Counting only the hits? The risk of underestimating the costs of stringent climate policy

By Massimo Tavoni, Richard S. J. Tol. 2010

112 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper warns against the risk of underestimating the costs—and the uncertainty about the costs—of achieving stringent stabilization targets. We argue that a straightforward review of integrated assessment models results produces biased estimates for the more ambitious climate objectives such as those compatible with the 2°C of the European Union and the G8. The magnitude and range of estimates are significantly reduced because only the most optimistic results are reported for such targets. We suggest a procedure that addresses this partiality. The results show highly variable costs for the most ambitious scenarios.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Environmental Engineering, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/58b80ca45e3bc8f7aec22aa685217c6ef3031727

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In Global and Planetary Change

Citations in the corpus

Evaluating process-based integrated assessment models of climate change mitigation (2017, background): “An additional issue for IAM MIPs is how to address selection biases if stringent mitigation scenarios are not solvable by all models (98).”
Targets for global climate policy: an overview (2013, background): “…Hourcade et al., 1996, 2001); there are the EMF 5 overview papers (Weyant, 1993, 1998, 2004; Weyant et al., 2006; Weyant and Hill, 1999), and there are meta-analyses as well (Barker et al., 2002; Fischer and Morgenstern, 2006; Kuik et al., 2009; Repetto and Austin, 1997; Tavoni and Tol, 2010).”
Transport electrification: A key element for energy system transformation and climate stabilization (2014, background): “Several reasons bear mentioning in this context: (i) the versatile use of CCS in different processes, from electricity generation to liquid fuel production and cement production, (ii) the possible combination of CCS with electricity, liquid fuel, or gas production from biomass, which can lead to neg”
Getting from here to there – energy technology transformation pathways in the EMF27 scenarios (2014, background): “This leads to a downward bias in the cost reporting (Tavoni and Tol 2010).”
A proposal for a new scenario framework to support research and assessment in different climate research communities (2012, background): “Since AR4, several studies have focused on estimating the influence of non-optimal situations for factors b–d, generally referred to as ‘second-best’ worlds (examples include Clarke et al., 2010; Edenhofer et al., 2010; Rao et al., 2008; Tavoni and Tol, 2010).”
The Emissions Gap Report 2012 (2012, background): “…of scientific studies and assessments have demonstrated that the availability of BioCCS is a crucial determinant for the costs and achievability of low greenhouse gas concentration stabilization targets (Azar et al., 2010; Edenhofer et al., 2010; Tavoni and Tol, 2010; van Vuuren et al., 2010).”