Climate policy assessments often appear to lack a multi-analytical approach capable of considering different dimensions of sustainability during the policy design. This paper presents an integrated assessment framework of climate policy instrument interactions by reconciling environmental, socio-economic, political and institutional aspects for the initial stage of policy development. Selected interacting policy instruments are categorised into their policy design characteristics, referring to parameters that describe the institutional context of each instrument. Criteria covering specific environmental, socio–political, macroeconomic, financial and technological objectives for assessing the policy instruments are identified and selected. Complementarities and overlaps between different combinations of instruments are identified. These affect subsequently the likely values of policy instruments against the evaluation criteria. By applying an interactive weighting method, policymakers are able to assign weights on the criteria expressing their perceptions and objectives. An overall assessment of combined instruments from these steps is therefore determined based on the input from policymakers. The developed framework provides a transparent tool to stakeholders capable of highlighting potential synergies and conflicts between environmental, socio-economic, political and technological criteria during the stage of climate policies design.
