The State of Experimental Research on Community Interventions to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions—A Systematic Review

This paper reviews research on community efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We conducted a systematic search of the relevant literature, and supplemented our findings with an analysis of review papers previously published on the topic. The results indicate that there have been no peer-reviewed experimental evaluations of community-wide interventions to reduce greenhouse gases involving electricity, refrigeration, or food. The lack of findings limits the conclusions which can be made about the efficacy of these efforts. As a result, we are not accumulating effective interventions, and some communities may be implementing strategies that are not effective. We advocate for the funding of experimental evaluations of multi-sector community interventions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Such interventions would attempt to engage every sector of the community in identifying and implementing policies and practices to reduce emissions. Comprehensive multi-sector interventions are likely to have synergistic effects, such that the total impact is greater than the sum of the impact of the individual components. We describe the value of interrupted time-series designs as an alternative to randomized trials, because these designs confer particular advantages for the evaluation of strategies in entire communities.

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The State of Experimental Research on Community Interventions to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions - A Systematic Review

10.20944/preprints202006.0244.v1 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Anthony Biglan ◽

Andrew C. Bonner ◽

Magnus Johansson ◽

Jessica L. Ghai ◽

Mark J. Van Ryzin ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Greenhouse Gas Emissions ◽

Greenhouse Gas ◽

Synergistic Effects ◽

Relevant Literature ◽

Interrupted Time Series ◽

Community Interventions ◽

Gas Emissions ◽

Effective Interventions ◽

Reduce Emissions ◽

Implementing Strategies

This paper reviews research on community efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We conducted a systematic search of relevant literature and supplemented our findings with an analysis of review papers previously published on the topic. The results indicate that little experimental evaluation exists on community interventions to reduce greenhouse gases, limiting the conclusions which can be made about the efficacy of these efforts. As a result, we are not accumulating effective interventions and some communities may be implementing strategies that are not effective. We advocate the development of interdisciplinary programs of research that experimentally evaluate comprehensive community interventions. Such interventions would attempt to engage every sector of the community in identifying and implementing policies and practices to reduce emissions. Such interventions are likely to have synergistic effects, such that the total impact is greater than the sum of impact of individual components. We describe the value of interrupted time-series designs as an alternative to randomized trials because these designs are more feasible for evaluating strategies in entire communities.

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Unintended possible consequences of fuel input taxes for individual investments in greenhouse gas mitigation technologies and the resulting emissions

South African Journal of Economic and Management Sciences ◽

10.4102/sajems.v20i1.1472 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 20 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Heinz E. Klingelhöfer

Keyword(s):

Greenhouse Gas Emissions ◽

Greenhouse Gas ◽

Carbon Tax ◽

Greenhouse Gas Mitigation ◽

Imperfect Markets ◽

Individual Investor ◽

Gas Emissions ◽

Price Ceiling ◽

The Individual ◽

The Impact

Background: South Africa is planning to introduce a carbon tax as a Pigouvian measure for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, one of the tax bases designed as a fuel input tax. In this form, it is supposed to incentivise users to reduce and/or substitute fossil fuels, leading to a reduction of CO2 emissions.Aim: This article examines how such a carbon tax regime may affect the individual willingness to invest in greenhouse gas mitigation technologies.Setting: Mathematical derivation, using methods of linear programming, duality theory and sensitivity analysis.Methods: By employing a two-step evaluation approach, it allows to identify the factors determining the maximum price an individual investor would pay for such an investment, given the conditions of imperfect markets.Results: This price ceiling depends on the (corrected) net present values of the payments and on the interdependencies arising from changes in the optimal investment and production programmes. Although the well-established results of environmental economics usually can be confirmed for a single investment, increasing carbon taxes may entail sometimes contradictory and unexpected consequences for individual investments in greenhouse gas mitigation technologies and the resulting emissions. Under certain circumstances, they may discourage such investments and, when still undertaken, even lead to higher emissions. However, these results can be interpreted in an economically comprehensible manner.Conclusion: Under the usually given conditions of imperfect markets, the impact of a carbon tax regime on individual investment decisions to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions is not as straight forward as under the usually assumed, but unrealistically simplifying perfect market conditions. To avoid undesired and discouraging effects, policy makers cannot make solitary decisions, but have to take interdependencies on the addressee´s side into account. The individual investor´s price ceiling for such an investment in imperfect markets can be interpreted as a sum of (partially corrected) net present values, which themselves are a generalisation of the net present values known from perfect markets

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Seeing Double: Peace, Order, and Good Government, and the Impact of Federal Greenhouse Gas Emissions Legislation on Provincial Jurisdiction

