CICERO Research Archive (CICERO Senter for klimaforskning)
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Driving forces in energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in east and south coastal China: commonality and variations
Get PDFAs the world's top carbon dioxide emitter, China is expected to reach its emissions peak by 2030. East and south coastal China contribute nearly one-third of the emissions in China, and therefore play a critical role in achieving the national goal of emission control. This study analyzes the driving forces of east and south coastal China's energy-related emissions and their provincial characteristics by applying the logarithmic mean divisia index method. The emissions in this region were found to double from 2000 to 2012, along with three and twofold increase in the economy and energy consumption. The result suggests a persistent connection between economic growth and emission even in this socioeconomically advanced region. The per capita emissions are lower than most regions of China at a given economic level, and are expected to be lower than select developed nations when reaching their corresponding economic levels. Energy efficiency has been the leading force in reducing emission growth, and we differentiate the provinces into three distinct low-carbon developmental stages. There is no significant influence from either the economic or energy structure change, indicating great emission reduction potential from structure decarbonization especially when compared to advanced nations. These results suggest that the dual effort of enhancing energy efficiency and decarbonizing the economic and energy structure would probably serve the goal of total emission control more effectively and efficiently, and factor driven emission reduction strategies are needed in these geographically and socioeconomically similar regions. The study expands on the current knowledge by analyzing the interprovincial commonality and variation of this pilot region in China, and therefore provides a stepwise view of the emission driving forces for emerging economies.submittedVersio
Market and Non-market Policies for Renewable Energy Diffusion: A Unifying Framework and Empirical Evidence from China’s Wind Power Sector
Get PDFWe provide a comprehensive framework of analyzing the diffusion process of renewable technology, incorporating epidemic and pecuniary effects. Relying on a panel dataset consisting of information from 1207 CDM wind projects in thirty provinces over the period 2004-2011, we find strong evidence on the dominant role of the epidemic effect and new evidence on pecuniary effects that generate a diminishing marginal effect of profitability in inducing technology adoption. Our numerical simulation demonstrates that the epidemic effect can play a quantitatively important role in the spread of renewable energy technology and markedly enhance the optimal social welfare. Our findings convey important policy implications for regulators when choosing policy instruments to enhance the diffusion and adoption of clean technology. Price instruments should be complemented by a wide range of non-market instruments to address non-market barriers. Policy interventions should be taken using a systemic approach.publishedVersio
Taxis and crowd-taxis: sharing as a private activity and public concern
Get PDFhe sharing economy has generated interest among economists for its customer focus and potential to enhance competition. However, it has also caused uproar in industries which have felt competitive pressure, for example among the established stakeholders in the taxi industry. While regulations currently impose considerable costs on the taxi industry, they do not cover virtual transport innovations such as Uber. The lack of a level playing field between taxis and such ‘crowd-taxis’ has generated media attention and conflict. Taxi owners worry about decreasing revenues and taxi drivers about poor working conditions. Other concerns are related to poor transport preparedness, accessibility issues, quality assurance and tax evasion. Despite considerable media attention, there has so far been a lack of scholarly literature addressing the consequences of the sharing economy in the transport sector. Focusing on the Norwegian taxi market, we argue that crowd-taxis will likely produce a range of unanticipated effects, necessitating regulation. For example, crowd-taxis may contribute to a loss of transport preparedness in rural areas. The findings are based on first and secondary data and 19 interviews. Citation & publishing informationTaxis and crowd-taxis: sharing as a private activity and public concernpublishedVersio
Local biomass burning is a dominant cause of the observed precipitation reduction in southern Africa
Get PDFObservations indicate a precipitation decline over large parts of southern Africa since the 1950s. Concurrently, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols have increased due to anthropogenic activities. Here we show that local black carbon and organic carbon aerosol emissions from biomass burning activities are a main cause of the observed decline in southern African dry season precipitation over the last century. Near the main biomass burning regions, global and regional modelling indicates precipitation decreases of 20–30%, with large spatial variability. Increasing global CO2 concentrations further contribute to precipitation reductions, somewhat less in magnitude but covering a larger area. Whereas precipitation changes from increased CO2 are driven by large-scale circulation changes, the increase in biomass burning aerosols causes local drying of the atmosphere. This study illustrates that reducing local biomass burning aerosol emissions may be a useful way to mitigate reduced rainfall in the region.publishedVersio
