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This article appears in the following Oxford Review of Economic Policy issue: CLIMATE CHANGE [View the issue table of contents]
Emissions in the Platinum Age: the implications of rapid development for climate-change mitigation
* Australian National University, e-mail: ross.garnaut{at}anu.edu.au
** Australian National University, e-mail: stephen.howes{at}anu.edu.au
*** Australian National University, e-mail: frank.jotzo{at}anu.edu.au
**** Victoria University, Melbourne, e-mail: peter.sheehan{at}vu.edu.au
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Abstract |
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Rapid global economic growth, centred in Asia but now spread across the world, is driving rapid greenhouse-gas emissions growth, making earlier projections unrealistic. This paper develops new, illustrative business-as-usual projections for carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil fuels and other sources and for non-CO2 greenhouse gases. Making adjustments to 2007 World Energy Outlook projections to reflect more fully recent trends, we project annual emissions by 2030 to be almost double current volumes, 11 per cent higher than in the most pessimistic scenario developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and at a level reached only in 2050 in the business-as-usual scenario used by the Stern Review. This has major implications for the global approach to climate-change mitigation. The required effort is much larger than implicit in the IPCC data informing the current international climate negotiations. Large cuts in developed country emissions will be required, and significant deviations from baselines will be required in developing countries by 2020. It is hard to see how the required cuts could be achieved without all major developing as well as developed countries adopting economy-wide policies.
Key Words: Q43 • Q54 • O53
The first three authors are working on the Australian Garnaut Climate Change Review. We would like to thank colleagues, in particular Elizabeth Edye, at the Garnaut Review (www.garnautreview.org.au) for useful discussions, and for their contributions to the Garnaut Interim Report (Garnaut, 2008b) which we draw on in parts of this paper. Anonymous peer-reviewer comments, feedback from Dieter Helm, Cameron Hepburn, Warwick McKibbin, and from seminar participants at the Australian National University and at ICRIER, Delhi also helped improve the paper.
1 Kaya and Yokobori (1997). The Kaya identity further decomposes economic growth into population growth and growth in income per capita.
2 Since energy intensity and carbon intensity are declining, an acceleration for them means that they are declining less rapidly.
3 The EIA (1998) reports that, on average, oil emits 40 per cent more CO2 than gas, and coal 27 per cent more than oil, per unit of energy input.
4 In 2006, China's coal consumption grew by 11.9 per cent and in 2007, according to preliminary estimates, by 7.8 per cent (see National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2007a,b).
5 The projection period in the 2002 WEO was 2000–30, and in the 2007 WEO 2005–30. The 2007 WEO does include a rapid growth scenario with higher emissions growth (2.1 per cent per annum over 2005–30), but this is not the reference case.
6 See China's National Bureau of Statistics, ‘Announcement on Verified GDP Data in 2006 and 2007’, available at http://www.stats.gov.cn/english/newsandcomingevent/t20080410_402473201.htm, 10 April 2008.
7 We extend the latter projection out to 2030.
8 We do not take the assumptions of the WEO 2007 ‘high growth’ scenario as the default because they are not provided in detail.
9 In 2006, energy consumption grew by 9.6 per cent, and GDP by 11.6 per cent. Energy figures from National Bureau of Statistics of China (2007a) (consumption of energy). For GDP figures, see footnote 7.
10 See National Bureau of Statistics of China (2007b). Provisional figures for 2007 indicate energy consumption growth of 7.8 per cent (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2008). This would imply a faster reduction in energy intensity (–3.7 per cent), but GDP has been revised upwards since the energy figures were released.
11 Without changing the growth assumption, the WEO forecast for China is only 3.2 per cent for annual average energy growth between 2005 and 2030.
12 See for example Agerup (2004): ‘The A1FI scenario depicts an extremely unlikely future.’
13 Fluorinated compounds (F gases) are not included in these projections owing to their small size (about 1 per cent of greenhouse-gas emissions) and the difficulties of making comparisons with the SRES scenarios using these gases.
14 IEA (2007b) does publish data for non-CO2 gases for 2005. However, some of these data appear identical to 2000 data (including for major countries such as China and India). There are varying estimates of non-CO2 emission levels. For example, EPA (2006) has combined CH4 and N2O emissions in 2000 of 9.1 Gt CO2-e; IEA (2007b) of 10.5 Gt CO2-e.
15 Canadell et al. (2007) who update Houghton's work have a lower CO2 (LUCF) value for 2000 (5.05 Gt CO2).
16 As per the Bali Box, and the Stern Review, since it is impossible to stabilize at 450 ppm CO2-e without overshooting, we consider a 450 target with temporary overshooting of that target to 500 ppm CO2-e.
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