JP

A critical challenge in meeting the Paris Agreement’s long-term goal of keeping global warming well below two degrees Celsius is to vastly reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions generated by the most energy-intensive industries. According to a recent report by the International Energy Agency, these industries—cement, iron and steel, chemicals—account for about 20 percent of global CO2 emissions.

Decarbonizing industry
Global air quality and health impacts of domestic and international shipping

Abstract: Shipping activities contribute to degraded air quality and premature mortalities worldwide, but previous assessments of their health impact have not yet differentiated contributions from domestic and international shipping at the global level. The impacts of domestic shipping can affect different populations, and domestic and international shipping emissions are governed under different regulatory systems. Thus, a consistent global analysis comparing the health impacts from domestic and international shipping could inform policy making in attempts to coordinate policies across multiple scales to address the health burden of shipping emissions.

In this study, we conduct an integrated analysis of global ship emissions and their PM2.5-related health impacts, in which we differentiate the contributions from domestic and international shipping. We create bottom-up global ship emission inventories based on ship activity records from the Automatic Identification System (AIS), and then apply the GEOS-Chem model and Global Exposure Mortality Model to quanitfy shipping-related PM2.5-concentrations and associated moralities. We also quantify the public health benefits under different control scenarios including the 2020 0.5% Sulphur Cap, a post-2020 0.1% Sulphur Cap, and a post-2020 Tier III NOx Standard.

We find that 94,200 (95% confidence interval: 84,800 - 103,000) premature deaths were associated with PM2.5 exposure due to maritime shipping in 2015, of which 83% were associated with international shipping activities and 17% with domestic shipping. Although the global health burdens of ship emissions are dominated by international shipping, the fraction varies by region: 44% of shipping-related deaths in China come from domestic shipping activities. We estimate about 30,200 (27,200 - 33,000) avoided deaths per year under a scenario consistent with a 2020 0.5% Sulphur Cap. We additionally examine two post-2020 control scenarios: we find that a Tier III NOx Standard would have greater benefits than a 0.1% Sulphur Cap, with the two policies reducing annual shipping-attributable PM2.5-related premature deaths by 33,300 (30,100 - 36,400) and 5,070 (4,560 - 5,540), respectively.

Multi-sector dynamics modeling enables researchers to evaluate future trends and tipping points in continental U.S. land-use change by simulating interactions and interdependencies among the human and natural systems that drive it, and the resilience of these systems to compounding forces and stressors.

 

The Science

DOE Highlight: Agricultural and forest land-use change in the continental United States: Are there tipping points?
Empirical evidence and projections of carbon leakage: Some, but not too much, probably

A chapter by Justin Caron appears in Handbook on Trade Policy and Climate Change edited by Michael Jacob, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd (2022). 

Abstract: The potential for policy-driven emissions reductions to “leak” to less regulated regions is a well-researched topic in climate change economics, though no clear conclusion regarding the likely magnitude of the problem has yet to emerge from the literature.

This chapter offers a broad overview of carbon leakage estimates, combining insights from various methodologies that existing meta-studies have so far reviewed separately: “simulation” studies providing ex-ante projections from complex economic models, and “estimation” studies that econometrically tease out ex-post evidence for leakage from existing carbon pricing schemes.

Combined with additional indirect evidence that trade frictions are generally strong relative to climate policy-induced energy price differentials, I conclude that the weight of evidence points to the conclusion of “some, but not too much” leakage: while specific sectors may be severely affected, estimated economy-wide leakage rates (of 10-30% on average) do not justify using it as an argument against climate policy.

The cost of CO2 transport and storage in global integrated assessment modeling

Abstract: Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is one of many critical tools to mitigate global climate change. Much analytic work has been dedicated to evaluating the cost and performance of various CO2 capture technologies, but less attention has been paid to evaluating the cost of CO2 transport and storage. This paper assesses the range of CO2 transport and storage costs and evaluates their impact on economy-wide modelling results of decarbonization pathways. Many integrated assessment modeling studies assume a combined cost for CO2 transport and storage that is uniform in all regions of the world, commonly estimated at $10/tCO2. Realistically, the cost of CO2 transport and storage is not fixed at $10/tCO2 and varies across geographic, geologic, and institutional settings. I surveyed the literature to identify key sources of variability in transport and storage costs and developed a method to quantify and incorporate these elements into a cost range. I find that onshore pipeline transport and storage costs vary from $4 to 45/tCO2 depending on key sources of variability including transport distance, scale (i.e. quantity of CO2 transported and stored), monitoring assumptions, reservoir geology, and transport cost variability such as pipeline capital costs. Using the MIT Economic Projection and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model, I examined the impact of variability in transport and storage costs by applying a range of uniform costs in all geographic regions in a future where global temperature rise is limited to 2°C. I then developed several modeling cases where transport and storage costs vary regionally. In these latter cases, global cumulative CO2 captured and stored through 2100 ranges from 290 to 377 Gt CO2, compared to 425 Gt CO2 when costs are assumed to be uniformly $10/t CO2 in all regions. I conclude that the widely used assumption of $10/tCO2 for the transport and storage of CO2 is reasonable in some regions, but not in others. Moreover, CCS deployment is more sensitive to transport and storage costs in some regions than others, particularly China. Several transport and storage options should be taken into account when modeling large-scale deployment of CCS in decarbonization pathways. However, cost data are scarce and there is still a significant amount of uncertainty and variability in available transport and storage costs.  

Pages

Subscribe to JP