CICERO Research Archive (CICERO Senter for klimaforskning)
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The political feasibility of potent enforcement in a post-Kyoto climate agreement
Get PDFThis is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Springer.To be effective, a post-Kyoto climate agreement must secure significant greenhouse gas emissions reductions by all (key) emitters. Potent participation and compliance enforcement will be required to make it in every key emitter’s best interest to participate in, and comply with, an agreement which specifies deep emissions reductions for all its signatories. This article considers the conditions under which potent enforcement would likely be politically feasible. Based on assessments of the current political landscape, and on the sets of constraints that characterize negotiations over enforcement systems, the article firstly finds that neither type of enforcement would be politically feasible if agreement is sought among all key emitters. Secondly, because participation enforcement is perceived as less legitimate than compliance enforcement, the coalition of countries prepared to accept the former is likely smaller than the coalition prepared to accept the latter. Thirdly, participation enforcement likely places stricter requirements on the coalition’s membership and size. Thus, while compliance enforcement should in principle always be politically feasible among some coalition, reaching agreement on participation enforcement is less likely. To the extent that participation enforcement is politically feasible, however, an agreement which enforces the cooperation of all key emitters may be attainable.acceptedVersio
Swedish Export Credit (SEK)
Get PDFCategory: Second Opinion, Sector: Export credit agency, Issuer type: Financial Institution, Shading: Not shadedpublishedVersio
Counteracting the climate effects of volcanic eruptions using short-lived greenhouse gases
Get PDFA large volcanic eruption might constitute a climate emergency, significantly altering global temperature and precipitation for several years. Major future eruptions will occur, but their size or timing cannot be predicted. We show, for the first time, that it may be possible to counteract these climate effects through deliberate emissions of short-lived greenhouse gases, dampening the abrupt impact of an eruption. We estimate an emission pathway countering a hypothetical eruption 3 times the size of Mount Pinatubo in 1991. We use a global climate model to evaluate global and regional responses to the eruption, with and without counteremissions. We then raise practical, financial, and ethical questions related to such a strategy. Unlike the more commonly discussed geoengineering to mitigate warming from long-lived greenhouse gases, designed emissions to counter temporary cooling would not have the disadvantage of needing to be sustained over long periods. Nevertheless, implementation would still face significant challenges.publishedVersio
Climate change impacts on crop yield: Evidence from China
Get PDFThe final publication is available at ElsevierWhen estimating climate change impact on crop yield, a typical assumption is constant elasticity of yield with respect to a climate variable even though the elasticity may be inconstant. After estimating both constant and inconstant elasticities with respect to temperature and precipitation based on provincial panel data in China 1980-2008, our results show that during that period, the temperature change contributes positively to total yield growth by 1.3% and 0.4% for wheat and rice, respectively, but negatively by 12% for maize. The impacts of precipitation change are marginal. We also compare our estimates with other studies and highlight the implications of the inconstant elasticities for crop yield, harvest and food security. We conclude that climate change impact on crop yield would not be an issue in China if positive impacts of other socio-economic factors continue in the future.submittedVersio
Internal migration and urbanization in China: Impacts on population exposure to household air pollution (2000-2010)
Get PDFThis is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Elsevier in Science of the Total Environment on 15 May 2014, available online: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2014.02.073Exposure to fine particles ≤2.5 μm in aerodynamic diameter (PM2.5) from incomplete combustion of solid fuels in household stoves, denoted household air pollution (HAP), is a major contributor to ill health in China and globally. Chinese households are, however, undergoing a massive transition to cleaner household fuels. The objective of the present study is to establish the importance of internal migration when it comes to the changing household fuel use pattern and the associated exposure to PM2.5 for the period 2000 to 2010. We also estimate health benefits of the fuel transition in terms of avoided premature deaths. Using China Census data on population, migration, and household fuel use for 2000 and 2010 we identify the size, place of residence, and main cooking fuel of sub-populations in 