The use of shale gas is commonly considered as a low-cost option for meeting ambitious climate policy targets. This article explores global and country-specific effects of increasing global shale gas exploitation on the energy markets, on greenhouse gas emissions, and on mitigation costs. The global techno-economic partial equilibrium model POLES (Prospective Outlook on Long-term Energy Systems) is employed to compare policies which limit global warming to 2°C and baseline scenarios when the availability of shale gas is either high or low. According to the simulation results, a high availability of shale gas has rather small effects on the costs of meeting climate targets in the medium and long term. In the long term, a higher availability of shale gas increases baseline emissions of greenhouse gases for most countries and for the world, and leads to higher compliance costs for most, but not all, countries. Allowing for global trading of emission certificates does not alter these general results. In sum, these findings cast doubt on shale gas’s potential as a low-cost option for meeting ambitious global climate targets.
POLICY RELEVANCE
Many countries with a large shale gas resource base consider the expansion of local shale gas extraction as an option to reduce their GHG emissions. The findings in this article imply that a higher availability of shale gas in these countries might actually increase emissions and mitigation costs for these countries and also for the world. An increase in shale gas extraction may spur a switch from coal to gas electricity generation, thus lowering emissions. At the global level and for many countries, though, this effect is more than offset by a crowding out of renewable and nuclear energy carriers, and by lower energy prices, leading to higher emissions and higher mitigation costs in turn. These findings would warrant a re-evaluation of the climate strategy in most countries relying on the exploitation of shale gas to meet their climate targets. 相似文献
State governments in the United States are well placed to identify opportunities for mitigation and the needs for adaptation to climate change. However, the cost of these efforts can have important implications for budgets that already face pressures from diverse areas such as unfunded pensions and growing health care costs. In this work, the current level of spending on climate-related activities at the state level are evaluated and policy recommendations are developed to improve financial management practices as they relate to climate risk. An examination of state budgets reveals that climate mitigation and adaptation activities represent less than 1% of spending in most states. The data collection highlights the obstacles to collecting accurate spending data and the lack of budgetary and accounting procedures in place. More importantly, the difficulty in benchmarking these activities poses challenges for the analysis of state-level policies as well as planning and modelling future climate-related spending. Other policy contexts, including public pensions and infrastructure, can provide guidance on budgetary and accounting tools that may help states prepare for and more efficiently manage climate-related expenditures.
Key policy insights
Climate change mitigation and adaptation will require substantial investments across many levels of government on a wide range of activities.
Currently, US states are not clearly demarcating climate expenditures, hindering the identification of climate-related budgetary risks.
In the absence of guidelines, these longer term fiscal outlays may remain chronically underfunded in favour of more near-term spending priorities.
Establishing appropriate financial management and data collection practices is important for more sophisticated cost-effectiveness and policy analyses.
This study explores the implications of shifting the narrative of climate policy evaluation from one of costs/benefits or economic growth to a message of improving social welfare. Focusing on the costs of mitigation and the associated impacts on gross domestic product (GDP) may translate into a widespread concern that a climate agreement will be very costly. This article considers the well-known Human Development Index (HDI) as an alternative criterion for judging the welfare effects of climate policy. We estimate what the maximum possible annual average increase in HDI welfare per tons of CO2 would be within the carbon budget associated with limiting warming to 2°C over the period 2015–2050. Emission pathways are determined by a policy that allows the HDI of poor countries and their emissions to increase under a business-as-usual development path, while countries with a high HDI value (>0.8) have to restrain their emissions to ensure that the global temperature rise does not exceed 2°C. For comparison, the well-known multi-regional RICE model is used to assess GDP growth under the same climate change policy goals.
