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In the present paper, national and externally organized projections of greenhouse gas emissions for Austria were compared to gain insight on the underlying scenario data assumptions. National greenhouse gas emission trends extend until 2030, an assessment of European Union (EU) countries to 2050. In addition, data for 2000-2100 was extracted from the global emission database described by the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP). By identifying trends in these projections, it was possible to produce (a) a long-term assessment of national scenarios until 2100, (b) an assessment of the ambition level toward national climate strategies, and (c) a standardized method to compare trends across countries. By extracting RCP data, Austrian's methane, nitrous oxide, and carbon dioxide emissions up to 2100 could be projected for all sources as well as specific sectors. With respect to the RCP scenario emission data, national projections did not seem to employ the mitigation potentials available for the most stringent RCP scenario, RCP2.6. Comparing projections that supported the EU Climate Strategy 2030 with national projections revealed similar trends. Because RCP2.6 is the only scenario consistent with a 2 °C global warming target, and it is much more ambitious than any of the national or European projections, further measures will be required if Austria is to adequately contribute to this widely accepted policy goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Greenhouse gases emission inventories are computed with rather low precision. Moreover, their uncertainty distributions may be asymmetric. This should be accounted for in the compliance and trading rules. In this paper we model the uncertainty of inventories as intervals or using fuzzy numbers. The latter allows us to better shape the uncertainty distributions. The compliance and emission trading rules obtained generalize the results for the symmetric uncertainty distributions that were considered in the earlier papers by the present authors (Nahorski et al., Water Air & Soil Pollution. Focus 7(4-5):539-558, ; Nahorski and Horabik, , J Energy Eng 134(2):47-52, ). However, unlike in the symmetric distribution, in the asymmetric fuzzy case it is necessary to apply approximations because of nonlinearities in the formulas. The final conclusion is that the interval uncertainty rules can be applied, but with a much higher substitutional noncompliance risk, which is a parameter of the rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The assessment of greenhouse gases emitted to and removed from the atmosphere is high on the international political and scientific agendas. Growing international concern and cooperation regarding the climate change problem have increased the need for policy-oriented solutions to the issue of uncertainty in, and related to, inventories of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The approaches to addressing uncertainty discussed in this Special Issue reflect attempts to improve national inventories, not only for their own sake but also from a wider, systems analytical perspective-a perspective that seeks to strengthen the usefulness of national inventories under a compliance and/or global monitoring and reporting framework. These approaches demonstrate the benefits of including inventory uncertainty in policy analyses. The authors of the contributed papers show that considering uncertainty helps avoid situations that can, for example, create a false sense of certainty or lead to invalid views of subsystems. This may eventually prevent related errors from showing up in analyses. However, considering uncertainty does not come for free. Proper treatment of uncertainty is costly and demanding because it forces us to make the step from 'simple to complex' and only then to discuss potential simplifications. Finally, comprehensive treatment of uncertainty does not offer policymakers quick and easy solutions. The authors of the papers in this Special Issue do, however, agree that uncertainty analysis must be a key component of national GHG inventory analysis. Uncertainty analysis helps to provide a greater understanding and better science helps us to reduce and deal with uncertainty. By recognizing the importance of identifying and quantifying uncertainties, great strides can be made in ongoing discussions regarding GHG inventories and accounting for climate change. The 17 papers in this Special Issue deal with many aspects of analyzing and dealing with uncertainty in emissions estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many European politicians argue that the EU should set tougher emission targets than what is required by the Kyoto protocol, and moreover, that emission trading with other countries outside EU should be limited so as to keep emission quota prices high. One of the arguments, frequently cited for such a policy, is the need for technological development. However, the literature on climate change and technological innovation does not unambiguously support the need for setting high emission taxes today. In this paper we investigate the relationship between emission taxes and technological change further by modeling innovation activity explicitly. In our model both the amount of R&D and the amount of carbon abatement are decided in a decentralized way by the market as a response to an emission tax. Moreover, we introduce several distinct failures in the market for new innovations, among others, insufficient patent protection and intertemporal knowledge spill-overs. Our findings suggest that governments should under some circumstances set a higher carbon tax today if we have technological change driven by R&D than if we have pure exogenous technological change. Based on numerical simulations these circumstances are (a) positive intertemporal knowledge spillovers and/or (b) weak patent protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are required to develop and report a