EDF crunches the numbers for climate change

Environmental Defense Fund’s numbers crunchers once again are providing the critical figures needed to develop new climate change policies this week at the Fourth World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economists in Montreal, Canada.

Intensity targets and economics

Intensity targets for emissions can be ineffective at reducing total emissions because, such as in the U.S., it’s possible for a country’s emissions intensity to fall while it total carbon emissions increase. This means falling intensity targets don’t necessarily result in an absolute emissions reduction, which is imperative for successful climate policy.

In their Montreal presentation, Alexander Golub, a senior research fellow at EDF, and Dominic Marcellino of the Ecologic Institute look at intensity targets, policies that specify emissions reductions relative to a country’s economic output or productivity (e.g. tons of CO2 per million dollars GDP), and pose the question: “Are intensity targets the way to facilitate economic development and prevent climate change?” Answer: No.

They explain why: developing countries are both the primary future victims and the main future contributors to climate change. These countries need to address climate change without sacrificing their economic development goals.

Some policymakers have proposed climate policy based on intensity targets. Not a good plan, say Golub and Marcellino, who argue intensity targets don't provide advantages for climate policy because they:

1. don’t provide better environmental results
2. are more expensive than other types of policy
3. will do nothing to ease international negotiations

View Golub's presentation about intensity targets, economic development and preventing climate change.

Reducing deforestation and economics

Slowing deforestation can lower the total costs of climate policies by up to 25 percent, according to a new analysis from EDF Senior Economist Ruben Lubowski, EDF's Golub, Valentina Bosetti of the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM), a leading modeling energy/climate modeling center in Europe, and Anil Markandya of the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3).

Lubowski says the research in “Linking Reduced Deforestation and a Global Carbon Market: Implications for Clean Energy Technology and Policy Flexibility":

confirms that integrating REDD into global carbon markets can create powerful incentives for preserving tropical forests while lowering costs and enhancing climate protection objectives.

We find that by introducing policies to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD), countries can reduce the costs of climate policy by up to 25%, and even more if there is uncertainty over future climate targets. Introducing this additional way to meet emission targets has little negative effect on the development of clean energy technologies, and actually could boost investments in some key technologies such as carbon capture and storage (CCS).

EDF's Luboswki and FEEM's Bosetti also recently collaborated in authoring and editing a FEEM publication of Deforestation and Climate Change: Reducing Carbon Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. The book, which looks at the history and current status of REDD, aims to:

shed light on some of the major concerns, issues and challenges related to the inclusion of forest carbon in international climate policies, as well as to illustrate some of the potential solutions and paths forward.

Economics and controlling climate change under uncertainty