Nov 22, 2016 | Climate Change, Energy & Climate
Shinichiro Fujimori, guest researcher in the IIASA Energy Program, discusses the implications of a recent paper with IIASA Science writer and Editor Daisy Brickhill.
The climate mitigation costs of the Paris Agreement are fairly distributed between countries, but they are not fair for future generations, a new IIASA study has found. This suggests that the relative differences between countries’ climate commitments can be kept the same, but to ensure equity for our descendants they must all be raised .
The Paris Agreement allows each country to set its own climate commitments (known as the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, or INDCs), and while this autonomy encourages more states to enter into the agreement, it may result in some countries freeloading by not making their fair share of cuts. There is also a trade-off between the mitigation investments we make now, and how much we leave for our descendants to deal with. The study by Fujimori and colleagues examines the issue of equity from different angles.
How did you measure the equity of the climate commitments?
We designed four scenarios: there was the baseline, which has no climate policy, and therefore no emission constraints at all. Then there was a scenario with a carbon price that is the same all over the world, set high enough to put us on course to meet targets to keep warming well below 2°C by 2100. The third scenario allowed different countries to have different carbon prices, meaning that they followed their current INDCs until 2030, but at that point a global carbon price was again put in place to ensure that we reach 2°C targets by the end of the century. Finally, we created a scenario where all emissions reduction targets were 20% higher than the INDCs until 2030. Again, after that a global carbon price was set. For all of the scenarios we also varied what is known in economics as the “discount rate.”
What is a discount rate?
People tend to devalue the future. So, for example, given the choice of €100 now or €150 in five years, many people would choose the €100 now. This is known as a time preference. You can add to this an “inequality aversion.” This is the amount that a wealthy person is willing to reduce their consumption by in order to increase the amount a poor person can consume. Together they make the discount rate.
We used different values of discount rate to see what might happen if people cared a lot about future generations, or poorer countries, or if they did not.
And, are the INDCs fair?
We found that delaying emissions reductions will push the costs onto future generations. In all our scenarios, regardless of the discount rate, there was inequality between the generations. The best scenario for equity between current and future generations was the second scenario with high, globally uniform carbon taxes that start immediately.
© Robwilson39 | Dreamstime
The inequity between generations was not unexpected, but what was surprising was that under the Paris Agreement the equity between countries was good. The third scenario, which followed the INDCs until 2030, has much better equality between the regions until the global carbon price began in 2030. This is because low-income countries tended to set lower carbon prices, and more developed countries had higher carbon prices.
That means that the last scenario is the ideal. We can keep the relative differences between the INDCs the same but raise them all so that we can meet the targets. That would give us both inter-regional equity and inter-generation equity.
What about the costs of the impacts of climate change? The Paris Agreement mentioned the need for a mechanism to support the victims of climate-related loss and damage. Might that not create a completely different picture of equity?
That is not something we covered in the study, but it is very important. We need many more studies in that area. We need flood teams, agricultural teams, and others, all collaborating across disciplines. Very much how IIASA works, in fact. Fortunately, the model we constructed for this study can incorporate all of these aspects, as they become available, and translate them into a comprehensive economic assessment.
Liu JY, Fujimori S, & Masui T (2016). Temporal and spatial distribution of global mitigation cost: INDCs and equity Environmental Research Letters, 11 (11): 114004.
This article gives the views of the interviewee, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
Jul 8, 2016 | Energy & Climate
By Daisy Brickhill, IIASA science writer and editor.
Many of the options proposed for achieving a stable climate rely on ‘bioenergy with carbon capture and storage’ — burning plant matter for energy, capturing the carbon, and storing it underground. However, this technology has hardly been deployed on anything approaching the large scale. Is it a realistic tool for climate mitigation?
Limiting global warming to 2°C above pre-industrial times has long been a reference point for policymakers and researchers trying to reduce the chances of dangerous climate change. The 2015 Paris climate summit went even further, with countries agreeing to try and limit temperature rise to 1.5°C.
However, while there is a strong scientific consensus that we need to aggressively cut greenhouse gas emissions immediately, there is also growing evidence that we may not be able to achieve the necessary reductions in the time available. This means that we may need a way of removing CO2 already in the atmosphere — a process known as negative emissions.