SSRN Electronic Journal ◽

10.2139/ssrn.3522915 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Andrew Leach ◽

Eric M. Adams

Keyword(s):

Greenhouse Gas Emissions ◽

Greenhouse Gas ◽

Gas Emissions ◽

Good Government ◽

The Impact

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Impact of Cycle Time and Payload of an Industrial Robot on Resource Efficiency

Robotics ◽

10.3390/robotics10010033 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 10 (1) ◽

pp. 33

Author(s):

Florian Stuhlenmiller ◽

Steffi Weyand ◽

Jens Jungblut ◽

Liselotte Schebek ◽

Debora Clever ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle Assessment ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Energy Consumption ◽

Greenhouse Gas Emissions ◽

Greenhouse Gas ◽

Resource Efficiency ◽

Life Cycle Costs ◽

Gas Emissions ◽

Cycle Times ◽

The Individual

Modern industry benefits from the automation capabilities and flexibility of robots. Consequently, the performance depends on the individual task, robot and trajectory, while application periods of several years lead to a significant impact of the use phase on the resource efficiency. In this work, simulation models predicting a robot’s energy consumption are extended by an estimation of the reliability, enabling the consideration of maintenance to enhance the assessment of the application’s life cycle costs. Furthermore, a life cycle assessment yields the greenhouse gas emissions for the individual application. Potential benefits of the combination of motion simulation and cost analysis are highlighted by the application to an exemplary system. For the selected application, the consumed energy has a distinct impact on greenhouse gas emissions, while acquisition costs govern life cycle costs. Low cycle times result in reduced costs per workpiece, however, for short cycle times and higher payloads, the probability of required spare parts distinctly increases for two critical robotic joints. Hence, the analysis of energy consumption and reliability, in combination with maintenance, life cycle costing and life cycle assessment, can provide additional information to improve the resource efficiency.

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HOW GREEN IS YOUR FOOTPRINT? THE IMPACT OF GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS ON STRATEGIC PLANNING

Proceedings of the Water Environment Federation ◽

10.2175/193864708790894485 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 2008 (6) ◽

pp. 783-792 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Patricia Scanlan ◽

Holly Elmendorf ◽

Hari Santha ◽

James Rowan

Keyword(s):

Strategic Planning ◽

Greenhouse Gas Emissions ◽

Greenhouse Gas ◽

Gas Emissions ◽

Green Is ◽

The Impact

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Observational Constraints on Past Attributable Warming and Predictions of Future Global Warming

Journal of Climate ◽

10.1175/jcli3802.1 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 19 (13) ◽

pp. 3055-3069 ◽

Cited By ~ 129

Author(s):

Peter A. Stott ◽

John F. B. Mitchell ◽

Myles R. Allen ◽

Thomas L. Delworth ◽

Jonathan M. Gregory ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Greenhouse Gas Emissions ◽

Greenhouse Gas ◽

Temperature Change ◽

Greenhouse Warming ◽

Gas Emissions ◽

Aerosol Forcing ◽

Future Global Warming ◽

Cooling Effects ◽

The Impact

Abstract This paper investigates the impact of aerosol forcing uncertainty on the robustness of estimates of the twentieth-century warming attributable to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Attribution analyses on three coupled climate models with very different sensitivities and aerosol forcing are carried out. The Third Hadley Centre Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere GCM (HadCM3), Parallel Climate Model (PCM), and GFDL R30 models all provide good simulations of twentieth-century global mean temperature changes when they include both anthropogenic and natural forcings. Such good agreement could result from a fortuitous cancellation of errors, for example, by balancing too much (or too little) greenhouse warming by too much (or too little) aerosol cooling. Despite a very large uncertainty for estimates of the possible range of sulfate aerosol forcing obtained from measurement campaigns, results show that the spatial and temporal nature of observed twentieth-century temperature change constrains the component of past warming attributable to anthropogenic greenhouse gases to be significantly greater (at the 5% level) than the observed warming over the twentieth century. The cooling effects of aerosols are detected in all three models. Both spatial and temporal aspects of observed temperature change are responsible for constraining the relative roles of greenhouse warming and sulfate cooling over the twentieth century. This is because there are distinctive temporal structures in differential warming rates between the hemispheres, between land and ocean, and between mid- and low latitudes. As a result, consistent estimates of warming attributable to greenhouse gas emissions are obtained from all three models, and predictions are relatively robust to the use of more or less sensitive models. The transient climate response following a 1% yr−1 increase in CO2 is estimated to lie between 2.2 and 4 K century−1 (5–95 percentiles).

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