scholarly journals Contrasting Suitability and Ambition in Regional Carbon Mitigation

Author(s):  
Mingxi Du ◽  
Yu Liu ◽  
Qi Cui ◽  
Jintai Lin ◽  
Yawen Liu ◽  
...  

Abstract Substantially enhancing carbon mitigation ambition is a crucial step towards achieving the Paris climate goal. Yet this attempt is hampered by poor knowledge on the net economic effect of mitigation for each emitter, by taking into account potential cost and benefit. Here we use a global economic model with regional and sectoral disaggregation details to assess the mitigation costs for 27 major emitting countries and regions, and further contrast the costs against the potential benefits of mitigation valued as avoided social cost of carbon. We find substantial variabilities across these emitters in both cost and benefit of mitigating each ton of carbon dioxide and, more importantly, a strong negative spatial correlation between cost and benefit. The relative suitability of carbon mitigation, defined as the ratio of normalized benefit to normalized cost, shows great spatial mismatch with the mitigation ambition of emitters indicated in their first intended nationally determined contributions. China is relatively suitable for domestic carbon mitigation and could largely enhance their mitigation ambition. The European Union, which is economically less suitable to reduce domestic emissions, could work with many developing countries which are more suitable but less capable to reduce emissions. Our work provides important information to improve concerted climate action and formulate more efficient mitigation strategy.

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan E. Hultman ◽  
Leon Clarke ◽  
Carla Frisch ◽  
Kevin Kennedy ◽  
Haewon McJeon ◽  
...  

Abstract Approaches that root national climate strategies in local actions will be essential for all countries as they develop new nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement. The potential impact of climate action from non-national actors in delivering higher global ambition is significant. Sub-national action in the United States provides a test for how such actions can accelerate emissions reductions. We aggregated U.S. state, city, and business commitments within an integrated assessment model to assess how a national climate strategy can be built upon non-state actions. We find that existing commitments alone could reduce emissions 25% below 2005 levels by 2030, and that enhancing actions by these actors could reduce emissions up to 37%. We show how these actions can provide a stepped-up basis for additional federal action to reduce emissions by 49%—consistent with 1.5 °C. Our analysis demonstrates sub-national actions can lead to substantial reductions and support increased national action.


Author(s):  
Zhu Zhu ◽  
Hang Zheng ◽  
Zhu Zhu

AbstractBased on the theory of trade added value, this paper discusses the potential actual trade scale and benefit damage degree of the two countries under the background of big country game by measuring the real trade scale of China and the USA, simulating the economic impact of tariffs imposed by China and the USA and utilizing Wang–Wei–Zhu (WWZ) method to decompose the potential changes in Sino-US trade. The results show that: firstly, the size of China-US trade in terms of total value is significantly overestimated and China's overall trade with the USA in 2001–2014 was overestimated by an average of 3.06 percent, of which goods trade was overestimated by 8.06 percent. Secondly, although tariff increases can reduce the degree of trade imbalance between China and the USA to some extent, the adverse effects are mutual and global, and the European Union, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Japan and Canada become the main transfer countries of Sino-US trade. Thirdly, the pattern of China's final exports and the US' intermediate exports determines that China's trade interests are more damaged than those of the USA. It is proved that there is a big gap between China and the USA in the depth and breadth of China's participation in the value chain division of labor and the trade scale measured by Gross Domestic Product is more instructive than the total value.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-45
Author(s):  
Michael D. Bauer ◽  
Glenn D. Rudebusch

Abstract Social discount rates (SDRs) are crucial for evaluating the costs of climate change. We show that the fundamental anchor for market-based SDRs is the equilibrium or steady-state real interest rate. Empirical interest rate models that allow for shifts in this equilibrium real rate find that it has declined notably since the 1990s, and this decline implies that the entire term structure of SDRs has shifted lower as well. Accounting for this new normal of persistently lower interest rates substantially boosts estimates of the social cost of carbon and supports a climate policy with stronger carbon mitigation strategies.


2021 ◽  
pp. 17-47
Author(s):  
Julia Hänni ◽  
Tienmu Ma

AbstractThis chapter explores the relationship between Swiss climate change law and the international and European climate change regimes. At the international level, the chapter reviews the three major international agreements regulating the field: the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC, and the Paris Agreement. And at the national and regional levels, the chapter briefly describes the CO2 Act—often considered the heart of Swiss climate change policy—and questions whether it will prove effective in achieving its explicitly stated emissions reduction targets. The chapter then reviews the most significant recent innovation in the evolution of Swiss climate change policy: joining the Emissions Trading System (ETS) established by the European Union. Due to long-standing problems afflicting the ETS, the authors raise doubts about whether Switzerland’s joining the scheme will lead to meaningful reductions in the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. As an alternative to an ETS-centric approach, the authors refer to an approach centered on human rights. Drawing on the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), the major international climate change agreements, other sources of international law, and the recent Urgenda decision of the Supreme Court of the Netherlands, the authors argue that under the human rights approach, Switzerland would be obligated to take stronger measures to reduce emissions than it could hope to achieve through the ETS and the CO2 Act alone.


