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Alternative carbon price trajectories can avoid excessive carbon removal
2021, Strefler, Jessica, Kriegler, Elmar, Bauer, Nico, Luderer, Gunnar, Pietzcker, Robert C., Giannousakis, Anastasis, Edenhofer, Ottmar
The large majority of climate change mitigation scenarios that hold warming below 2 °C show high deployment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR), resulting in a peak-and-decline behavior in global temperature. This is driven by the assumption of an exponentially increasing carbon price trajectory which is perceived to be economically optimal for meeting a carbon budget. However, this optimality relies on the assumption that a finite carbon budget associated with a temperature target is filled up steadily over time. The availability of net carbon removals invalidates this assumption and therefore a different carbon price trajectory should be chosen. We show how the optimal carbon price path for remaining well below 2 °C limits CDR demand and analyze requirements for constructing alternatives, which may be easier to implement in reality. We show that warming can be held at well below 2 °C at much lower long-term economic effort and lower CDR deployment and therefore lower risks if carbon prices are high enough in the beginning to ensure target compliance, but increase at a lower rate after carbon neutrality has been reached.
Taking stock of national climate policies to evaluate implementation of the Paris Agreement
2020, Roelfsema, Mark, van Soest, Heleen L., Harmsen, Mathijs, van Vuuren, Detlef P., Bertram, Christoph, den Elzen, Michel, Höhne, Niklas, Iacobuta, Gabriela, Krey, Volker, Kriegler, Elmar, Luderer, Gunnar, Riahi, Keywan, Ueckerdt, Falko, Després, Jacques, Drouet, Laurent, Emmerling, Johannes, Frank, Stefan, Fricko, Oliver, Gidden, Matthew, Humpenöder, Florian, Huppmann, Daniel, Fujimori, Shinichiro, Fragkiadakis, Kostas, Gi, Keii, Keramidas, Kimon, Köberle, Alexandre C., Aleluia Reis, Lara, Rochedo, Pedro, Schaeffer, Roberto, Oshiro, Ken, Vrontisi, Zoi, Chen, Wenying, Iyer, Gokul C., Edmonds, Jae, Kannavou, Maria, Jiang, Kejun, Mathur, Ritu, Safonov, George, Vishwanathan, Saritha Sudharmma
Many countries have implemented national climate policies to accomplish pledged Nationally Determined Contributions and to contribute to the temperature objectives of the Paris Agreement on climate change. In 2023, the global stocktake will assess the combined effort of countries. Here, based on a public policy database and a multi-model scenario analysis, we show that implementation of current policies leaves a median emission gap of 22.4 to 28.2 GtCO2eq by 2030 with the optimal pathways to implement the well below 2 °C and 1.5 °C Paris goals. If Nationally Determined Contributions would be fully implemented, this gap would be reduced by a third. Interestingly, the countries evaluated were found to not achieve their pledged contributions with implemented policies (implementation gap), or to have an ambition gap with optimal pathways towards well below 2 °C. This shows that all countries would need to accelerate the implementation of policies for renewable technologies, while efficiency improvements are especially important in emerging countries and fossil-fuel-dependent countries.
Implications of climate mitigation for future agricultural production
2015, Müller, Christoph, Elliott, Joshua, Chryssanthacopoulos, James, Deryng, Delphine, Folberth, Christian, Pugh, Thomas A.M., Schmid, Erwin
Climate change is projected to negatively impact biophysical agricultural productivity in much of the world. Actions taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate future climate changes, are thus of central importance for agricultural production. Climate impacts are, however, not unidirectional; some crops in some regions (primarily higher latitudes) are projected to benefit, particularly if increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is assumed to strongly increase crop productivity at large spatial and temporal scales. Climate mitigation measures that are implemented by reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations lead to reductions both in the strength of climate change and in the benefits of carbon dioxide fertilization. Consequently, analysis of the effects of climate mitigation on agricultural productivity must address not only regions for which mitigation is likely to reduce or even reverse climate damages. There are also regions that are likely to see increased crop yields due to climate change, which may lose these added potentials under mitigation action. Comparing data from the most comprehensive archive of crop yield projections publicly available, we find that climate mitigation leads to overall benefits from avoided damages at the global scale and especially in many regions that are already at risk of food insecurity today. Ignoring controversial carbon dioxide fertilization effects on crop productivity, we find that for the median projection aggressive mitigation could eliminate ~81% of the negative impacts of climate change on biophysical agricultural productivity globally by the end of the century. In this case, the benefits of mitigation typically extend well into temperate regions, but vary by crop and underlying climate model projections. Should large benefits to crop yields from carbon dioxide fertilization be realized, the effects of mitigation become much more mixed, though still positive globally and beneficial in many food insecure countries.