CICERO Research Archive (CICERO Senter for klimaforskning)
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A multi-method evaluation of the potential for using the electricity bill to encourage energy savings in Norwegian households
Get PDFThis study explores whether the electricity bill can be used as a medium to deliver information that encourages energy conservation in Norwegian households. Two main categories of information were tested: social comparative feedback and information about the monetary savings that can be made through specific energy-saving measures. The study combines four methods. First, a focus group study gathered advice on the categories and design of information that could influence energy consumption, and addressed general issues on energy consumption. Second, a field experiment monitored actual electricity use in 1000 households over a period of 10 months. In addition, through a survey and a series of in-depth interviews, the experience of the participating households was investigated. The experiment showed no effect on actual consumption. One main barrier was that only half the sample noticed the information. This suggests that the potential for encouraging energy conservation through adding new information to the bill in Norway is limited. The bill is already quite informative and is becoming less relevant as an increasing share of consumers switch to electronic bills and direct debit, which decreases the attention they pay to their bills.publishedVersio
Radiative forcing in the ACCMIP historical and future climate simulations
Get PDFThe Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Model Intercomparison Project (ACCMIP) examined the short-lived drivers of climate change in current climate models. Here we evaluate the 10 ACCMIP models that included aerosols, 8 of which also participated in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5). The models reproduce present-day total aerosol optical depth (AOD) relatively well, though many are biased low. Contributions from individual aerosol components are quite different, however, and most models underestimate east Asian AOD. The models capture most 1980–2000 AOD trends well, but underpredict increases over the Yellow/ Eastern Sea. They strongly underestimate absorbing AOD in many regions. We examine both the direct radiative forcing (RF) and the forcing including rapid adjustments (effective radiative forcing; ERF, including direct and indirect effects). The models’ all-sky 1850 to 2000 global mean annual average total aerosol RF is (mean; range) −0.26Wm−2; −0.06 to −0.49Wm−2. Screening based on model skill in capturing observed AOD yields a best estimate of −0.42Wm−2; −0.33 to −0.50Wm−2, including adjustment for missing aerosol components in some models. Many ACCMIP and CMIP5 models appear to produce substantially smaller aerosol RF than this best estimate. Climate feedbacks contribute substantially (35 to −58 %) to modeled historical aerosol RF. The 1850 to 2000 aerosol ERF is −1.17Wm−2; −0.71 to −1.44Wm−2. Thus adjustments, including clouds, typically cause greater forcing than direct RF. Despite this, the multi-model spread relative to the mean is typically the same for ERF as it is for RF, or even smaller, over areas with substantial forcing. The largest 1850 to 2000 negative aerosol RF and ERF values are over and near Europe, south and east Asia and North America. ERF, however, is positive over the Sahara, the Karakoram, high Southern latitudes and especially the Arctic. Global aerosol RF peaks in most models around 1980, declining thereafter with only weak sensitivity to the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP). One model, however, projects approximately stable RF levels, while two show increasingly negative RF due to nitrate (not included in most models). Aerosol ERF, in contrast, becomes more negative during 1980 to 2000. During this period, increased Asian emissions appear to have a larger impact on aerosol ERF than European and North American decreases due to their being upwind of the large, relatively pristine Pacific Ocean. There is no clear relationship between historical aerosol ERF and climate sensitivity in the CMIP5 subset of ACCMIP models. In the ACCMIP/CMIP5 models, historical aerosol ERF of about −0.8 to −1.5Wm−2 is most consistent with observed historical warming. Aerosol ERF masks a large portion of greenhouse forcing during the late 20th and early 21st century at the global scale. Regionally, aerosol ERF is so large that net forcing is negative over most industrialized and biomass burning regions through 1980, but remains strongly negative only over east and southeast Asia by 2000. Net forcing is strongly positive by 1980 over most deserts, the Arctic, Australia, and most tropical oceans. Both the magnitude of and area covered by positive forcing expand steadily thereafter.publishedVersio
Export Development Canada (EDC)
Get PDFCategory: Second Opinion, Sector: Export Credit Agency, Issuer type: Financial Institution, Shading: Not shadedpublishedVersio
A Joint Norwegian-Swedish Market of Green Certificates
Get PDFTwo competing types of policies dominate as European countries implement enhanced investments in renewable energy: Feed-in tariffs and green certificates. Norway and Sweden established a joint market of green certificates from January 1st 2012. This working paper accounts for the parliamentary and public debate in Norway on green certificates from the very start in 1999 to the agreement with Sweden was reached ten years later in September 200
Impact of Urbanization on Carbon Emissions from Perspective of Residential Consumption
No full textsubmittedVersio
National Climate Policy Ambitiousness: A Comparative Study of Denmark, France,Germany, Norway, Sweden and the UK