Negative emissions can come in many forms: from simply planting more trees, to crushing rocks that naturally absorb CO2. One widely considered option is using plant matter as a fuel to produce energy, then capturing the CO2 that is emitted and storing it underground. This is known as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS).
This latter technology is cited by research as being an important part of restricting warming to safe — or at least safer — levels since it contributes to both carbon sequestration and decarbonization of the energy system. In fact, more than half of the future scenarios that give at least a 66% chance of limiting warming to 2°C, which were developed for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), feature BECCS.
However, the technology remains mostly untested on a large scale and there are doubts about its sustainability in terms of land and water use, and other potentially negative impacts on the environment. With so many IPCC scenarios including BECCS, information on whether it is at all a practical solution is desperately needed.
A recent IIASA study addresses deployment of BECCS in Indonesia, examining whether adapting existing coal-fired power stations so that they can burn a mix of coal and plant waste from agriculture (such as seed kernels or stems that are usually discarded), is more effective than building specific biomass-burning power stations.
Rice paddies in Indonesia. Plant waste from agriculture can be used in bioenergy with carbon capture and storage systems.
The team found that although both options saved the same amount of CO2, the combined stations were more efficient, producing more electricity for the amount of biomass burnt. “More efficiency means that burning biomass in adapted coal-fired power stations would be more economically viable,” says IIASA researcher Ping Yowargana, coauthor of the study. “It is also likely to be easier and cheaper to convert existing coal power stations than build new specific biomass-burning stations. With lower investments and existing infrastructure, policymakers and other stakeholders are more likely to embrace the idea.”
There are limitations: the study results indicate that under the current conditions it is not possible to burn any more than 30% biomass in a combined power station, for instance. There are also uncertainties surrounding whether it is possible to collect enough biomass on the scale needed. “We need to do further work on the logistic and financial feasibility of BECCS,” says Yowargana. “But these results are broadly general, and can be applied to other countries and situations, making them a valuable starting point.”
And while a complete conversion to a decarbonized energy system is needed in the long term, this work points the way to how BECCS might be deployed now to help prevent the damaging climate change we have sown for ourselves.
Reference: Hetland J, Yowargana P, Leduc S & Kraxner F (2016). Carbon-negative emissions: Systemic impacts of biomass conversion: A case study on CO2 capture and storage options. International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control, 49. pp. 330-342.
Further reading:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/beccs-the-story-of-climate-changes-saviour-technology
Moreira, J. R., Romeiro, V., Fuss, S., Kraxner, F. and Pacca, S. A. (2016) BECCS potential in Brazil: Achieving negative emissions in ethanol and electricity production based on sugar cane bagasse and other residues. Applied Energy, 179. pp. 55-63. Item availability may be restricted.
Smith, P., Davis, S.J., Creutzig, F., Fuss, S., Rogelj, J., McCollum, D., Krey, V., Grubler, A., Jonas, M., Kraxner, F., Nakicenovic, N., Obersteiner, M. and Rogner, M. (2016) Biophysical and economic limits to negative CO2 emissions. Nature Climate Change, 6 (1). pp. 42-50.
Fuss, S., Canadell, J.G., Peters, G.P., Tavoni, M., Andrew, R.M., Ciais, P., Jackson, R.B., Jones, C.D., Kraxner, F., Nakicenovic, N., Le Quere, C., Raupach, M.R., Sharifi, A., Smith, P. and Yamagata, Y. (2014) Betting on negative emissions. Nature Climate Change, 4 (10). pp. 850-853.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
Oct 29, 2015 | Energy & Climate
Interview with Naoko Ishii, CEO and Chairperson of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), an independent organization that provides grants for projects working towards sustainability. IIASA, the GEF, and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) have recently partnered on a new project to explore integrated solutions for water, energy, and land.
Naoko Ishii ©Global Environment Facility
Q What is sustainable development and why is it important?
A As Brundtland put it, sustainable development meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.
If we do not achieve sustainable development, we will fail to provide even the barest essentials of life—food, water, and shelter—for the growing population. The extra two billion people that will inhabit the world in 2050 can only be accommodated if we are serious about sustainable development.
