Comparing the Effects of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on Global Warming

Eckaus, Richard S.

doi:10.5547/issn0195-6574-ej-vol13-no1-2

Cited by 62 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Two approaches to this problem prevail in the economic literature. One, which we shall adopt, is the cost-effective approach, where some pre-specified climate constraint is taken as given, and costs subject to that constraint are minimized (Eckaus, 1992;Michaelis, 1992;Aaheim, 1999;Manne and Richels, 2001;and O'Neill, 2003). The other, the so-called costbenefit approach, determines the optimal mix of abatement of various gases based on the balancing of climate damages and abatement costs (see Fuglestvedt et al, 2003 for an overview of relevant studies).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Costs Savings of a Flexible Multi-Gas Climate Policy

Aaheim¹,

Fuglestvedt²,

Godal³

2006

The Energy Journal

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Current climate policies are based on the use of Global Warming Potentials (GWPs) to compare emissions of various greenhouse gases. Yet, from an economic point of view, more efficient methods exist. We compare the potential costs of implementing some long-term goal for stabilization of the climate in three cases: Reduce CO2 emissions only, reduce emissions of the four greenhouse gases CO2, CH4, N2O and SF6 using the standard IPCC GWPs and reduce emissions of the same four gases with efficient and flexible, time dependent metrics. A multi-gas approach with GWPs reduces the costs by 8 percent when compared with CO2 reductions only, whereas the costs may be reduced by an additional 2 percent if using flexible metrics. If compared with the use of GWPs, we find that efficient weights increase the cost savings of including non-CO2 gases in climate policy by 15-40%, depending on the stabilization goal.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Costs Savings of a Flexible Multi-Gas Climate Policy

Aaheim¹,

Fuglestvedt²,

Godal³

2006

The Energy Journal

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“…The economic critique has mainly focused on the fact that GWPs do not consider the expected damages from climate change, what policy target should be met or abatement costs, and that the GWP values are sensitive to an arbitrarily chosen time horizon (O'Neill, 2003;Reilly and Richards, 1993;Schmalensee, 1993;Eckaus, 1992). The scientific critique has pointed to the choice of indicator (i.e.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Cost of Using Global Warming Potentials: Analysing the Trade off Between CO2, CH4 and N2O

2006

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Abstract. The metric governing the trade-off between different greenhouse gases in the Kyoto Protocol, the Global Warming Potentials (GWPs), has received ample critique from both scientific and economic points of view. Here we use an integrated climate-economic optimization model to estimate the cost-effective trade-off between CO 2 , CH 4 and N 2 O when meeting a temperature stabilization target. We then estimate the increased cost from using GWPs when meeting the same temperature target. Although the efficient valuation of the gases differs significantly from their respective GWPs, the potential economic benefit of valuing them in a more correct way amounts to 3.8 percent of the overall costs of meeting the temperature stabilization target in the base case. In absolute value, this corresponds to an additional net present value cost of US$ 2000 100 billion. To corroborate our findings we perform a Monte Carlo-analysis where several key parameters are randomly varied simultaneously. The result from this exercise shows that our main result is robust to a wide range of changes in the key parameter values, giving a median economic loss from using GWPs of 4.2 percent.

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“…To address these shortcomings of GWPs, social scientists, beginning perhaps with Nordhaus [1] and continuing with Eckhaus, Schmalensee, Manne and Richels [20][21][22] among the more influential contributors, have developed various dynamic optimisation models. The objectives and constraints vary across models, but one generic model would seek to minimise (possibly discounted) greenhouse gas emissions growth subject to constraints on the availability of resources.…”

Section: The Social Scientistsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A New Composite Index for Greenhouse Gases: Climate Science Meets Social Science

Edmonds

Lovell

2017

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Global greenhouse gas emissions have increased at a rate of nearly 2% per year since 1970, and the rate of increase has been increasing. The contribution of greenhouse gases to global warming constitutes an environmental management challenge requiring interdisciplinary effort and international cooperation. In an effort to meet this challenge, the Kyoto Protocol imposes limits on aggregate CO 2 -equivalent emissions of four greenhouse gases, although it permits countries to trade off one gas for another at specified rates. This requires a definition of trade-off rates, which the Protocol specifies as Global Warming Potentials, although these have been controversial since their introduction. The primary source of concern has been the constancy of the trade-off rates, both across countries and through time. We propose a new composite index that allows freely variable trade-off rates, thereby facilitating the design of efficient abatement policy. In a pair of exercises we compare our composite index with that used by the Protocol. In both exercises we reject the constancy of trade-off rates, although despite the significantly different weighting schemes we find a degree of concordance between the two greenhouse gas indices.

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Comparing the Effects of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on Global Warming

Cited by 62 publications

References 5 publications

Costs Savings of a Flexible Multi-Gas Climate Policy

Costs Savings of a Flexible Multi-Gas Climate Policy

The Cost of Using Global Warming Potentials: Analysing the Trade off Between CO2, CH4 and N2O

A New Composite Index for Greenhouse Gases: Climate Science Meets Social Science

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