Green Bonds and Environmental Integrity: Insights from CICERO Second Opinions
Get PDFThis policy note shares insights from CICERO's experience in producing over 60 second opinions. Insights on the environmental integrity of green bonds include: 1) Management that is aligned for climate risk can give greater confidence in a green bond, 2) Internal dialogue with environmental experts can benefit from issuing a green bond and obtaining a second opinion, and 3) Best practice is emerging for certain project types. Issuers are more often incorporating life cycle analysis to understand the full environmental impact of the projects they finance, e.g. in renewable energy projects, as well as of their corporate activities including supply chains and subcontractors. Sustainable buildings are more likely to include an energy efficiency target in addition to building certifications. Multilateral development banks and municipalities are more likely to include adaptation components in their green bonds. In some cases, environmental experts are gaining veto power in the project selection process. Regular reporting on green bond projects is becoming the norm, with increasing interest in working towards impact reporting
Predicting Paris: Multi-Method Approaches to Forecast the Outcomes of Global Climate Negotiations
Get PDFWe examine the negotiations held under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change in Paris, December 2015. Prior to these negotiations, there was considerable uncertainty about whether an agreement would be reached, particularly given that the world’s leaders failed to do so in the 2009 negotiations held in Copenhagen. Amid this uncertainty, we applied three different methods to predict the outcomes: an expert survey and two negotiation simulation models, namely the Exchange Model and the Predictioneer’s Game. After the event, these predictions were assessed against the coded texts that were agreed in Paris. The evidence suggests that combining experts’ predictions to reach a collective expert prediction makes for significantly more accurate predictions than individual experts’ predictions. The differences in the performance between the two different negotiation simulation models were not statistically significant.publishedVersio
Global and regional radiative forcing from 20 % reductions in BC, OC and SO4 - An HTAP2 multi-model study
Get PDFIn the Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollution Phase 2 (HTAP2) exercise, a range of global atmospheric general circulation and chemical transport models performed coordinated perturbation experiments with 20 % reductions in emissions of anthropogenic aerosols, or aerosol precursors, in a number of source regions. Here, we compare the resulting changes in the atmospheric load and vertically resolved profiles of black carbon (BC), organic aerosols (OA) and sulfate (SO4) from 10 models that include treatment of aerosols. We use a set of temporally, horizontally and vertically resolved profiles of aerosol forcing efficiency (AFE) to estimate the impact of emission changes in six major source regions on global radiative forcing (RF) pertaining to the direct aerosol effect, finding values between. 51.9 and 210.8 mW m−2 Tg−1 for BC, between −2.4 and −17.9 mW m−2 Tg−1 for OA and between −3.6 and −10.3 W m−2 Tg−1 for SO4. In most cases, the local influence dominates, but results show that mitigations in south and east Asia have substantial impacts on the radiative budget in all investigated receptor regions, especially for BC. In Russia and the Middle East, more than 80 % of the forcing for BC and OA is due to extra-regional emission reductions. Similarly, for North America, BC emissions control in east Asia is found to be more important than domestic mitigations, which is consistent with previous findings. Comparing fully resolved RF calculations to RF estimates based on vertically averaged AFE profiles allows us to quantify the importance of vertical resolution to RF estimates. We find that locally in the source regions, a 20 % emission reduction strengthens the radiative forcing associated with SO4 by 25 % when including the vertical dimension, as the AFE for SO4 is strongest near the surface. Conversely, the local RF from BC weakens by 37 % since BC AFE is low close to the ground. The fraction of BC direct effect forcing attributable to intercontinental transport, on the other hand, is enhanced by one-third when accounting for the vertical aspect, because long-range transport primarily leads to aerosol changes at high altitudes, where the BC AFE is strong. While the surface temperature response may vary with the altitude of aerosol change, the analysis in the present study is not extended to estimates of temperature or precipitation changespublishedVersio
Percentile indices for assessing changes in heavy precipitation events