On a personal level I care about sustainable development because I care about the future, I care about young people, and I care about humanity. Achieving sustainable development is, in my opinion, the single most important issue we face today. Without it, all life on Earth is in jeopardy.
The Global Environment Facility (GEF) was created on the eve of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio to assist in the protection of the global environment and promote sustainable development. The benefits of such an endeavor have only become clearer over time. It is no coincidence that in 2015 all nations of the world will adopt a set of sustainable development goals which place a strong emphasis on the “global commons,” and that in parallel we have a new global agreement on climate change within reach.
How do you see the world in 2050? What are your most optimistic and pessimistic visions?
I am an optimistic person so I will say that, by 2050, every government, every business, and every individual will take the environment into consideration in all their actions. By 2050, we will all be caring for the Earth, taking responsibility for the use of our planet’s resources, and building economies which will leave no one without dignity or necessary subsistence. We will live within safe planetary boundaries. Pessimism is not an option for me.
How can science help the world achieve sustainable development?
Science plays a critical role. We need it to monitor the state of our resources, the impacts of our activities, and the progress being made. Science can also help identify solutions. It can help encourage businesses to make smart decisions, for example, about saving money though energy efficiency, risk mitigation, and new revenue opportunities driven by innovation and new business models.
Sustainable development is a truly cross-cutting endeavor: it spans many sectors, from agriculture to economics, and transcends national boundaries. Science can play an important role by producing research that is integrated, cross-sectoral and international. In this way, synergies, co-benefits, and trade-offs can be explored in order to identify the smartest paths to achieving multiple sustainable development goals at the same time
“Sustainable development is a truly cross-cutting endeavor: it spans many sectors, from agriculture to economics, and transcends national boundaries.” ©The GEF
How do you see the role of Global Environment Facility in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals?
The GEF is uniquely placed to support the global commons—the planet’s finite environmental resources that provide the stable conditions required for a sustainable, prosperous future for all. Our new strategy—GEF2020—lays out an ambitious vision for the GEF, aimed at addressing the underlying drivers of environmental degradation and delivering integrated, holistic, solutions. We are building on more than 20 years of experience providing support to over 165 countries. By working with national governments, local communities, the private sector, civil society organizations and indigenous peoples, we help find and implement integrated solutions to global challenges.
What are the advantages of a cross-sectoral and cross-border approach to identifying paths to sustainable development?
Many environmental challenges and threats to sustainable development do not respect borders. Moreover, they are often interdependent, or share common drivers. For example, biodiversity loss and climate change is partly driven by unsustainable forest management, which is in turn connected to production of globally traded commodities like palm oil or soy. Problems like this require an integrated, cross-cutting approach.
Given the importance of cross-sectoral interventions, at the GEF we will be implementing a program of integrated approach pilot projects. We believe that these will help countries and the global community in tackling underlying drivers of environmental degradation. I am also very excited about a research program we have recently launched in partnership with IIASA and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, focusing on development and implementation of integrated solutions to tackle the water-food-energy nexus.
Note: This article gives the views of the interviewee, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
Sep 22, 2015 | Energy & Climate
By Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Deputy Director General, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria (Originally published on the World Economic Forum Agenda Blog.)
Nebojsa Nakicenovic
Goal 7 of the Sustainable Development Goals is ambitious: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all. This must be accomplished without compromising Goal 13: climate. This is achievable.
In spite of ups-and-downs and outright shocks in the global economy, some quite recent, the economic success stories of the industrialized countries are role models for the countries that are still developing. This puts the entire global community in the dichotomous position of needing to fire up the engine of growth, without producing the greenhouse gases it has been emitting since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. What is the answer?
Very few questions in the complex area of energy and climate change can have a simplistic answer, but I am going to attempt one here: decarbonization, namely, drastic reduction of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions per unit of economic activity.
Back in 1993, I wrote this:
“The possibility of less carbon-intensive and even carbon-free energy as major sources of energy during the next century is consistent with the long-term dynamic transformation and structural change of the energy system.”
My view in 2015 is the same; however, the scientific community 22 years later has a much better understanding of “the decarbonization challenge” and how it can be addressed. I will sketch out a 10-step approach to the removal of carbon from the global economy, but first I’d like to paint in a bit of the background.
Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas and contributor to climate change. The largest source is our use of fossil fuels to drive development. Carbon dioxide emissions have increased exponentially since 1850 at about 2% per year, while decarbonization of the global economy is only around 0.3% per year.
The 2012 Global Energy Assessment, in which IIASA played a leading role, puts the current decarbonization rate at approximately six times too low to offset the increase in global energy use of about 2% per year. To meet the goal of the 2009 climate agreement (the Copenhagen Accord), namely, “the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be below 2 degrees Celsius” to prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, global net emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will need to approach zero by the second half of this century, implying deep, deep decarbonization rates.
“Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas and contributor to climate change. The largest source is our use of fossil fuels to drive development.” © Kokhanchikov | Dollar Photo Club
But we need deep decarbonization while energy needs are increasing to meet the demand of the developing world, including the three billion without access today to sustainable energy. All scenarios in the academic literature that lead to further economic development in the world, universal access to sustainable energy, and the stabilization of climate change to less than 2 degrees Celsius, anticipate deep and urgent decarbonization. Here’s my 10-point plan for doing that.
- Change attitudes
Attitudes to energy use are based on many factors, from cultural norms to overall infrastructure design. We need much greater political will to affect a change in attitudes: it is critical that policy interventions should communicate to citizens the ethical notion of improved well-being and health now and for future generations of a zero-carbon economy. .
- Transform governance
The transformation needed this century is more fundamental than previous transformations, like the replacement of coal by oil, because of the significantly shorter time needed to achieve it. Thus, government policies are essential, and are needed particularly in changing buildings codes, fuel efficiency standards for transportation, mandates for the introduction of renewables, and carbon pricing.
- Improve energy efficiency
More efficient provision of energy services, or doing more with less, and radical improvements in energy efficiency, especially in end use, will reduce the amount of primary energy required and represents a cost-effective, near-term option for reducing carbon dioxide emissions, as well as having multiple benefits in different areas of life.
- Ramp up renewable use
We can show that the share of renewable non-fossil energy from solar, wind, rain, tides, waves, and geothermal sources in global primary energy could increase from the current 17% to between 30% and 75%. In some regions it could exceed 90% by 2050, provided that public attitudes change and efficiency increases.
- Reduce global energy intensity
The energy intensity in the industrial sector in different countries is steadily declining due to improvements in energy efficiency and a change in the structure of the industrial output. Far greater reductions are feasible by combining these improvements with adoption of the best-achievable technology.
- Use known technologies
Carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS), now being piloted, is a pathway that leads to decarbonization with continued use of fossil energy. It requires: reducing costs, supporting scale-up, assuring carbon storage integrity and environmental capability, and securing approval of storage sites. Nuclear energy could make a significant contribution in some parts of the world, or it could be phased out as, for instance, in Germany.
- Improve buildings
Retrofitting buildings can reduce heating and cooling energy requirements by 50–90%; new buildings can be designed and built using close to zero energy for heating and cooling. Passive energy houses and those that produce energy onsite are another great opportunity to achieve vigorous decarbonization. In conjunction with compatible lifestyles oriented toward rational energy use, efficient buildings are an important decarbonization option.
- Cut transport carbon
A major transformation of transportation is possible over the next 30–40 years and will require improving vehicle designs, infrastructure, fuels and behavior. Electrically powered transportation reduces final energy use by more than a factor of three over gasoline-powered vehicles. A shift toward collective mobility is an essential option. This also implies behavioral changes and new business models like car-sharing, and self-driving cars to replace individual mobility.
- Clean industrial processes
Overall, global industry efficiency is only 30%. Improved energy efficiency in industry results in significant energy productivity gains and, in turn, improved productivity boosts employment and corporate competitiveness. A shift toward low to zero emission energy sources in industry is another important and much-needed change. For example, with an aggressive renewables strategy, near-zero growth in GHG emissions in the industrial sector would be possible. Finally, decarbonization would also involve changes of industrial processes, for example, from high to low temperatures.
- Stranded assets and ‘derisking’ renewables.
