Skip to main content
European Commission logo
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
CORDIS Web 30th anniversary CORDIS Web 30th anniversary

Article Category

Content archived on 2023-03-23

Article available in the following languages:

EN

Woods Hole Research Center, top "climate think tank" of 2013

The International Center for Climate Governance (ICCG) has published the results of its 2013 "Climate Think Tank Ranking" of the most cutting-edge institutions working in the field of climate change economics and policy.

ICCG is pleased to announce that its highest-rated think tank is the Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC), a private, non-profit environmental research organization based in Falmouth, Massachusetts (USA). Second comes the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3) based in Bilbao (Spain), who was ranked first a year ago. Third is the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) based in Brussels (Belgium). This second edition of ICCG's Climate Think Tank Ranking has incorporated important methodological improvements enabling it to assess more than 200 think tanks specialized in the field of climate change economics and policy, which figured in the 2013 Think Tank Map observatory as of December 10, 2013. The top think tank was announced on June 29th by ICCG Director Carlo Carraro during the plenary session on "Challenges and Policies for a Low Carbon Future" of the Fifth World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economists (Istanbul, Turkey, June 28 - July 2, 2014). The award ceremony will be held at ICCG headquarters on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, in October 2014. The Woods Hole Research Center will be awarded a valuable artistic Murano glass item crafted by a famous Murano Master. The ranking is based on solid quantitative methodological and analytical data. Think tanks were assessed on a set of 15 indicators structured in three main pillars: Activities, Publications and Dissemination. The Activities pillar measures the influence of research findings on policy, managerial and professional practices, social behavior or public discourse; the Publication pillar measures the research output of a think tank in terms of peer-reviewed publications (quantity and quality) and working paper/reports/policy briefs; the Dissemination pillar was a new criterion in this second edition, which ICCG added in recognition of the importance for think tanks to disseminate their research through international events and web channels. Two different rankings were built: the Standardized Ranking and the Absolute Ranking. The Standardized Ranking standardized all the think tank activity outputs in 2013 by the number of their researchers, following the criteria of per capita productivity. The Absolute Ranking considered all the think tank activity outputs produced in 2013 in absolute terms (the top think tank in the absolute ranking is the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace (IPSL), based in Paris, second comes the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), based in Washington and New York). See the attached results of both rankings. ICCG's 2013 Climate Think Tank Award to the highest impact think tank working on climate change science, economics and policy was granted, on the basis of Standardized Ranking, to the Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC). The full methodological report is downloadable at this link: http://www.thinktankmap.org/Page.aspx?Name=Documents For further information: ranking@thinktankmap.org / +39.(0)41 2700459. About the Think Tank Map The Think Tank Map observatory is a project developed by the International Center for Climate Governance (ICCG). It was launched in 2011 as an instrument for providing a complete overview of active think tanks in the field of climate change economics and policy. The Think Tank Map is currently composed of 295 (independent and university affiliated) think tanks worldwide. The Think Tank Map is not only a showcase for every organization working on climate change economics and policy, but it is also a catalyst for new cooperation opportunities, allowing stakeholders, researchers, institutions, and the media to be informed on all relevant activities and to engage in mutually beneficial partnerships. About ICCG The International Center for Climate Governance (ICCG) was founded in 2009 as a joint initiative of the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM) and the Fondazione Giorgio Cini. ICCG is now an internationally renowned centre whose research activities focus on the design of climate policy and governance. ICCG’s mission is to disseminate, to policy-makers and the general public at the local, national and international level, science-based and socio-economic research in the field of climate change mitigation and adaptation. It pursues this mission through interdisciplinary activities, as well as the elaboration of analyses of climate and energy policy and the definition of optimal governance models for controlling climate change. ICCG, in collaboration with the Euro-Mediterranean Centre on Climate Change (CMCC), has developed three observatories: the Think Tank Map (TTMap), the Climate Policy Watcher (CPW) and the Best Climate Practices (BCP), which are on-line tools that provide updated information and in-depth analysis on initiatives related to climate change economics and policy.

Countries

Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czechia, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Spain, Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, United Kingdom