The shale gas boom in the United States spurred a shift in electricity generation from coal to natural gas. Natural gas combined cycle units emit half of the CO2 to produce the same energy as a coal unit; therefore, the market trend is credited for a reduction in GHG emissions from the US power sector. However, methane that escapes the natural gas supply chain may undercut these relative climate benefits. In 2016, Canada, the United States and Mexico pledged to reduce methane emissions from the oil and natural gas sector 40–45% from 2012 levels by 2025. This article reviews the science-policy landscape of methane measurement and mitigation relevant for meeting this pledge, including changes in US policy following the 2016 presidential election. Considerable policy incoherence exists in all three countries. Reliable inventories remain elusive; despite government and private sector research efforts, the magnitude of methane emissions remains in dispute. Meanwhile, mitigation efforts vary significantly. A framework that integrates science and policy would enable actors to more effectively inform, leverage and pursue advances in methane measurement and mitigation. The framework is applied to North America, but could apply to other geographic contexts.
Key policy insights
The oil and gas sector’s contribution to atmospheric methane concentrations is becoming an increasingly prominent issue in climate policy.
Efforts to measure and control fugitive methane emissions do not presently proceed within a coherent framework that integrates science and policy.
In 2016, the governments of Canada, Mexico and the United States pledged to reduce methane emissions from the oil and natural gas sector 40–45% from 2012 levels by 2025.
The 2016 presidential election in the United States has halted American progress at the federal level, suggesting a heavier reliance on industry and subnational efforts in that country.
Collectively or individually, the countries, individual agencies, or private stakeholders could use the proposed North American Methane Reduction framework to direct research, enhance monitoring and evaluate mitigation efforts, and improve the chances that continental methane reduction targets will be achieved.
Climate policy uncertainty significantly hinders investments in low-carbon technologies, and the global community is behind schedule to curb carbon emissions. Strong actions will be necessary to limit the increase in global temperatures, and continued delays create risks of escalating climate change damages and future policy costs. These risks are system-wide, long-term and large-scale and thus hard to diversify across firms. Because of its unique scale, cost structure and near-term availability, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation in developing countries (REDD+) has significant potential to help manage climate policy risks and facilitate the transition to lower greenhouse gas emissions. ‘Call’ options contracts in the form of the right but not the obligation to buy high-quality emissions reduction credits from jurisdictional REDD+ programmes at a predetermined price per ton of CO2 could help unlock this potential despite the current lack of carbon markets that accept REDD+ for compliance. This approach could provide a globally important cost-containment mechanism and insurance for firms against higher future carbon prices, while channelling finance to avoid deforestation until policy uncertainties decline and carbon markets scale up.
Key policy insights
Climate policy uncertainty discourages abatement investments, exposing firms to an escalating systemic risk of future rapid increases in emission control expenditures.
This situation poses a risk of an abatement ‘short squeeze,’ paralleling the case in financial markets when prices jump sharply as investors rush to square accounts on an investment they have sold ‘short’, one they have bet against and promised to repay later in anticipation of falling prices.
There is likely to be a willingness to pay for mechanisms that hedge the risks of abruptly rising carbon prices, in particular for ‘call’ options, the right but not the obligation to buy high-quality emissions reduction credits at a predetermined price, due to the significantly lower upfront capital expenditure compared to other hedging alternatives.
Establishing rules as soon as possible for compliance market acceptance of high-quality emissions reductions credits from REDD+ would facilitate REDD+ transactions, including via options-based contracts, which could help fill the gap of uncertain climate policies in the short and medium term.
To assess the potential impacts of the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, this study applied GCAM-TU (an updated version of the Global Change Assessment Model) to simulate global and regional emission pathways of energy-related CO2, which show that US emissions in 2100 would reduce to ?2.4?Gt, ?0.7?Gt and ?0.2?Gt under scenarios of RCP2.6, RCP3.7 and RCP4.5, respectively. Two unfavourable policy scenarios were designed, assuming a temporary delay and a complete stop for US mitigation actions after 2015. Simulations by the Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse-gas Induced Climate Change (MAGICC) indicate that the temperature increase by 2100 would rise by 0.081°C–0.161°C compared to the three original RCPs (Representative Concentration Pathways) if US emissions were kept at their 2015 levels until 2100. The probability of staying below 2°C would decrease by 6–9% even if the US resumes mitigation efforts for achieving its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) target after 2025. It is estimated by GCAM-TU that, without US participation, increased reduction efforts are required for the rest of the world, including developing countries, in order to achieve the 2°C goal, resulting in 18% higher global cumulative mitigation costs from 2015 to 2100.Key policy insights
President Trump’s climate policies, including planned withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, cast a shadow on international climate actions, and would lower the likelihood of achieving the 2°C target.
To meet the 2°C target without the US means increased reduction efforts and mitigation costs for the rest of the world, and considerable economic burdens for major developing areas.
Active state-, city- and enterprise-level powers should be supported to keep the emission reduction gap from further widening even with reduced mitigation efforts from the US federal government.
Emission reductions improve the chances that dangerous anthropogenic climate change will be averted, but could also cause some firms financial distress. Corporate failures, especially if they are unnecessary, add to the social cost of abatement. Social value can be permanently destroyed by the dissolution of organizational capital, deadweight losses paid to liquidators, and unemployment. This article proposes using measures of corporate solvency as an objective tool for policy makers to calibrate the optimal stringency of climate change policies, so that they can deliver the least loss of corporate solvency for a given level of emission reductions. They could also be used to determine the generosity of any compensation to address losses to corporate solvency. We demonstrate this approach using a case study of the UK’s Carbon Price Support (a carbon tax).
Key policy insights
Solvency metrics could be used to empirically calibrate the optimal stringency of climate policies.
An idealized solvency trajectory for firms affected by climate change policy would cause corporate solvency to initially decline – approaching but not exceeding ‘distressed’ levels – and then gradually improve to a new ‘steady state’ once the low-carbon transition had been achieved.
In terms of the UK’s Carbon Price Support, corporate solvency of energy-intensive industries was found to be stable subsequent to its introduction. Therefore, the available evidence does not support its later weakening.
In an age of anthropogenic climate change, risk and vulnerability have become common parlance. Yet the histories of both concepts are bound up in the colonial project. This article attempts to give a brief genealogy of these concepts by considering their evolution within early colonial attempts to deal with the dangers and threats posed by a tropical climate. This article argues that British and French colonial writers and administrators began to understand the dangers associated with colonizing distant lands as distinct risks associated with living in a tropical climate. Tropical fevers, ecological devastation, famine and revolt in particular spurred on the development of new knowledge, which advanced understandings of the effects of the tropical climate both on European health and long‐term colonial ambitions. In turn the concept of a pernicious tropical climate that posed a biological threat to the health of Europeans came to play a major role in configuring prevailing notions of race, health and morality. Risk and vulnerability have been key discursive features of new knowledges and governmental technologies crafted in the context of colonialism to secure European rule over distant lands and people. 相似文献
