The economics of mitigating climate change: What can we know?

Rosen, Richard A.; Guenther, Edeltraud

doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2014.01.013

Cited by 93 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…We use that kind of stylized economic pathways to explore 'what-if' scenarios without making complex and debated [21][22][23] assumptions as it is done for integrated assessments. We hereby provide physically based estimates of negative emission requirements in the form of a table whose inputs are our two simple parameters: the starting year and the rate of decrease of the mitigation floor.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Negative emissions physically needed to keep global warming below 2 °C

Gasser¹,

Guivarch²,

Tachiiri³

et al. 2015

Nat Commun

315

218

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To limit global warming to o2°C we must reduce the net amount of CO 2 we release into the atmosphere, either by producing less CO 2 (conventional mitigation) or by capturing more CO 2 (negative emissions). Here, using state-of-the-art carbon-climate models, we quantify the trade-off between these two options in RCP2.6: an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenario likely to limit global warming below 2°C. In our best-case illustrative assumption of conventional mitigation, negative emissions of 0.5-3 Gt C (gigatonnes of carbon) per year and storage capacity of 50-250 Gt C are required. In our worst case, those requirements are 7-11 Gt C per year and 1,000-1,600 Gt C, respectively. Because these figures have not been shown to be feasible, we conclude that development of negative emission technologies should be accelerated, but also that conventional mitigation must remain a substantial part of any climate policy aiming at the 2-°C target.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Negative emissions physically needed to keep global warming below 2 °C

Gasser¹,

Guivarch²,

Tachiiri³

et al. 2015

Nat Commun

315

218

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Case studies of impacts and adaptive responses may shed light on dynamics and cultural values essential in place-based systems that are nonetheless difficult to encompass in quantitative regional-to-global-scale impact models (e.g., Moser and Hart 2015). As a third example, results dependent on technology assumptions may reflect optimism or pessimism about technology development, diffusion, and costs, even though the role of worldview can be hard to quantify (e.g., Rosen and Guenther 2015). As part of the key risk assessment, WGII AR5 authors applied expert judgment, through the IPCC drafting and review process, to make sense of such complexities.…”

Section: Features Of the Climate Challenge Emphasized In Key Risksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding and responding to danger from climate change: the role of key risks in the IPCC AR5

et al. 2016

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The IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) identifies key risks in a changing climate to inform judgments about danger from climate change and to empower responses. In this article, we introduce the innovations and implications of its approach, which extends analysis across sectors and regions, and consider relevance for future research and assessment. Across key risks in the AR5, we analyze the changing risk levels and potential for risk reduction over the next few decades, an era with some further committed warming, and in the second half of the 21st century and beyond, a longer-term era of climate options determined by the ambition of global mitigation. The key risk assessment underpins the IPCC's conclusion that increasing magnitudes of warming increase the likelihood of severe, pervasive, and irreversible impacts. Here, we emphasize central challenges in understanding and communicating risks. These features include the importance of complex interactions in shaping risks, the need for rigorous expert judgment in evaluating risks, and the centrality of values, perceptions, and goals in determining both risks and responses.Anthropogenic interference with the climate system is occurring (IPCC 2013). The impacts of climate changes that have already occurred are widespread and consequential, and with continued high emissions or even with ambitious mitigation, large and uncertain consequences will play out over long timeframes (IPCC 2014c). These conclusions are deeply rooted in scientific understanding assessed comprehensively by the IPCC. They also propel us to an assessment frontier: how can we inform solutions through innovative conceptualizations of the climate challenge in assessment?In this article, we provide an overview of one response to this question: the key risk approach applied across the Working Group II contribution to the IPCC's AR5 (WGII AR5). We discuss why the key risk approach was developed, how it works, and what it implies across sectors and regions, informing both research and assessment.

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“…The perspective is a little different, though: accounting for an externality, the BAU case should not be assumed optimal. When accounting for climate damages, one can theoretically consider an optimal BAU scenario that can be expected to lead to a worse result with the inclusion of climate change damages than without, and may therefore also have a worse result than a mitigation scenario that avoids these damages (see [20,21] and references therein for a short sketch of the issue and available literature).…”

Section: Mechanisms That Lead To Lower Cost (Or Even Net Benefit) Estmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Technical change: The representation of technical change in models as exogenous, endogenous, or as induced by policy, and its implications for the assessment of mitigation costs has been widely discussed in the literature (see, [20,26] for summaries and references therein for the literature). Let us emphasize here the mechanisms of learning-by-doing (e.g., [27,28]), and directed technical change [29]: Investment not only increases production via the direct effect of capital accumulation, but also via an indirect effect on producivity.…”

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confidence: 99%

Balance or Synergies between Environment and Economy—A Note on Model Structures

2016

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Abstract:The UN sustainable development goals contain environmental, economic, and social objectives. They may only be reached, or at least it would be easier to reach them, if instead of a trade-off between these objectives that implies a need for balancing them, there are synergies to be reaped. This paper discusses how the structures of economic models typically used in policy analysis influence whether win-win strategies for the environment and the economy can be conceptualised and analysed. With a focus on climate policy modelling, the paper points out how, by construction, commonly used model structures find mitigation costs rather than benefits. This paper describes mechanisms that, when added to these model structures, can bring win-win options into a model's solution horizon, and which provide a spectrum of alternative modelling approaches that allow for the identification of such options.

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The economics of mitigating climate change: What can we know?

Cited by 93 publications

References 7 publications

Negative emissions physically needed to keep global warming below 2 °C

Negative emissions physically needed to keep global warming below 2 °C

Understanding and responding to danger from climate change: the role of key risks in the IPCC AR5

Balance or Synergies between Environment and Economy—A Note on Model Structures

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