CICERO Research Archive (CICERO Senter for klimaforskning)
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Sustainable Passenger Transport: Back to Brundtland
Get PDFWe argue that there is no clear definition of the concept sustainable passenger transport to help guide politicians in solving challenges at the global or regional level. Rather, the use of the concept has to an increasing extent reflected socially desirable attributes of local- and project-level problems, but these ignore the global challenges the concept was meant to solve. Going back to the Brundtland Report, we redefine the concept of ‘sustainable passenger transport’ and suggest an assessment method based on four equally important, main dimensions: safeguarding long-term ecological sustainability, satisfying basic transport needs, and promoting intra- and intergenerational equity. We also define indicators and threshold values that have to be met for each of these dimensions and then illustrate how to achieve sustainable passenger transport.publishedVersio
European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD)
Get PDFCategory: Second Opinion, Sector: Development, Issuer type: Financial Institution, Shading: Not shadedpublishedVersio
Global premature mortality due to anthropogenic outdoor air pollution and the contribution of past climate change
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Comparing approaches to valuing sectoral net investments
Get PDFThe final publication is available at ElsevierIn the literature of comprehensive national accounts, national net investments are used to indicate dynamic welfare improvement in an economy. A well-known approach associates national net investments with the shadow value of change in stock of capital assets in an economy. Following this capital stock approach, sectoral net investments can be defined as the shadow value of change in stock of capital assets owned by a sector in an economy. An alternative approach is based on future commodity flows to a sector. This commodity flow approach associates sectoral net investments with the present value of changes in future commodity flows to a sector. In the present paper, I compare these two approaches and prove that they coincide with each other only if the future commodity flows to the sector can be attributed to current stock of capital assets in the sector alone. In empirical studies, commodity flow approach can be a better alternative if the purpose is to estimate the contributions to national net investments of a recipient of future cash flows.submittedVersio
A two-track CDM: improved incentives for sustainable development and offset production
No full textThis is a submitted manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Climate Policy on 27 Apr 2013, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14693062.2013.781446The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has been criticized in the literature for encouraging a focus on offset production (OP) at the expense of achieving or encouraging sustainable development (SD). It is argued that one explanation for this is that there is no commonly agreed definition of SD and, moreover, the priority of CDM project developers is often to produce cost-effective OP. Many of the proposals to address these drawbacks are not politically feasible. It is argued that the CDM should be split into a two-track mechanism, with one track for offset production and the other for offset production with an emphasis on sustainable development benefits. This would enable the political deadlock to be broken, allow the inclusion of SD benefits in the price mechanism itself, and allow both SD and OP objectives to be simultaneously achieved.submittedVersio
Climate warming feedback from mountain birch forest expansion: Reduced albedo dominates carbon uptake
Get PDFExpanding high elevation and high latitude forest has contrasting climate feedbacks through carbon sequestration (cooling) and reduced surface reflectance (warming), which are yet poorly quantified. Here, we present an empirically-based projection of mountain birch forest expansion in south-central Norway under climate change and absence of land use. Climate effects of carbon sequestration and albedo change are compared using four emission metrics. Forest expansion was modeled for a projected 2.6 °C increase of summer temperature in 2100, with associated reduced snow cover. We find that the current (year 2000) forest line of the region is circa 100 m lower than its climatic potential due to land use history. In the future scenarios, forest cover increased from 12 to 27% between 2000 and 2100, resulting in a 59% increase in biomass carbon storage and an albedo change from 0.46 to 0.30. Forest expansion in 2100 was behind its climatic potential, forest migration rates being the primary limiting factor. In 2100, the warming caused by lower albedo from expanding forest was 10 to 17 times stronger than the cooling effect from carbon sequestration for all emission metrics considered. Reduced snow cover further exacerbated the net warming feedback. The warming effect is considerably stronger than previously reported for boreal forest cover, because of the typically low biomass density in mountain forests and the large changes in albedo of snow-covered tundra areas. The positive climate feedback of high latitude and high elevation expanding mountain forests with seasonal snow cover exceeds those of afforestation at lower elevation, and calls for further attention of both modelers and empiricists. The inclusion and upscaling of these climate feedbacks from mountain forests into global models is warranted to assess the potential global impacts.Climate warming feedback from mountain birch forest expansion: Reduced albedo dominates carbon uptakeacceptedVersio
Tropospheric ozone changes, radiative forcing and attribution to emissions in the Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Model Intercomparison Project (ACCMIP)
