Business interest in Swiss climate policy

Business interest associations play an important role in the decision making process of climate policy. In 2009, the revision of the Swiss CO2 law for designing post-2012 climate policy is at stake. This paper analyzes the positions and arguments of the Swiss business community on climate policy, combining cluster analysis with qualitative content analysis. As a main finding, we can observe gradual positioning between opponents and proponents of climate regulation. There is no solid business front opposing climate policy in Switzerland but different clusters and sub-clusters of firms and associations drawing a pluralist picture of business interest. The positions mainly base on rational behaviour assessing the respective industry’s costs and benefits of climate regulation as well as the exposure to climate change impacts. However, large business interest associations tend to overstate the expected costs resulting from climate regulation. For some cases, we find that firms are not represented appropriately by their business associations.