The flow of investment needs to be changed away from fossil fuels and toward efficiency, renewables, decarbonization of fossil energy sources, and especially efficient end-use in buildings, transport, and industry. Sustainable energy futures require relatively high up-front investments with the benefit of low long-term costs. They are attractive in the long run, but the up-front investments need derisking and other forms of support, such as feed-in tariffs.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
Aug 13, 2015 | Energy & Climate
By Sabine Fuss, Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) and IIASA Ecosystems Services and Management Program
The Sleipner CCS plant in Norway was the world’s first commercial CO2 storage facility. Photo: Kjetil Alsvik/Statoil
Current strategies for limiting climate change to no more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels are centered around a shift towards less carbon-intensive technology, increases in energy efficiency, and changes in management and behavior.
This won’t be enough.
Global carbon dioxide concentrations have exceeded the benchmark of 400ppm, and it is clear that we’re headed for an overshoot. This means that to have a chance of stabilizing climate change below 2°C, we will actually need to extract greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, thus achieving what we call “negative emissions.” This is even more evident when we look at continued population growth, our dependence on existing infrastructure in the near future, and rising living standards in many emerging regions.
In a session on negative emissions at this year’s CFCC conference in Paris jointly organized by members of the Global Carbon Project at IIASA, MCC and CSIRO, and CO2-GEONET, a group of leading international researchers discussed the need for negative emissions and the implications of large-scale removal of CO2 from the atmosphere, and took a closer look at the outstanding questions and uncertainties on the topic.
Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), and afforestation are two possibilities that could contribute to negative emissions, removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. © zlikovec |Dollar Photo Club
A wide range of possibilities – but many open questions
The IPCC’s AR5 scenarios show that negative emissions could be achieved by combining carbon-neutral Bioenergy with Carbon dioxide Capture and Storage (BECCS), but also through afforestation. Most of the ambitious climate stabilization pathways show that we would need BECCS by the middle of the century, even though the removed emissions would not outweigh the remaining positive emissions at that point, that is, we would not yet see net negative emissions.
More precisely, the most recent scenarios of Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) show that to achieve the 2°C limit, negative emissions of up to 13.2 GtCO2-eq./yr in 2100 are needed. This could be reached by BECCS, which might run into problems as competing for land with other demands, or a technology known as Direct Air Capture, which is more energy-intensive. Enhanced Weathering and afforestation might also deliver negative emissions, though of a smaller magnitude. However, all the presented negative emission technologies have their limits and none is a silver bullet. Clearly, there are more cards in the deck than just BECCS and we will have to aim for a portfolio respecting limits and trade-offs with other policy goals, but also opportunities and synergies.
One glaring clear point: negative emissions cannot be used to continue “business as usual” and then remove the bulk of the emissions mid-century. The required carbon flows would simply be too large. At the same time, such a high-emissions world would bring with it major environmental feedbacks, such as ocean acidification. Thus, negative emissions have to be understood as just one element of a mitigation portfolio complementing drastic GHG emission reductions in the near term.
While the large-scale use of biomass and its impacts have been at the center of bioenergy discussions for a while, CCS will also need to be scaled up to massive amounts of up to 25 GtCO2 per year by 2100. However, geology experts at the meeting were optimistic with respect to the storage potentials for these large amounts. The only challenge would be to find enough viable storage sites with assured capacity.
Other challenges include the need to investigate negative emission options that are not yet included in the AR5 scenarios, such as Enhanced Weathering, Direct Air Capture, and a method to improve CCS and BECCS with geothermal energy. How much the combined potential of these negative emissions options will indeed reduce temperatures also depends on the response of the climate system. However, two modelling teams presented new insights on reaction to overshoot, and negative emissions physically needed to keep global warming below 2°C.
While negative emissions are needed at large scale, many questions remain, which will need to be addressed very soon in order for scenarios meet reality. Communication must improve between scientists, politicians, practitioners, but also media and the public. Existing misunderstandings, for example, that negative emissions are just an excuse to continue on a business as usual pathway, or that negative emissions carry the same risks as geo-engineering, need to be resolved.