Get PDFMany climate studies assess trends and projections in heavy precipitation events using precipitation percentile (or quantile) indices. Here we investigate three different percentile indices that are commonly used. We demonstrate that these may produce very different results and thus require great care with interpretation. More specifically, consideration is given to two intensity-based indices and one frequency-based index, namely (a) all-day percentiles, (b) wet-day percentiles, and (c) frequency indices based on the exceedance of a percentile threshold. Wet-day percentiles are conditionally computed for the subset of wet events (with precipitation exceeding some threshold, e.g. 1 mm/d for daily precipitation). We present evidence that this commonly used methodology can lead to artifacts and misleading results if significant changes in the wet-day frequency are not accounted for. Percentile threshold indices measure the frequency of exceedance with respect to a percentile-based threshold. We show that these indices yield an assessment of changes in heavy precipitation events that is qualitatively consistent with all-day percentiles, but there are substantial differences in quantitative terms. We discuss the reasons for these effects, present a theoretical assessment, and provide a series of examples using global and regional climate models to quantify the effects in typical applications. Application to climate model output shows that these considerations are relevant to a wide range of typical climate-change applications. In particular, wet-day percentiles generally yield different results, and in most instances should not be used for the impact-oriented assessment of changes in heavy precipitation events.submittedVersio
City of Västerås
No full textCategory: Second Opinion, Sector: Municipal Government, Issuer type: Local Government, Shading: Dark GreenpublishedVersio
Global Carbon Budget 2016
Get PDFAccurate assessment of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere – the “global carbon budget” – is important to better understand the global carbon cycle, support the development of climate policies, and project future climate change. Here we describe data sets and methodology to quantify all major components of the global carbon budget, including their uncertainties, based on the combination of a range of data, algorithms, statistics, and model estimates and their interpretation by a broad scientific community. We discuss changes compared to previous estimates and consistency within and among components, alongside methodology and data limitations. CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry (EFF) are based on energy statistics and cement production data, respectively, while emissions from land-use change (ELUC), mainly deforestation, are based on combined evidence from land-cover change data, fire activity associated with deforestation, and models. The global atmospheric CO2 concentration is measured directly and its rate of growth (GATM) is computed from the annual changes in concentration. The mean ocean CO2 sink (SOCEAN) is based on observations from the 1990s, while the annual anomalies and trends are estimated with ocean models. The variability in SOCEAN is evaluated with data products based on surveys of ocean CO2 measurements. The global residual terrestrial CO2 sink (SLAND) is estimated by the difference of the other terms of the global carbon budget and compared to results of independent dynamic global vegetation models. We compare the mean land and ocean fluxes and their variability to estimates from three atmospheric inverse methods for three broad latitude bands. All uncertainties are reported as ±1σ, reflecting the current capacity to characterise the annual estimates of each component of the global carbon budget. For the last decade available (2006–2015), EFF was 9.3 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1, ELUC 1.0 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1, GATM 4.5 ± 0.1 GtC yr−1, SOCEAN 2.6 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1, and SLAND 3.1 ± 0.9 GtC yr−1. For year 2015 alone, the growth in EFF was approximately zero and emissions remained at 9.9 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1, showing a slowdown in growth of these emissions compared to the average growth of 1.8 % yr−1 that took place during 2006–2015. Also, for 2015, ELUC was 1.3 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1, GATM was 6.3 ± 0.2 GtC yr−1, SOCEAN was 3.0 ± 0.5 GtC yr−1, and SLAND was 1.9 ± 0.9 GtC yr−1. GATM was higher in 2015 compared to the past decade (2006–2015), reflecting a smaller SLAND for that year. The global atmospheric CO2 concentration reached 399.4 ± 0.1 ppm averaged over 2015. For 2016, preliminary data indicate the continuation of low growth in EFF with +0.2 % (range of −1.0 to +1.8 %) based on national emissions projections for China and USA, and projections of gross domestic product corrected for recent changes in the carbon intensity of the economy for the rest of the world. In spite of the low growth of EFF in 2016, the growth rate in atmospheric CO2 concentration is expected to be relatively high because of the persistence of the smaller residual terrestrial sink (SLAND) in response to El Niño conditions of 2015–2016. From this projection of EFF and assumed constant ELUC for 2016, cumulative emissions of CO2 will reach 565 ± 55 GtC (2075 ± 205 GtCO2) for 1870–2016, about 75 % from EFF and 25 % from ELUC. This living data update documents changes in the methods and data sets used in this new carbon budget compared with previous publications of this data set (Le Quéré et al., 2015b, a, 2014, 2013). All observations presented here can be downloaded from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (doi:10.3334/CDIAC/GCP_2016).publishedVersio