national inventory of greenhouse gases not controlled by the Montreal Protocol. In the Asia region, "Workshops on Greenhouse Gas Inventories in Asia (WGIA)" have been organised annually since 2003 under the support of the government of Japan. WGIAs promote information exchange in the region to support countries' efforts to improve the quality of greenhouse gas inventories. This paper reports the major outcomes of the WGIAs and discusses the key aspects of information exchange in the region for the improvement of inventories. Results: The major outcomes of WGIAs intended to help countries improve GHG inventories, can be summarised as follows: (1) identification of common issues and possible solutions by sector, (2) reporting country inventory practices, and (3) verification of the UNFCCC reporting requirements. Conclusion: The workshops provided the opportunity for countries to share common issues and constraints pertinent to GHG inventories and to exchange information regarding possible solutions for those issues based on their own experience. The relevance of information exchange is determined due to emission sources, emitting mechanisms from sources, and technologies used. Information exchange about emission sources that are unique to Asia, like those of the agriculture sector, contributes significantly to the accumulation of knowledge at the regional and global levels. Enabling countries to verify their national circumstances with the reporting requirements under UNFCCC is also an essential part of the WGIA information exchange activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

pproximately half of human-induced carbon dioxide (CO) emissions are taken up by the land and ocean, and the rest stays in the atmosphere, increasing the global concentration and acting as a major greenhouse-gas (GHG) climate-forcing element. Although GHG mitigation is now in the political arena, the exact spatial distribution of the land sink is not well known. In this paper, an estimation of mean European net ecosystem exchange (NEE) carbon fluxes for the period 1998-2001 is performed with three mesoscale and two global transport models, based on the integration of atmospheric CO measurements into the same Bayesian synthesis inverse approach. A special focus is given to sub-continental regions of Europe making use of newly available CO concentration measurements in this region. Inverse flux estimates from the five transport models are compared with independent flux estimates from four ecosystem models. All inversions detect a strong annual carbon sink in the southwestern part of Europe and a source in the northeastern part. Such a dipole, although robust with respect to the network of stations used, remains uncertain and still to be confirmed with independent estimates. Comparison of the seasonal variations of the inversion-based net land biosphere fluxes (NEP) with the NEP predicted by the ecosystem models indicates a shift of the maximum uptake period, from June in the ecosystem models to July in the inversions. This study thus improves on the understanding of the carbon cycle at sub-continental scales over Europe, demonstrating that the methodology for understanding regional carbon cycle is advancing, which increases its relevance in terms of issues related to regional mitigation policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we consider the buying/selling prices of carbon dioxide (CO) emission permits in trading models with uncertainty. Permission prices, although usually omitted from standard models, may significantly influence the trading market. We thus undertook to construct a more realistic trade model and to compare it with the standard one. To do this, we introduced several important changes to the standard model, namely, (1) a new optimized quality function; and (2) transactions with price negotiations between regions. We also enhanced the model using methods described in the literature to allow it to deal with reported emissions uncertainty. Additionally, we used an original method of simulating this kind of market based on a specialized evolutionary algorithm (EA). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enterprises are the market players for carbon reductions and carbon trading, and they are also the significant driving force in a low-carbon economy and society. Using the data of A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2016, this study uses a difference-in-differences (DID) model to examine the effects of the low-carbon city construction on corporate carbon reduction performance. Consistent with our hypotheses, we find that the low-carbon city construction promotes corporate carbon reduction performance. Further analysis indicates that the policy effect is stronger for state-owned enterprises (SOEs) than non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs). Moreover, environmental quality can affect the promotion of local government officials, which is more prominent in pilot low-carbon cities, and political promotion incentives significantly improve corporate carbon reduction performance. Furthermore, the highest emission reduction effects come in the fourth year after adopting a carbon reduction policy and are concentrated among the firms in the eastern region. Overall, our findings offer a new point view for a deeper understanding of the improvement of corporate carbon reduction performance, and provide microscopic evidence for the objective evaluation of the environmental effects of China's low-carbon city pilot policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate assessment of the cost of carbon sequestration is important for the development of mitigation policies globally. Given that sequestration in soils or vegetation is a lengthy process, such assessment requires financial discounting and making realistic assumptions about changes over time in the rate of sequestration, the price of carbon, and the opportunity cost incurred by adopting sequestration practices. Our objective is to demonstrate