Read the full session report (PDF)
Sabine Fuss is leading the working group “Sustainable resource management and global change” at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) in Berlin and holds a guest affiliation with IIASA’s ESM program. She is co-leading (with D. v. Vuuren) the research initiative “MAnaging Global Negative Emission Technologies (MaGNET)” hosted at the GCP Tsukuba Office
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
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Jun 23, 2015 | Energy & Climate, Science and Policy
By Hannes Böttcher, Senior Researcher, Öko-Institut, previously in IIASA’s Ecosystem Services and Management Program
In or out? Debit or credit? The role of the land use sector in the EU climate policy still needs to be defined
The EU has a target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40% by 2030. This is an economy-wide target and therefore includes the land use sector, which includes land use, land use change and forestry. The EU is currently in the process of deciding how to integrate land use into this target. This is not an easy task, as we show in a new study.
Land use includes activities, such as logging, that can release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But the sector also includes other processes that can remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Accounting for these processes is a complicated task. © Souvenirpixels | Dreamstime.com
The land use sector has several particularities that make it different from other sectors already included in the target, such as energy, industrial processes, waste, and agriculture. The most specific particularity is that the sector includes activities that cause emissions but also can lead to carbon being removed from that atmosphere, and taken up and stored in vegetation and soil. However, this removal is not permanent. Harvesting trees, and burning wood releases the carbon much more quickly than it was stored. Another particularity is that not all emissions and removals are directly caused by humans. This is especially true for removals from forest management.
In the past, the EU reported that uptake and storing of carbon through land use activities was higher than emissions from this sector. The European land use sector thus acted as a relatively stable net sink of emissions at around -300 to -350 Megatons (Mt) CO2 per year. But this might change in the near future: projections show the net sink declining to only 279 Mt CO2 in 2030.
Adding up carbon credits and debits
The emissions and removals that are actually occurring in the atmosphere are not exactly those that are currently accounted for under the Kyoto Protocol. Rather complicated rules exist that define what can be counted as credits and debits. Depending on how these rules develop, the EU sink may be accounted for to a large degree as a credit, or it could turn into a debit because the sink is getting smaller compared to the past. It is not likely that the entire sink will be turned into credits. Especially for the management of existing forests, which contributes a lot to the net sink, negotiators of the Kyoto Protocol have developed special accounting rules for the time before 2020. Under these rules, carbon credits only count if measured against a baseline.
The rules for the time after 2020 have not yet been agreed, however, as the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2020. In order to assess the impact of including the land use sector in the EU target in our new study, we had to make different assumptions, for example about how much wood we will harvest, the development of emissions and removals, and what the baseline for forest management should be. We then applied the existing Kyoto rules and alternative rules and assessed their impact on the level of ambition required to meet the EU’s target. It quickly became obvious: the assumptions we make and the rules we apply have very large implications for the 2030 Climate and Energy Framework.
One option of including land use discussed by the Commission is to take agriculture emissions out of the currently existing framework of the so-called ESD (an already existing mechanism to distribute mitigation efforts among EU Member States for specific sectors such as transport, buildings, waste and agriculture) and merge it with land use activities in a separate pillar. In our study we estimated the net credits that the land use sector could potentially generate, and found these credits could be as high as the entire emission reduction effort needed in agriculture. This would mean that in agriculture no reductions would be needed if the credits from land use were exchangeable between the sectors.
The impact on the target of 40% emissions reductions can be more than 4 percentage points if land use is included and the rules are not changed. This means that the original 40% target without land use would be reduced to an only 35% target. Other sectors would have to reduce their emissions less because land use seems to do part of the job. The target as a whole would thus become much less ambitious than it currently is. But this does not need to be the case. If accounting rules are changed in a way to account for the fact that the sink is getting smaller and smaller, land use would create debits. Including debits in the target would make it a 41% target instead and increase the overall level of ambition. This would be bad for the atmosphere because effectively emissions would not be reduced as much as needed.
It thus all depends on assumptions and rules. Before the rules are announced, the contribution of the land use sector cannot be quantified. Given this, we argue that the best option would be to keep land use separate from other sectors, give it separate target and design accounting rules that set incentives to increase the sink.
Reference
Böttcher H, Graichen J. 2015. Impacts on the EU 2030 climate target of inlcuding LULUCF in the climate and energy policy framework. Report prepared for Fern and IFOAM. Oeko-Institut.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
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