Tag: integrated assessment modelling

New CD-LINKS Research Forecasts High Emitting Countries to Suffer Economic Damages from Climate Change

Novel international study indicates actual cost of global warming will be highest for the three top emitting countries (China, India and US), and globally higher and more unequal than normally assumed. Among the authors, scientists from EIEE (European Institute on Economics and the Environment), the partnership between RFF (Resources for the Future), the energy and environmental economics think tank based in Washington DC, and member of the CD-LINKS consortium CMCC Foundation – Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change. The paper is published in the latest issue of Nature Climate Change.

For the first time, researchers have developed a data set quantifying what the social cost of carbon—the measure of the economic harm from carbon dioxide emissions—will be for each of the globe’s nearly 200 countries, and the results are surprising. The top 3 emitting countries – India, China and the US – have the most to lose from climate change. Gulf countries like Saudia Arabia also score very high.

The findings, led by an international team of scientists and which appear in Nature Climate Change, estimate country-level contributions to the social cost of carbon (SCC) using recent climate model projections, empirical climate-driven economic damage  estimations and socioeconomic forecasts. In addition to revealing that some counties are expected to suffer more than others from carbon emissions, they also show the global social cost of carbon is significantly higher than the one typically used.

Among the state-of-the-art contemporary estimates of SCC are those calculated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The latest figures range from $12 to $62 per metric ton of CO2 emitted by 2020; however the new data shows that SCC to be approximately $180–800 per ton of carbon emissions. What’s more, the country-level SCC for India, China, US and Saudia Arabia alone are estimated to be above $20 per ton – higher than the carbon prices of the European Trading System – the largest CO2 market in the world.

“We all know carbon dioxide released from burning fossil fuels affects people and ecosystems around the world, today and in the future; however these impacts are not included in market prices, creating an environmental externality whereby consumers of fossil fuel energy do not pay for and are unaware of the true costs of their consumption,” said lead author, UC San Diego assistant professor Kate Ricke. “Evaluating the economic cost associated with climate is valuable on a number of fronts, as these estimates are used to inform environmental regulation and rulemakings.”

In order to model the effects of CO2 emissions on country-level temperatures, the authors use an innovative approach by combining results from several climate and carbon cycle modelling experiments to capture the magnitude and geographic pattern of warming under different greenhouse gas emission trajectories, and the carbon-cycle and climate system response to carbon emissions.

Since carbon dioxide is a global pollutant, previous analysis has focused on the global social cost of carbon; however a country-by-country breakdown of the economic damage global warming will cause is important for various reasons.

“Our analysis demonstrates that the economic costs of climate change will be high in many countries, including ones like the US and Gulf Countries which traditionally have not taken leadership on climate policy” said Massimo Tavoni, Associate Prof. at Politecnico di Milano, Director of EIEE – European Institute on Economics and the Environment and an author of the study. “Moreover, 90% of the world countries will lose from climate, and these impacts will exacerbate global inequality and international tensions. Many countries have not yet recognised the risk posed by climate change. This study aims at filling this gap”.

The authors have harnessed the power of data science by generating hundreds of scenarios spanning socio-economic, climate, and impact uncertainties. This complex space has revealed many clear insights as well as many areas of uncertainty. “Although the ranking of world powers affected by climate change is robust across scenarios, the magnitude of the social cost of carbon is subject to considerable uncertainty” says Laurent Drouet, a senior scientist at EIEE, author of the study and developer of a visual interface which allows navigating the results (//country-level-scc.github.io/explorer/).

The authors noted mapping domestic impacts of climate change can help better understand the determinants of international cooperation. The nationally-determined architecture of the Paris climate agreement—and its vulnerability to changing national interests—is one important example.

Research leading to this paper has been partially supported by the European Research Council (ERC), through the project COBHAM, and the Horizon 2020 project CD-LINKS.

The text of this press release has been republished with permission from EIEE.

CD-LINKS Summer School on Integrated Assessment Models: A Tool for Science-Based Policy Making

In cooperation with CMCC, IIASA, and the support of EAERE, the CD-LINKS project is launching a Summer School aimed at providing advanced training for young international scholars on integrated assessment models. It will take place at the Palazzo Artigianelli, Venice, Italy, from 30 June to 6 July, 2019.

As environmental policy making becomes increasingly informed by model simulations, it becomes crucial for researchers involved in this science-to-policy dialogue to obtain a basic understanding of how such models work, how they are developed and how to interpret their output.

Objectives
The objective of the summer school is to create a community of young scholars from a broad range of disciplines, ranging from environmental and natural resource economists to energy engineers, physicists, system analysts and environmental scientists, interested in the topic of modelling human activities and the earth system in an integrated framework, commonly referred to as Integrated Assessment Modelling.

The school will cover the process of modelling the interactions between economic activities and the energy system, land use, forest and agriculture, water, and atmosphere, and whether and how these multi-dimensional implications could be aggregated or traded-off.

Topics

  • History of the Integrated Assessment modelling of human activities and the earth system
  • Past socio-demographic trends and implications for energy: future major trends
  • Overview of land use, agriculture and food
  • Overview of the modelling of impacts of climate change
  • Modelling Sustainable Development Goals: The expansion of Integrated Assessment Models and bringing everything back together
  • Integrated Assessment Model development and their use: three national experiences

Note: We received a record number of applications, and therefore only contacted candidates who were accepted to the program. All accepted candidates were notified as of  5th April 2019. Thank you again for your interest in the Summer School.  – CD-LINKS Consortium and Summer School Faculty.

