Climate Policy

Aiming to avoid the worst effects of climate change, from severe droughts to extreme coastal flooding, the nearly 200 nations that signed the Paris Agreement set a long-term goal of keeping global warming well below two degrees Celsius. Achieving that goal will require dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, primarily through a global transition to low-carbon energy technologies. In the power sector, these include solar, wind, biomass, nuclear and carbon capture and storage (CCS).

Powering through the coming energy transition

We live at a time of increasing physical risk—exposure to detrimental climate change and/or weather extremes—as well as transition risk—particularly the financial impacts of fossil fuel assets losing their value in the needed rapid transition to a low-carbon economy aimed at stabilizing the climate. A better understanding of these risks could empower decision-makers in the public and private sectors to chart a more sustainable, equitable and prosperous future.

Global changes: Physical and transition risks
Integrated climate-change assessment scenarios and carbon dioxide removal

Abstract: To halt climate change this century, we must reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from human activities to net zero. Any emission sources, such as in the energy or land-use sectors, must be balanced by natural or technological carbon sinks that facilitate CO2 removal (CDR) from the atmosphere. Projections of demand for large-scale CDR are based on an integrated scenario framework for emission scenarios composed of emission profiles as well as alternative socio-economic development trends and social values consistent with them. The framework, however, was developed years before systematic reviews of CDR entered the literature. This primer provides an overview of the purposes of scenarios in climate-change research and how they are used. It also introduces the integrated scenario framework and why it came about. CDR studies using the scenario framework, as well as its limitations, are discussed. Possible future developments for the scenario framework are highlighted, especially in relation to CDR.

This project assesses the participation and contribution of India’s hard-to-abate sectors (such as cement, iron and steel, chemicals, refineries and fertilizer production) to the country’s decarbonization efforts. The project identifies existing emissions contributions of hard-to-abate sectors in India and their likely future trajectory of development under the currently proposed policy regime.

Economic analysis of the Hard-to-Abate Sectors in India

This project continues a collaborative effort with RTI that is providing analytical support to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Economics Branch. The objective is to simulate environmental policy impacts on the US using a recursive-dynamic, computable general equilibrium modeling framework. For certain applications, the model incorporates linkage to partial equilibrium representations of the electricity sector from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Regional Energy Deployment System (ReEDS) to facilitate robust energy and environmental policy analyses. 

Economy-Wide Modeling of Energy/Environment Policy Scenarios

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