Get PDFThis report explores how and to what extent the climate policies of Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden and the UK can be called ‘ambitious’. Relevant EU climate policies are also presented. The report develops three dimensions of ambitiousness: Market, Minimizing Societal Costs, and Technology Development. The climate policy portfolios of the six countries are ranked along these three dimensions, with three sets of specific criteria. Four climate policy areas are examined: emissions-reductions targets, emissions regulations, renewable energy policies and energy-efficiency policies. Applying different criteria for measuring level of ambition results in radically different rankings for the countries studied. The UK and Germany perform best with respect to technology development, with Denmark in second place and France on third. Norway is best as regards minimizing the social costs while Sweden ranks highest on the market dimensio
Explaining growing climate policy differences between the European Union and the United States
Get PDFStrong rhetorical differences between the European Union and the United States on climate matters have been evident for almost two decades. Since the mid-2000s, such differences are becoming visible in their respective climate policies as well. We propose three explanations for differences in climate policy outcomes in the EU and the US. First, the agenda-setting privileges of their policy-makers are significantly different, influencing how agenda setters shape policies and link issues, such as energy and climate policy. Second, while issue linkage has helped overcome distributional obstacles in the EU, it has led to more complexity and greater policy obstacles in the US. Finally, legislative rules, procedures, and norms have constrained the coalition-building efforts of lawmakers in the two systems in different ways, affecting negotiation processes and outcomes. Such differences in agenda-setting privileges, potential for issue linkages, and legislative procedures in the EU and the US have left them wide apart in international climate negotiations.submittedVersio
Pre-industrial to end 21st century projections of tropospheric ozone from the Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Model Intercomparison Project (ACCMIP)
Get PDFPresent day tropospheric ozone and its changes between 1850 and 2100 are considered, analysing 15 global models that participated in the Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Model Intercomparison Project (ACCMIP). The ensemble mean compares well against present day observations. The seasonal cycle correlates well, except for some locations in the tropical upper troposphere. Most (75 %) of the models are encompassed with a range of global mean tropospheric ozone column estimates from satellite data, but there is a suggestion of a high bias in the Northern Hemisphere and a low bias in the Southern Hemisphere, which could indicate deficiencies with the ozone precursor emissions. Compared to the present day ensemble mean tropospheric ozone burden of 337 ± 23 Tg, the ensemble mean burden for 1850 time slice is ~30% lower. Future changes were modelled using emissions and climate projections from four Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs). Compared to 2000, the relative changes in the ensemble mean tropospheric ozone burden in 2030 (2100) for the different RCPs are: −4% (−16%) for RCP2.6, 2% (−7%) for RCP4.5, 1% (−9%) for RCP6.0, and 7% (18%) for RCP8.5. Model agreement on the magnitude of the change is greatest for larger changes. Reductions in most precursor emissions are common across the RCPs and drive ozone decreases in all but RCP8.5, where doubled methane and a 40–150% greater stratospheric influx (estimated from a subset of models) increase ozone. While models with a high ozone burden for the present day also have high ozone burdens for the other time slices, no model consistently predicts large or small ozone changes; i.e. the magnitudes of the burdens and burden changes do not appear to be related simply, and the models are sensitive to emissions and climate changes in different ways. Spatial patterns of ozone changes are well correlated across most models, but are notably different for models without time evolving stratospheric ozone concentrations. A unified approach to ozone budget specifications and a rigorous investigation of the factors that drive tropospheric ozone is recommended to help future studies attribute ozone changes and inter-model differences more clearly.publishedVersio
Mean-curvature watersheds: A simple method for segmentation of a digital elevation model into terrain units
Get PDFTerrain segmentation is the process of subdividing a continuous terrain surface into discrete terrain units. If the resulting units represent meaningful geomorphic objects the approach may facilitate studies of not only landforms and land forming processes, but also the interaction among surface form, soil, vegetation, hydrology and topoclimatic regimes. Commonly used methods for terrain segmentation fail to produce terrain units with a potentially large, but cyclic variation in topographic attributes, such as uniformly curved areas bounded by topographic break-lines, although this topographic characterisation is common for a number of landforms. This paper describes a new method for terrain segmentation using mean-curvature (MEC) watersheds. The method produces objects that contain a cycle of MEC values. Thus the topographic variation within each object may be large, but due to the cyclic nature of the MEC variation a geometric simplicity is ensured. In a case study we show how the resulting terrain units correspond well with a number of landforms and surface types observed in the field, and conclude that the method can be expected to be of great value for a number of applications within geomorphology and related disciplines