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Economics
Published in Larry E. Erickson, Gary Brase, Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Improving Air Quality, 2019
First, let’s look at the costs. The social cost of carbon, which is the cost to society associated with a unit of greenhouse gas emissions, is considered in the report and related to the cost to reduce emissions. This value is about $46/ton of carbon dioxide (Gillingham and Stock, 2018). There is value in bringing the social cost of carbon into economic analysis. Some of the impacts of carbon emissions include melting glaciers, flooding, declining agricultural yields, heat stress, rising sea levels, displaced populations, more wildfires, and ecosystem impacts (Stern, 2007). When the quality of life in developing countries is reduced because of climate change, there may be significant migration, which has effects in other locations. The Stern report indicates that there may be a reduction of 5–20% in global economic activity because of greenhouse gas emissions if no actions are taken to reduce emissions. This compares with the 23% reported more recently (Burke et al., 2015). On these facts alone, one might conclude that taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is both feasible and highly desirable.
Rethinking the unthinkable
Published in Jack Stilgoe, Experiment Earth, 2015
The counterfactual costs of dramatically mitigating climate change or not doing anything have been more thoroughly estimated and challenged, but they are nonetheless still problematic. Economist William Nordhaus has used his dynamic integrated climate–economy (DICE) model to argue that geoengineering offers the potential for ‘costless mitigation of climate change’ (W. D. Nordhaus 1992, p. 1317). Nordhaus was one of the first economists to model climate change and a prominent critic of Nicholas Stern’s review on the economics of climate change, commissioned by the UK government (W. D. Nordhaus 2007). Central to such disagreements are the discount rates – converting future costs into present-day ones – assumed by various economic models. Once different climate sensitivities and estimates of costs from extreme weather are included, the calculated ‘social cost of carbon’ implied can vary by an order of magnitude. According to one critical review, the ‘models can be used to obtain almost any result one desires’ (Pindyck 2013, p. 5). In searching for objective and politically persuasive information for climate policy, questions of what sort of world we would like to live in and the value we place on future generations are excised. The reduction of climate change to an economic problem, as opposed to just an engineering one, also allows a new angle for those such as Bjorn Lomborg (2010) who would suggest that if cheapness were the main criterion, other options including geoengineering should be considered.
Identifying benefits
Published in Doramas Jorge-Calderón, Aviation Investment, 2020
The implication of the discussion on taxes and MBMs so far for emissions pricing in projects could be summarised as follows. What is important for deciding on the economic price on emissions is not the emissions of the project in themselves but the effect of the project on total societal emissions. To the extent that a project increases societal carbon emissions, the economic cost of emissions is the social cost of carbon. To the extent that the project does not result in a net increase in carbon emissions, the economic cost of the emissions is the cost of ensuring that net carbon emissions do not increase.
Ethanol blending program in India: An economic assessment
Published in Energy Sources, Part B: Economics, Planning, and Policy, 2021
Climate change is bound to have a detrimental effect on society and the principal cause for this change is the continuously rise in the quantum of global carbon emissions (Guivarch and Pottier 2017). There are three categories for evaluating the cost of carbon emissions: Marginal Abatement Cost (MAC), Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) and Shadow price of carbon emissions. Out of these, the Social Cost of Carbon calculates the economic cost of harm or deterioration caused to the environment by the release of CO2 emissions and is an essential criteria for structuring policies pertaining to climate change (Tian, Ye, and Zhen 2019). It is evaluated as the incremental impact on environment caused by release of every surplus tonne of CO2 emissions or the quantum of gain that could have been achieved by avoiding such emission (Tol 2019).
Evaluating effects of the Covid-19 pandemic period on energy consumption and enviro-economic indicators of Turkish road transportation
Published in Energy Sources, Part A: Recovery, Utilization, and Environmental Effects, 2021
Habib Gürbüz, Yasin Şöhret, Selçuk Ekici
Damage costs of greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change are generally defined as the social cost of carbon. The social cost of any greenhouse gas emissions is predicted by scenarios, in which some key factors, such as carbon cycle, climate sensitivity, future technology, economic productivity, discount rate, time preference, is taken into account (Bachmann 2020; Sproul, Barlow, and Quinn 2019). Bolaño-Ortiz et al. (2020) investigated the effect of the Covid-19 lockdown on enviro-economic indicators in Argentina. Their results show that in Argentina, air quality has improved with the effect of reductions in emissions during the covid-19 lock-in process. They also state that there is an acceptable correlation between atmospheric emission variation, increase in air quality, and its effects on the economy.
Integrating cost-benefits analysis and life cycle assessment of green roofs: a case study in Florida
Published in Human and Ecological Risk Assessment: An International Journal, 2020
Lan Yao, Abdol Chini, Ruochen Zeng
The social benefit of reducing carbon by using green roofs was considered by using GWP indicator of the LCA. The social cost of carbon was used to convert social benefit of reducing carbon into economic value. Based on the previous literature study, the most recent central estimate (3% discount rate) of social cost of carbon is $47/metric ton.