Cumulative Carbon Emissions and Climate Change
Dr John Rhys, Oxford Institute for Energy Studies Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are essentially cumulative in the earth\’s atmosphere. The thesis of this paper (drawing on an earlier OIES Working Paper) is that much economic analysis and policy making in relation to the mitigation of CO2 emissions has failed to reflect fully this essential element of the science. In particular the cumulative and irreversible nature of CO2 necessarily implies that a significantly heavier weight should attach to current as opposed to future emissions. This is in major contrast to some conventional wisdom and also to the outcomes and expectations that can be observed from current application of market-based approaches to limiting carbon emissions. Application of a progressive tightening of “carbon caps” – limits on total CO2 emissions - has tended to deliver a very different message on the relative importance of present and future emissions, with the price of current emissions being very low but with a prospect of rapid rises in the future. This inconsistency in time profiles, between a focus on costs or externalities – the social cost Read more…
Categories: Academic Papers, Energy and environment, Energy policy
Tags: Carbon budgets, carbon cap, conference 2012, Emission reductions, European Energy in a Challenging World
Climate-Change.-Has-the-economics-lost-contact-with-the-physics.pdf 997.17 KBCumulative-carbon-emissions-and-climate-change.pdf 228.27 KBSep
2012