Policy relevance
This is the first study that shifts the narrative of climate policy evaluation from one of GDP growth to a message of improving social welfare, as captured by the HDI. This could make it easier for political leaders and climate negotiators to publicly commit themselves to ambitious carbon emission reduction goals, such as limiting global warming to 2°C, as in the (non-binding) agreement made at COP 21 in Paris in 2015. We find that if impacts are framed in terms of growth in HDI per t CO2 emission per capita instead of in GDP, the HDI of poor countries and their emissions are allowed to increase under a business-as-usual development path, whereas countries with a high HDI (>0.8) must control emissions so that global temperature rise remains within 2°C. Importantly, a climate agreement is more attractive for rich countries under the HDI than the GDP frame. This is good news, as these countries have to make the major contribution to emissions reductions. 相似文献
After decades of pressure from vulnerable developing countries, the Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage (the WIM) was established at the nineteenth Conference of the Parties (COP 19) in 2013 to address costly damages from climate change. However, little progress has been made towards establishing a mechanism to fund loss and damage. The WIM's Executive Committee issued its first two-year workplan the following year at COP 20 which offered, among other things, a range of approaches to financing loss and damage programmes, which we review here. We provide brief overviews of each mechanism proposed by the WIM ExCom, describe their current applications, their statuses under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), some of their advantages and disadvantages, and their current or potential application to loss and damage. We find that several of these mechanisms may be useful in supporting loss and damage programmes, but identify some key gaps. First, most of the mechanisms identified by the WIM ExCom are insurance schemes subsidized with voluntary contributions, which may not be adequate or reliable over time. Second, none were devised to apply to slow-onset events, or to non-economic losses and damages. That is, if harms are inflicted on parts of a society or its ecosystems that have no price, or if they occur gradually, they would probably not be covered by these mechanisms. Finally, the lack of a dedicated and adequate flow of finance to address the real loss and damage being experienced by vulnerable nations will require the use of innovative financial tools beyond those mentioned in the WIM ExCom workplan.
Key policy insights
Despite a full article of the 2015 Paris Agreement devoted to loss and damage, there is little international agreement on the scope of loss and damage programmes, and especially how they would be funded and by whom.
Most of the loss and damage funding mechanisms identified by the WIM ExCom are insurance schemes subsidized with voluntary contributions, which may burden the most vulnerable countries and may not be reliable over time.
None of the mechanisms were devised to apply to slow-onset events, or to non-economic losses and damages.
This article shows the potential impact on global GHG emissions in 2030, if all countries were to implement sectoral climate policies similar to successful examples already implemented elsewhere. This assessment was represented in the IMAGE and GLOBIOM/G4M models by replicating the impact of successful national policies at the sector level in all world regions. The first step was to select successful policies in nine policy areas. In the second step, the impact on the energy and land-use systems or GHG emissions was identified and translated into model parameters, assuming that it would be possible to translate the impacts of the policies to other countries. As a result, projected annual GHG emission levels would be about 50 GtCO2e by 2030 (2% above 2010 levels), compared to the 60 GtCO2e in the ‘current policies’ scenario. Most reductions are achieved in the electricity sector through expanding renewable energy, followed by the reduction of fluorinated gases, reducing venting and flaring in oil and gas production, and improving industry efficiency. Materializing the calculated mitigation potential might not be as straightforward given different country priorities, policy preferences and circumstances.
Key policy insights
Considerable emissions reductions globally would be possible, if a selection of successful policies were replicated and implemented in all countries worldwide.
This would significantly reduce, but not close, the emissions gap with a 2°C pathway.
From the selection of successful policies evaluated in this study, those implemented in the sector ‘electricity supply’ have the highest impact on global emissions compared to the ‘current policies’ scenario.
Replicating the impact of these policies worldwide could lead to emission and energy trends in the renewable electricity, passenger transport, industry (including fluorinated gases) and buildings sector, that are close to those in a 2°C scenario.
Using successful policies and translating these to policy impact per sector is a more reality-based alternative to most mitigation pathways, which need to make theoretical assumptions on policy cost-effectiveness.
