DELIVERING THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY A TOOLKIT FOR POLICYMAKERS

82 • DELIVERING THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY – A TOOLKIT FOR POLICYMAKERS
could be further investigated. Academics might develop ways to model and measure
the circular economy and perspectives on the competitive implications and
transition challenges facing different sectors.
• Sector working groups could be set up to locate circular opportunities for
businesses and consumers. Industry associations could contribute greatly by investigating
profitable opportunities and sharing knowledge of circular business
models in their industry. They could also explore opportunities to collaborate on
things like material specifications and recycling systems to improve volume, quality
and cost in secondary resource markets. Government might play a facilitating
role.
2.3.3 Prioritise, package and sequence policy options
Objective:
End product:
Prioritise the sector-specific policy options identified in Section
2.2.5; bring them together as required in coherent policy packages;
and sequence over time the potential implementation of these policy
packages as well as the economy-wide policy options identified in
Section 2.3.2
A set of policy packages (typically one per circular economy
opportunity); an implementation roadmap for both potential sectorspecific
policy packages and economy-wide policy options
The outcome a policymaker can expect by working through the steps of this toolkit is
a set of potential policy options to address the barriers in the identified sector-specific
circular economy opportunities, as well as a set of potential economy-wide policy
options. This section aims to provide overarching thoughts on next steps regarding
prioritisation, packaging and sequencing of policy options. It does not attempt to
provide a detailed overview, as these next steps are already laid out in other publications
such as, for example, the European Commission’s impact assessment guidelines. 103
Prioritising
An initial mapping of policy interventions to barriers (see Section 2.2.5) can result in a
large number of policy options. It can be useful as a first step to apply a high-level policy
impact and cost assessment. Other factors such as time to implementation, time to
achieve outcome, and distributional effects can also be taken into account. Such a highlevel
qualitative prioritisation can provide input for the subsequent due diligence and
impact assessment/cost-benefit analysis in the policymaking process.
An example of such a prioritisation exercise for the ‘Value capture in cascading biorefineries’
opportunity in the Danish pilot is found in Figure 22. Such a matrix can be the
result of an analytical exercise or can be made more directly based on expert input. To
structure this initial prioritisation, it is worthwhile breaking down impact and cost into
their component parts:
• The impact of a policy option
o
o
Importance of the barrier it aims to overcome (as assessed in Section
2.2.4), assigning a weight to each of the barrier ‘colours’ (critical/very
important/important)
Effectiveness of the identified policy options at overcoming the barriers
• The cost of a policy option
o
o
Administrative and transaction costs
Wider economic costs
103 European Commission, Impact Assessment Guidelines (and Annexes) (2009).