Get PDFOzone (O3) from 17 atmospheric chemistry models taking part in the Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Model Intercomparison Project (ACCMIP) has been used to calculate tropospheric ozone radiative forcings (RFs). All models applied a common set of anthropogenic emissions, which are better constrained for the present-day than the past. Future anthropogenic emissions follow the four Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios, which define a relatively narrow range of possible air pollution emissions. We calculate a value for the pre-industrial (1750) to present-day (2010) tropospheric ozone RF of 410mWm−2. The model range of pre-industrial to present-day changes in O3 produces a spread (±1 standard deviation) in RFs of ±17 %. Three different radiation schemes were used – we find differences in RFs between schemes (for the same ozone fields) of ±10 %. Applying two different tropopause definitions gives differences in RFs of ±3 %. Given additional (unquantified) uncertainties associated with emissions, climate-chemistry interactions and land-use change, we estimate an overall uncertainty of ±30% for the tropospheric ozone RF. Experiments carried out by a subset of six models attribute tropospheric ozone RF to increased emissions of methane (44±12 %), nitrogen oxides (31±9 %), carbon monoxide (15±3 %) and non-methane volatile organic compounds (9±2 %); earlier studies attributed more of the tropospheric ozone RF to methane and less to nitrogen oxides. Normalising RFs to changes in tropospheric column ozone, we find a global mean normalised RF of 42mWm−2 DU−1, a value similar to previous work. Using normalised RFs and future tropospheric column ozone projections we calculate future tropospheric ozone RFs (mWm−2; relative to 1750) for the four future scenarios (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and RCP8.5) of 350, 420, 370 and 460 (in 2030), and 200, 300, 280 and 600 (in 2100). Models show some coherent responses of ozone to climate change: decreases in the tropical lower troposphere, associated with increases in water vapour; and increases in the sub-tropical to mid-latitude upper troposphere, associated with increases in lightning and stratosphere-to-troposphere transport. Climate change has relatively small impacts on global mean tropospheric ozone RF.publishedVersio
Consumption-based GHG emission accounting: a UK case study
No full textThis is a submitted manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Climate Policy on 05 Jun 2013, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/14693062.2013.788858Global GHG emissions continue to rise, with nearly a quarter of it due to trade that is not currently captured within global climate policy. In the context of current trade patterns and limited global cooperation on climate change, the feasibility of consumption-based emissions accounting to contribute to a more comprehensive (national) policy framework in the UK is investigated. Consumption-based emissions results for the UK from a range of models are presented, their technical robustness is assessed, and their potential application in national climate policy is examined using examples of policies designed to reduce carbon leakage and to address high levels of consumption. It is shown that there is a need to include consumption-based emissions as a complementary indicator to the current approach of measuring territorial emissions. Methods are shown to be robust enough to measure progress on climate change and develop and inform mitigation policy. Finally, some suggestions are made for future policy-oriented research in the area of consumption-based accounting that will facilitate its application to policy.submittedVersio
The Norwegian fast start climate finance contribution
Get PDFThis Working Paper is part of a series of studies initiated by The Overseas Development Institute, ODI, scrutinizing how developing countries are defining, delivering and reporting on fast start finance - FSF. Norwegian climate finance, unlike most other developed countries, is solely based on public grants. The main share of Norwegian bilateral climate finance has gone to mitigation measures under the REDD+ program. The Norwegian International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICF) was launched at the COP 13 at Bali in 2007. Over the five years from 2006 to 2011, the Norwegian total ODA budget increased to NOK 27.7 billion, or some 4.6 billion USD - around 1 per cent of Gross National Income. Over the same period bilateral climate finance increased from 3 to 23 per cent of Norwegian ODA. The total Norwegian grants-based contributions to climate finance adds up to some USD 709 million for 2010, and some USD 773 million in 2011 according to official accounts.
Norwegian authorities reports according to decision 1/cp.16 (Cancun Agreements - AWGLCA outcome). These are public, transparent and readily available on the UNFCCC web page
Climate policy and dependence on traded carbon
Get PDFA growing number of countries regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions occurring within their borders, but due to rapid growth in international trade, the products consumed in many of the same countries increasingly rely on coal, oil and gas extracted and burned in other countries where CO2 is not regulated. As a consequence, existing national and regional climate policies may be growing less effective every year. Furthermore, countries that are dependent on imported products or fossil fuels are more exposed to energy and climate policies in other countries. We show that the combined international trade in carbon (as fossil fuels and also embodied in products) increased from 12.3 GtCO2 (55% of global emissions) in 1997 to 17.6 GtCO2 (60%) in 2007 (growing at 3.7% yr−1). Within this, trade in fossil fuels was larger (10.8 GtCO2 in 2007) than trade in embodied carbon (6.9 GtCO2), but the latter grew faster (4.6% yr−1 compared with 3.1% yr−1 for fuels). Most major economies demonstrate increased dependence on traded carbon, either as exports or as imports. Because energy is increasingly embodied in internationally traded products, both as fossil fuels and as products, energy and climate policies in other countries may weaken domestic climate policy via carbon leakage and mask energy security issues.publishedVersio