Sustainable greenhouse policies: the role of non-CO2 gases

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in JEL-Classification. Q 20.Abstract. This paper investigates the economic implications of a comprehensive approach to sustainable greenhouse policies that strives to stabilise the atmospheric concentration of the five major greenhouse gases at an ecologically determined threshold level. In a theoretical optimisation model conditions for an efficient allocation of abatement effort among pollutants and over time are derived. The model is empirically specified and adapted to a dynamic GAMS-algorithm. By various simulation runs for a time period of 200 years (1990 to 2190), the economics of greenhouse gas accumulation are explored. In particular, the long-run cost associated with the above stabilisation target are evaluated for two different policy scenarios: a comprehensive approach that covers all major greenhouse gases simultaneously and a 'piecemeal approach' that is limited to reducing CO 2 or a selected subset of greenhouse gases, respectively. By comparing the simulation results, the potential losses in efficiency associated with a piecemeal approach are evaluated, and some policy implications are discussed.

Costs Savings of a Flexible Multi-Gas Climate Policy

“…By including non-CO 2 gases and using GWPs, the costs of climate policy decrease only by around 10%. This is about twice as much as Michaelis (1999) found using a similar but simpler model. Second, the additional cost savings from the flexible refinement as compared to using fixed GWPs is about 2%, which is very similar to what reported by O'Neill (2003).…”

“…in the calculations (see e.g Michaelis, 1999). It is, however, unclear whether possible rate dependent impacts are well represented by such a function, especially within an optimization model.…”

A unifying framework for metrics for aggregating the climate effect of different emissions

“…Note that such reasoning would not hold if equation (10) had a constraint on the rate of warming, rather than its level. 19 When the constraint does not bind, the ratio of marginal costs in the least-cost solution can be expressed as a purely physical ratio [51]. 20 Reference [33] derives a variation of the GTP called the cost-effective temperature potential (CETP) that assumes the shadow price is constant once the constraint is reached, and therefore it also drops out of that metric.…”

The Global Warming Potential Paradox: Implications for the Design of Climate Policy

“…It has been confirmed by a number of studies, which, following up on the aforementioned pioneering works, proposed alternative indices (Kandlikar, 1995;Kandlikar, 1996;Hammit et al, 1996;Bradford and Keller, 2000;Manne and Richels, 2001;Shine et al, 2005) or provided empirical assessments of the concept's implications (Michaelis, 1999;Smith and Wigley, 2000;O'Neil, 2000;Tol et al, 2003;O'Neil, 2003;Kurosawa, 2004;Sarofim et al, 2005). See Fuglestvedt et al (2003) for a comprehensive review.…”