Geopolitical changes combined with the increasing urgency of ambitious climate action have re-opened debates about justice and international climate policy. Tensions about historical responsibility have been particularly difficult and could intensify with increased climate impacts and as developing countries face mounting pressure to take mitigation action. Climate change is not the only time humans have faced historically rooted, collective action challenges involving justice disputes. Practices and tools from transitional justice have been used in over 30 countries across a range of conflicts at the interface of historical responsibility and imperatives for collective futures. Central to this body of theory and experience is the need to reflect both backwards- and forwards-oriented elements in efforts to build social solidarity. Lessons from transitional justice theory and practice have not been systematically explored in the climate context. This article conceptually examines the potential of transitional justice practices to inform global climate governance by looking at the structural similarities and differences between the global climate regime and traditional transitional justice contexts. It then identifies a suite of common transitional justice practices and assesses their potential applicability in the climate context.
POLICY RELEVANCE
Justice disputes, including about historical responsibility and future climate actions, are long-standing in the climate context and could intensify with increased climate impacts and broadened mitigation pressures.
Lessons from efforts to use transitional justice mechanisms could provide insight into strategies for balancing recognition of harms rooted in the past, while creating stronger future-oriented collective action.
Several areas of transitional justice practice including: the combination of amnesties and litigation, truth commissions, reparations and institutional change could provide useful insights for the climate context.
Statistical change-point analysis was applied to a spring time series of the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) in Korea, and this showed that the total analysis period can be divided into two periods: a wet period (1975–1990) and a dry period (1991–2014). To investigate the deepening of the spring drought in Korea, a difference in the spring means between the 1991–2014 and 1975–1990 periods was analyzed with respect to large-scale environments. In the recent spring, a typical pressure system pattern in winter, which was an anomalous west-high east-low pressure system pattern, was strengthened throughout the troposphere around Korea. Due to the anomalous pressure system pattern, Korea was affected by relatively cold and dry anomalous northerlies. Furthermore, the western North Pacific subtropical high (WNPSH) was not intensified, and thus the supply of warm and moist airs into Korea was further reduced due to the upper-level jet moving further to the south. In order to determine the reason for the development of the anomalous west-high east-low pressure system pattern in East Asia, the difference in spring snow depth between the two periods was analyzed, and the analysis results showed that positive anomalies were predominant throughout most regions in East Eurasia. As a result, in the analysis of the ground heat net flux, negative anomalies were strengthened in most regions in East Eurasia. The cooling effect in the surrounding regions due to the high snow depth in East Eurasia strengthened the anomalous pressure system pattern as a west-high east-low type. 相似文献
The present study examines a climate regime shift in the time series of the number of rainy days during August in the Korean Peninsula. The statistical change-point analysis indicates that a significant shift occurred in the time series around 1998, providing a rationale to divide it into two parts: 1975–1997 for the shorter rainy-day period and 1998–2012 for the longer rainy-day period. To examine the cause of recent rapid increases in the number of days with precipitation in August in the Korean Peninsula, differences in the averages of large-scale environments between the 1998–2012 period and the 1975–1997 period were analyzed.The differences in stream flows showed that anomalous cyclones were reinforced in the East Asian continent while anomalous anticyclones were reinforced in the western North Pacific at all layers of the troposphere. The anomalous anticyclones reinforced in the western North Pacific were associated with the western North Pacific subtropical high (WNPSH) developed a little more toward the Korean Peninsula recently. Consequently, the Korean Peninsula has been affected by anomalous south westerlies that supplied warm and humid airs from low tropical regions to the Korean Peninsula. The vertical thermal instability (warm anomaly at lower-level and cold anomaly at middle and upper-level) developed near the Korean Peninsula. In addition, upper tropospheric jets were reinforced further recently near the Korean Peninsula to provide good environments for development of upward flows. The frequency of TCs that affect the Korean Peninsula in August also increased rapidly since 1998. 相似文献