Important dates

Application deadline: CLOSED

Announcement of accepted applicants: 5th April 2019

Summer school held: 30th June to 6th July 2019

Any questions contact: cd-links.summer-school(@)iiasa.ac.at

Clean power is not enough: More action in other sectors needed to meet Paris targets

CO2 emissions from non-electricity energy uses, such as industry, transport, and heating, are the greatest impediment to meeting the Paris climate targets, according to new research from an international team of scientists working on the CD-LINKS project.

Debates about the Paris climate targets often centre around electricity supply. Yet, even in a world of stringent climate policies and clean power generation, the remaining use of fossil fuels in industry, transport, and heating in buildings could still cause enough CO2emissions to endanger the climate targets agreed on by the international community. Published in Nature Climate Change, the new study, coauthored by IIASA researchers and led by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), is the first to focus specifically on the residual emissions from sectors that are not as easily decarbonised as power generation.

© bibiphoto / Shutterstock

© bibiphoto / Shutterstock

“We wanted to decipher what really makes the difference in terms of carbon budgets and residual emissions. To identify crucial decarbonisation bottlenecks towards 1.5-2°C stabilisation, we focused on the role of fossil fuel emissions that originate in industries like cement or steel making, fuel our transport sector from cars to freight to aviation and goes into heating our buildings,” says Shinichiro Fujimori, a researcher from the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) and Kyoto University in Japan. “These sectors are much more complicated to decarbonise than our energy supply, as there are no such obvious options available as wind and solar electricity generation.”

It is these activities that crucially determine how much CO2 will be emitted within this century, and how much the world will have to rely on negative emissions technologies if the climate targets are to be met.

The researchers find that for the 1.5°C temperature limit, negative emissions technologies might no longer be just an option, but a necessity. The Paris goal of keeping global warming well below 2°C and further pursuing to limit it to 1.5°C implies a remaining carbon budget of just 200 billion tons of CO2 until 2100, which is in stark contrast to the 4,000 billion tons of CO2 that would be emitted until 2100 if current trends continue. Mitigation efforts pledged so far are inadequate to reduce emissions sufficiently. This gives rise to concerns about the increasing reliance on uncertain and potentially risky technologies for so-called negative emissions technologies to remove greenhouse gases from the air, such as bioenergy plantations combined with carbon capture and storage (CCS).

“We found that even with enormous efforts by all countries, including early and substantial strengthening of the intended Nationally Determined Contributions (the NDCs), our calculations show that residual fossil carbon emissions will remain at about 1,000 Gigatons of CO2,” explains lead author Gunnar Luderer from PIK. “This seems to be a lower end of what can be achieved with even the most stringent climate policies, because much of the residual emissions are already locked-into the system due to existing infrastructures and dependencies on fossil fuels. To aim for the ambitious 1.5°C target for end-of-century warming would mean that an incredibly huge amount of at least 600 Gigatons of CO2 removal was required.”

The team of computer modelers from Europe, the US, and Japan used seven integrated assessment models to look at different climate change scenarios. Their study is the first to compare scenarios where stricter emissions reduction policies in line with the Paris climate targets are adopted, with scenarios where countries continue with the existing Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) set out as part of the Paris Agreement, which many agree are insufficient to meet the targets.

“Even if we start being serious about emissions reductions today, about 25 years’ worth of today’s emissions are still expected to be produced by the accumulated industrial, transport, and building infrastructure of the world. However, if we follow what countries have promised under the Paris Agreement and wait until after 2030 with serious emissions reductions, even more emissions will be locked in and the world will have to rely much stronger on CO2 removal technologies that remain unproven at scale,” says IIASA researcher Joeri Rogelj.

Not strengthening the NDCs before 2030 would not only increase near-term emissions, but would also hurt the longer-term emission reduction potentials as it locks in even more investments into fossil-based infrastructures, according to their study.

“Climate mitigation might be a complex challenge, but it boils down to quite simple math in the end: If the Paris targets are to be met, future CO2 emissions have to be kept within a finite budget,” says Elmar Kriegler from PIK, adding: “While it may still be difficult to determine the exact remaining CO2 budget for 1.5°C, one thing is very clear – ambitions to reduce fossil fuel emissions have to be ramped up substantially and soon to keep doors open to meet the Paris targets.”

Reference

Luderer G, Vrontisi Z, Bertram C, Edelenbosch OY, Pietzcker RC, Rogelj J, De Boer HS, Drouet L, et al. (2018) Residual fossil CO2 emissions in 1.5-2°C pathways. Nature Climate Change. DOI: 10.1038/s41558-018-0198-6 [pure.iiasa.ac.at/15340] 

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Programme FP7/2007-2013 under grant agreement no. 308329 (ADVANCE) as well as the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement no. 642147 (CD-LINKS). PIK also received support from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research as part of ENavi, one of the four Kopernikus Projects.

Text adapted from a press release by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Germany

Capacity building workshop, India, 22nd March

On 22nd March CD-LINKS held a capacity building workshop aimed at post-doctoral researchers and PhD students interested in integrated assessment modeling, systems analysis, and visualisation tools. About 20 people attended the event, who were from the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), IORA Ecological Solutions, and studying at TERI University, and were citizens of India and Nigeria.

Students listening to presentation at capacity building workshop / photo credit J. Callen

Presentations were from invited experts participating in the CD-LINKS project. One session of the workshop was focused on integrated assessment modelling methodology. The second session was focused on the analysis of data and how to present modelling results in a more engaging and useful format.

At the end of the workshop a discussion on communicating results to policy and decision makers took place. During the discussion it was emphasised to the students that the purpose of a model is to explain the order of magnitude and dynamics of a system, but it is not a crystal ball for predicting the future and this should be communicated to policy/ decision makers. The presenters of the course also recommended that the students to undertake sensitivity analysis and model comparison to ensure the robustness of their results.

The presentations are available to download:

The next capacity building workshop is planned for March 2019 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.