{"word_count": 823, "character_count": 5808}
Regional Carbon Budgets: Do They Matter for Climate Policy? / M. Tavoni &#38; D. van Vuuren. Milan : Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, 2015, 21 p. (Nota di Lavoro 71.2015) http://www.feem.it/userfiles/attach/20157291210364NDL2015-071.pdfCarbon budgets have emerged as a robust metric of warming, but little is known about the usefulness of regional carbon budgets as indicators of policy. This article explores the potential of regional carbon budgets to inform climate policy. Using the large database of scenarios from IPCC AR5 WGIII, we show that regional budgets are important metrics of the long term contribution to climate change and the effort required to mitigate it. However, their value appears to be more limited for informing short term courses of actions, and for predicting the economic consequences of emission reduction policies.Agglomeration, Urban Growth and Infrastructure in Global Climate Policy: A Dynamic CGE Approach / Fabio Grazi, Henri Waisman. Milan : Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, 2015, 53 p. (nota di lavoro ; 2015.061) http://www.feem.it/userfiles/attach/20156251022554NDL2015-061.pdfThis paper presents an integrated model of urban agglomeration economies within a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of global economic activity, energy use and carbon emissions to explore the theoretical and empirical nature of the interdependence of cities and the world economy in a climate policy context. Based on calibration data for 74 major OECD agglomerations, the integrated model is used to gauge the long-term impact of: i) global carbon pricing on urban systems and the economic activity; ii) urban infrastructure development on the economic costs of curbing carbon emissions. Importantly, it is found that combining urban infrastructure and carbon pricing allows for stringent emissions reduction targets, while still avoiding the economic and welfare costs of the carbon price only.Reinvigorating International Climate Policy: A Comprehensive Framework for Effective Nonstate Action / Sander Chan, Harro van Asselt, Thomas Hale, Kenneth W. Abbott, Marianne Beisheim, Matthew Hoffmann, Brendan Guy, Niklas Höhne, Angel Hsu, Philipp Pattberg, Pieter Pauw, Céline Ramstein, Oscar Widerberg, Global Policy, forthcoming in November 2015 - Pre-publicationAs countries negotiate a new climate agreement for the Paris climate summit in December 2015, a groundswell of climate actions is emerging as cities, regions, businesses, and civil society groups act on mitigation and adaptation, independently, with each other and with national governments and international organizations. The Paris summit provides a historic opportunity to develop a framework to catalyze, support, and steer these initiatives. Without such a framework, “bottom-up” governance runs the risk of failing to deliver meaningful results. Social science research highlights the need for a comprehensive approach that promotes ambition, experimentation and accountability, and avoids unnecessary overlaps. This article specifies functions and design principles for a new, comprehensive framework for sub- and nonstate climate actions that could provide effective coordination.Who's getting ready for zero ? A report on the state of play of zero carbon modelling / Paul Allen, project Coordinator, Isabel Bottoms, Track 0, Philip James, Zero Carbon Britain &#38; Farhana Yamin, Founder and CEO, Track 0 Associate Fellow, Chatham House. Track 0 and Centre for Alternative Technology, 2015, 59 p. http://track0.org/2015/09/whos-getting-ready-for-zero-heres-who/The report is the first of its kind in offering this comprehensive scoping of all the deep decarbonisation and zero emissions modelling work that’s out there. Each scenario is different, setting out the pathway for how whole countries can decarbonise with different combinations of sustainable energy, transport and waste management, as well as greening the urban environment and land use. The scenarios range from academic pieces of work to inspiring visions for action based on a combination of policy, what’s technically feasible, what the science tells us is necessary and forays into how far humans are capable of changing their most energy intensive habits.Assessing countries' historical contributions to GHG emissions / Tommi Ekholm and Tomi J. Lindroos. VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, 2015, 23 p. (research report) http://www.vtt.fi/inf/julkaisut/muut/2015/VTT-R-00139-15.pdfA new research report on countries' historical contributions to GHG emissions, and on the implications of a per-capita emission budgets on countries’ future emission pathways.Negative emissions physically needed to keep global warming below 2 °C / Gasser T., Guivarch C. et al. Nature Communications 6, 7958, 2015 http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150803/ncomms8958/full/ncomms8958.htmlAbstract : To limit global warming to &#60;2 °C we must reduce the net amount of CO2 we release into the atmosphere, either by producing less CO2 (conventional mitigation) or by capturing more CO2 (negative emissions). Here, using state-of-the-art carbon–climate models, we quantify the trade-off between these two options in RCP2.6 : an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenario likely to limit global warming below 2 °C. In our best-case illustrative assumption of conventional mitigation, negative emissions of 0.5–3 Gt C (gigatonnes of carbon) per year and storage capacity of 50–250 Gt C are required. In our worst case, those requirements are 7–11 Gt C per year and 1,000–1,600 Gt C, respectively. Because these figures have not been shown to be feasible, we conclude that development of negative emission technologies should be accelerated, but also that conventional mitigation must remain a substantial part of any climate policy aiming at the 2-°C target.