how these assumptions affect estimates of the cost of sequestration-based mitigation strategies. Using an Australian case study of soil carbon sequestration, our estimates of the carbon price required for financial viability are highly sensitive to dynamic assumptions, varying by a factor of four with different assumptions. Yet the influence of these time-related assumptions is poorly acknowledged in the literature, with many studies either failing to disclose their assumptions, or employing questionable assumptions and methods. Recommended global strategies are for researchers to report their assumptions related to dynamics much more transparently and to improve their research methods and the realism of their assumptions when analysing the economics of carbon sequestration. We recommend that policymakers become better aware of the issues created by dynamics, so that they are able to validly interpret assessments of the cost of sequestration and to ensure that they design policies in a way that facilitates fair comparison of the costs of mitigation strategies that operate over different timescales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deep emission cuts rely on the use of low carbon technologies like renewable energy or carbon capture and storage. There is considerable uncertainty about their future costs. We carry out a sensitivity analysis based on Gauss Quadrature for cost parameters describing these technologies in order to evaluate the effect of the uncertainty on total and marginal mitigation costs as well as composition changes in the energy system. Globally, effects in total cost often average out, but different regions are affected quite differently from the underlying uncertainty in costs for key abatement technologies. Regions can be either affected because they are well suited to deploy a technology for geophysical reasons or because of repercussions through international energy markets. The absolute impact of uncertainty on consumption increases over the time horizon and with the ambition of emission reductions. Uncertainty in abatement costs relative to expected abatement costs are however larger under a moderate ambition climate policy scenario because in this case the marginal abatement occurs in the electricity sector where the cost uncertainty is implemented. Under more ambitious climate policy in line with the two degree target, the electricity sector is always decarbonized by 2050, hence uncertainty has less effect on the electricity mix. The findings illustrate the need for regional results as global averages can hide distributional consequences on technological uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Livestock [inclusive of ruminant species, namely cattle ( Bos Taurus and Bos indicus), sheep ( Ovis aries), goats ( Capra hircus), and buffaloes ( Bubalus bubalis), and non-ruminant species, namely pigs ( Sus scrofa domesticus) and chickens ( Gallus domesticus)] are both affected by climate change and contribute as much as 14.5 % of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, most of which is from ruminant animals (Gerber et al. 2013). This study aims to estimate the marginal costs of reducing GHG emissions for a selection of practices in the ruminant livestock sector (inclusive of the major ruminant species-cattle, sheep, and goats) globally. It advances on previous assessments by calculating marginal costs rather than commonly reported average costs of abatement and can thus provide insights about abatement responses at different carbon prices. We selected the most promising abatement options based on their effectiveness and feasibility. Improved grazing management and legume sowing are the main practices assessed in grazing systems. The urea (CO(NH)) treatment of crop straws is the main practice applied in mixed crop-livestock systems, while the feeding of dietary lipids and nitrates are confined to more intensive production systems. These practices were estimated to reduce emissions by up to 379 metric megatons of carbon dioxide (CO) equivalent emissions per year (MtCO-eq yr). Two thirds of this reduction was estimated to be possible at a carbon price of 20 US dollars per metric ton of CO equivalent emissions ($20 tCO-eq). This study also provides strategic guidance as to where abatement efforts could be most cost effectively targeted. For example, improved grazing management was particularly cost effective in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, while legume sowing appeared to work best in Western Europe and Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most modelling studies that explore long-term greenhouse gas mitigation scenarios focus on cost-efficient emission pathways towards a certain climate target, like the internationally agreed target to keep global temperature increase below 2 °C compared to pre-industrial levels (the 2 °C climate target). However, different timing of reductions lead to different transient temperature increase over the course of the century and subsequently to differences in the time profiles of not only the mitigation costs but also adaptation costs and residual climate change damage. This study adds to the existing literature by focussing on the implication of these differences for the evaluation of a set of three mitigation scenarios (early action, gradual action and delayed action), all three limiting global temperature increase below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels, using different discount rates. The study shows that the gradual mitigation pathway is, for these discount rates, preferred over early or delayed action in terms of total climate costs and net benefits. The relative costs and benefits of the early or delayed mitigation action scenarios, in contrast, do strongly depend on the discount rate applied. For specific discount rates, these pathways might therefore be preferred for other reasons, such as reducing long-term uncertainty in climate costs by early action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using