Author(s):  
Ivan Voiku

The right way out of the crisis of the agro-based industries is the maximum use of the opportunities of scientific and technological progress and the orientation of the real economy to innovative development. One of the promising technologies of crop production is an innovative technology in potato growing, which provides for the co-culturing of potatoes with honey crops. Phacelia tanacetifolia (PhaceliatanacetifoliaBenth) is selected as honey crop, which is a valuable green manure. It allows to reduce the need for organic and mineral fertilizers, increases the ecological cleanness of products, favors the growth of potato yield, provides the additional honey yield. Phacelia significantly improves the soil structure, displacing a significant part of weeds, providing natural loosening of the soil, protection from drying out, from pests and parasites. The co-culturing of potatoes with phacelia protects the environment from the use of dangerous plant protection products. If the economic effect is defined as the difference between the profits of innovative and traditional technologies, then, according to preliminary calculations, the level of profitability of innovative technology in potato growing is 1.9 times higher, and the profit from 1 ha is 1.6 times higher compared with the traditional technology. Large-scale development of the proposed technology is hampered by the lack of potato planters and seed planters, which provide planting of potatoes and sowing seeds of honey crops simultaneously, in the Russian market and the markets of the European Union. An innovative technology - mounted seeder for potato planters was developed by the staff members of the Pskov State University. The article describes the main agro-technological requirements to this device. A general model and a kinematic scheme were developed to visualize the combination of the working elements of the potato planter and the mounted seeder. The developed model falls into the type of seed planters, which is designed to sowing in drills the seeds of honey crops (phacelia) in the furrow between potatoes at the time of the forthcoming closing of this furrow by soil, and can be used in agricultural engineering. Potential consumers of the proposed innovative technology in potato growing and the developed mounted seeder are farm enterprises and agricultural production cooperatives, which have small plots of land, use crop rotation systems in potato growing, and work for reducing costs and increasing the yield of potato cultivation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 33-47
Author(s):  
Marian Woźniak ◽  

Electricity is one of the factors shaping the quality of life of society. The Polish energy sector is to a large extent identified with fossil fuel used in conventional energy, based mainly on hard coal, which is not fully in line with the current energy policy of the European Union. Therefore, today it is necessary to use renewable energy more efficiently, which, in addition to the clearly indicated economic effect, also accentuates environmental effects. The purpose of the work is to show the opinions of young people aged 15–24 in terms of their awareness of the interpretation of myths about renewable energy, which is a key problem in the development of the modern energy sector, and to indicate the directions of development of the energy policy in Poland.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 323-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabine Schlacke ◽  
Michèle Knodt

On 24 December 2018, the Regulation (EU) 2018/1999 on the governance system of the Energy Union and Climate Action entered into force. The Governance Regulation provides the European Union with a new regulatory regime for renewable energies and energy efficiency. It has the function of an ‘Umbrella Regulation’ which aims at the overarching control of energy and climate policies for the period 2021 to 2030. Its target is to implement the climate protection goals of the Paris Agreement. At the same time, it represents a compromise and compensation for the European Union’s lack of competences in the area of energy supply, especially concerning the determination of the energy mix of the Member States. Despite choosing a Regulation (which applies automatically) as the legislative tool, its steering and sanctioning mechanisms are in this respect rather ‘soft’: The Regulation gives the Member States a wide scope of decision-making. Which goals and instruments are established by the Governance Regulation, which scope of decision making remains at the national level, how Germany exercises its decision making powers and how it should be exercised are key questions addressed in this article.


ILAR Journal ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
I Anna S Olsson ◽  
Christine J Nicol ◽  
Steven M Niemi ◽  
Peter Sandøe

Abstract The focus of this paper is the requirement that the use of live animals in experiments and in vivo assays should never be allowed if those uses involve severe suffering. This requirement was first implemented in Danish legislation, was later adopted by the European Union, and has had limited uptake in North America. Animal suffering can arise from exposure to a wide range of different external and internal events that threaten biological or social functions, while the severity of suffering may be influenced by the animals’ perceptions of their own situation and the degree of control they are able to exert. Severe suffering is more than an incremental increase in negative state(s) but involves a qualitative shift whereby the normal mechanisms to contain or keep negative states at arm’s length no longer function. The result of severe suffering will be a loss of the ability of cope. The idea of putting a cap on severe suffering may be justified from multiple ethical perspectives. In most, if not all, cases it is possible to avoid imposing severe suffering on animals during experiments without giving up the potential benefits of finding new ways to cure, prevent, or alleviate serious human diseases and generate other important knowledge. From this it follows that there is a strong ethical case to favor a regulatory ban on animal experiments involving severe suffering.


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