.

In his thesis, Taminiau compares European Union climate policy with that of the United States and shows that the EU imposes many regulations and a great deal of legislation on its member states, while the US uses non-binding agreements between government and the business world. His analysis arrives at the conclusion that the EU’s approach is more effective than the American one. The thesis delves even deeper and explains that certain states in the US take a different approach than the federal one. This was what the jury appreciated, the finer detail which provides valuable extra information about different approaches and their effectiveness.

The aim and the subject were very clearly defined and dealt with, according to the jury. The description of the policies of the European Union and United States is good, the chosen empirical method worked out clearly and in detail in multiple graphs, and the thesis is very well presented. The subject is one that fits CE Delft well, as it is about independent research endeavouring to find effective policy that can be implemented, and that is technically sound, economically prudent and socially just. The winning thesis is entitled ‘Comparative analysis of climate change policy in a trans-Atlantic perspective – the implications of the level of governance regarding climate change mitigation effectiveness’.

This is the first time that the ‘CE Delft Scriptieprijs Klimaatbeleid’ has been awarded. The winner was chosen from entries from six universities, all of them theses that had gained a mark of 8 or higher on a scale of one to ten.