micrometeorological techniques to measure greenhouse gas emissions from differently treated adjacent plots is a promising avenue to verify the effect of mitigation strategies at the field scale. In pursuing such an approach, it is crucial to accurately characterize the source area of the fluxes measured at each sampling point. Hence, a comprehensive footprint analysis method is required so that emission rates can be obtained for a specific field within a biochemically heterogeneous area. In this study, a footprint analysis method is developed to estimate the emission for an experiment where the flux of NO is measured from several control and treated plots. The emission rate of an individual plot is estimated using an inverse footprint fraction approach where the footprint fractions are obtained from an analytical footprint model. A numerical solution for obtaining the background flux for such a multiplot measurement system is also provided. Results of the footprint analysis method are assessed, first, by comparing footprint fractions obtained from both an analytical footprint model and a 'forward' simulation of a backward Lagrangian stochastic (bLs) model; and second, by comparing the emission rates of a control plot obtained from the footprint analysis method and from the 'backward' simulation of the bLs model. It is found that the analytical footprint fractions compare well with the values obtained from the bLs model (correlation coefficient of 0.58 and 0.66 within p value <0.001). An average of 4.3 % of the measured fluxes is found to be contributed by sources outside the measured area and, excluding this outside area contribution to the measured flux, footprint corrected emission rates within the defined domain are found to increase by 2.1 to 5.8 % of the measured flux. Also, the proposed method of emission rate estimation is found to work well under a wide range of atmospheric stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide a review description of atmospheric inversion methods for the determination of fluxes of long-lived trace gases based on measurements of atmospheric concentration. Emphasis is given to technical aspects of inversion settings, which are crucial to inter-compare and understand inversion results. We briefly sketch the formalism used in such methods, then provide a summary of major currents in research and contemporary problems. Most attention is given to carbon dioxide (CO) which poses the threat of future climate change. Therefore, there is keen interest in better understanding where and when CO emitted by the combustion of fossil fuels is reabsorbed by land ecosystems and oceans. Using the information contained in concentration fields observed from ground-based networks and from upcoming satellite observations in order to constrain the geographic distribution of surface fluxes is an inverse problem; it consists of finding a set of fluxes that optimally matches the observations available. We review the application of inverse methods to quantify the distribution of the sources and sinks of CO at the surface of the Earth based on global measurements of atmospheric concentration and three-dimensional models of atmospheric transport. We describe the use of top-down atmospheric inversion methods in terms of numerical transport modeling and atmospheric observation networks, and detail some of the currently important issues in assigning uncertainties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Substantially postponing the emission reductions, compared to the ranges indicated in IPCC’s recent assessment for 2020 as required for meeting the longterm 2°C target, increases the risk of exceeding this target. The costs of a delay strategy are lower in the short term, but leads to higher costs in the longer term. The analysis shows if the emission reductions are postponed to 2030 it is not likely that higher emissions from the earlier years can be fully compensated in future decades in a so-called ‘delayed action scenario’. A full compensation would require emission reduction rates in the coming decades that are much higher than those found in the scenario literature. Without compensation, the risk of exceeding the global temperature rise target of 2°C will increase. This confirms that it is not only the reduction commitments for 2050 that determine the risk of exceeding the 2°C target, but also the path between now and 2050. To meet this 2°C target, more ambitious 2020 reduction targets are needed for the developed and developing countries than those that have been pledged so far. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For CO2 capture and storage (CCS) to succeed as a mitigation strategy, political commitment is one of several prerequisites. This article offers an appraisal of political commitment to a CCS strategy among high-income countries in Europe and North America: Which governments are committed, and what particular interests and concerns do they seek to accommodate by supporting CCS? In order to answer these questions, new data are reported on government CCS research, development and demonstration (RD&D) budgets. RD&D budgets divided by GDP is used as an indicator of political commitment, and explanations are sought for cross-national differences. The analysis shows that fossil fuels reserves and extraction within a country has a very strong bearing on funding levels. Likely explanations include the potential for combining CCS with enhanced resource recovery. All large economies (population >50 million) have a funding program. The smaller states that provide funding (Norway, Canada, the Netherlands) have the highest funding levels relative to GDP. These findings suggest that high-income petroleum producing countries are likely to be leaders in promoting CCS and a favorable regulatory environment. The fact that all large, high-income countries in the two regions now display some interest in CCS further improves its political outlook. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]