THE BENEFITS OF GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSION REDUCTION: AN APPLICATION OF FUND

The avoided damages of climate change are estimated for a range of emission reduction policies from a range of business as usual scenarios. In the emission abatement scenarios, concentrations of greenhouse gases overshoot before falling to a stable level. The peak concentrations are used to characterise the stabilisation scenario. Similarly, the peak impacts are used to evaluate the scenarios. This is in line with avoiding “dangerous interference with the climate system”. Results are shown for both cost-effective and “realistic” emission reduction policies. Avoided climate change impacts increase with emission abatement, but the additionally avoided impacts fall as abatement gets more stringent. The most serious climate change impacts can be avoided with only modest emission reduction. Very stringent emission reduction may even increase climate change impacts, because of the removal of the sulphur veil and because emission abatement costs may slow economic growth and increase vulnerability. A comparison of the net present value of the costs of emission reduction with the net present value of the avoided damage also point towards more modest emission abatement. These findings are robust to variations in scenarios and parameters.

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