2000 and 2010, respectively. We combine these data with estimated exposure levels for the sub-populations and estimate changes in population exposure over the decade. We find that the population weighted exposure (PWE) for the Chinese population as a whole was reduced by 52(36–70) microgr/m3 PM2.5 over the decade, and that about 60% of the reduction can be linked to internal migration. During the same period the migrant population, in total 261 million people, was subject to a reduced population weighted exposure (PWE) of 123(87–165) g/m3 PM2.5. The corresponding figure for non-migrants is 34(23–47)microgr/m3. The largest PWE was estimated for rural-to-urban migrants (138 million people), 214 (154–283) microgr/m3. The estimated annual health benefit associated with the reduced exposure in the total population is 31 (26–37) billion USD, corresponding to 0.4% of the Chinese GDPsubmittedVersio
Asian Development Bank (ADB)
Get PDFCategory: Second Opinion, Sector: Development, Issuer type: Financial Institution, Shading: Not shadedpublishedVersio
The Australian terrestrial carbon budget
Get PDFThis paper reports a study of the full carbon (C-CO2) budget of the Australian continent, focussing on 1990–2011 in the context of estimates over two centuries. The work is a contribution to the RECCAP (REgional Carbon Cycle Assessment and Processes) project, as one of numerous regional studies. In constructing the budget, we estimate the following component carbon fluxes: net primary production (NPP); net ecosystem production (NEP); fire; land use change (LUC); riverine export; dust export; harvest (wood, crop and livestock) and fossil fuel emissions (both territorial and non-territorial). Major biospheric fluxes were derived using BIOS2 (Haverd et al., 2012), a fine-spatial-resolution (0.05°) offline modelling environment in which predictions of CABLE (Wang et al., 2011), a sophisticated land surface model with carbon cycle, are constrained by multiple observation types. The mean NEP reveals that climate variability and rising CO2 contributed 12 ± 24 (1σ error on mean) and 68 ± 15 TgC yr−1, respectively. However these gains were partially offset by fire and LUC (along with other minor fluxes), which caused net losses of 26 ± 4 TgC yr−1 and 18 ± 7 TgC yr−1, respectively. The resultant net biome production (NBP) is 36 ± 29 TgC yr−1, in which the largest contributions to uncertainty are NEP, fire and LUC. This NBP offset fossil fuel emissions (95 ± 6 TgC yr−1) by 38 ± 30%. The interannual variability (IAV) in the Australian carbon budget exceeds Australia's total carbon emissions by fossil fuel combustion and is dominated by IAV in NEP. Territorial fossil fuel emissions are significantly smaller than the rapidly growing fossil fuel exports: in 2009–2010, Australia exported 2.5 times more carbon in fossil fuels than it emitted by burning fossil fuels.publishedVersio
Energy Market Impacts of Nuclear Power Phase-Out Policies
Get PDFAfter the Fukushima disaster in March 2011 safety concerns have escalated and policies towards nuclear power are being reconsidered in several countries. This article presents a study of the effect of nuclear power phase-out on regional electricity prices. We consider 4 scenarios with various levels of ambition to scale down the nuclear industry using a multiple region, multiple sector global general equilibrium model. Non-nuclear power production follows the New Policies scenario of the World Energy Outlook (IEA, 2010). Phase-out in Germany and Switzerland increases electricity prices of OECD-Europe moderately by 2-3 per cent early on to 4-5 per cent by 2035 if transmission capacity within the region is sufficient. If all regions shut down old plants built before 2011, North America, OECD-Europe and Japan face increasing electricity prices in the range of 23-28 per cent in 2035. These price increases illustrate the incentives for further investments in renewable electricity or improved technologies in nuclear power production
Sustaining Welfare for Future Generations. A Review Note on the Capital Approach to the Measurement of Sustainable Development
Get PDFThe objective of this policy paper is twofold:
-To present an update on an economic approach to measure sustainable development - the capital approach - and how this approach may be combined with the ecological approach to arrive at indicators of sustainable development;
-Show how this analytical framework is actually used in longer term policy making in Norway - a country that relies heavily on non-renewable resources.
A model of development is presented based on produced, human, natural, health - and social capital and the level of technology. Natural capital is divided into two parts - natural capital produced and sold in markets (oil and gas) - and non-market natural capital like clean air and biodiversity. Then the policy rules and indicators that flow from this framework are applied to Norwegian longer term policies for sustainable development
Export-Import Bank of Korea (KEXIM)
No full textCategory: Second Opinion, Sector: Export Credit Agency, Issuer type: Financial Institution, Shading: Not shadedpublishedVersio