The Role of Non-CO2 GHGs in Climate Policy: Analysis Using the MIT IGSM

John Reilly, Marcus Sarofim, Sergey Paltsev and Ronald Prinn
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: John Matthew Reilly

The Energy Journal, 2006, vol. Multi-Greenhouse Gas Mitigation and Climate Policy, issue Special Issue #3, 503-520

Abstract: First steps toward a broad climate agreement, such as the Kyoto Protocol, have focused on less than global geographic coverage. We consider instead a policy that is less comprehensive in term of greenhouse gases (GHGs), including only the non-CO2 GHGs, but is geographically comprehensive. Abating non-CO2 GHGs may be seen as less of a threat to economic development and therefore it may be possible to involve developing countries in such a policy even though they have resisted limits on CO2 emissions. The policy we consider involves a GHG price of about $15 per ton carbon-equivalent (tce) levied only on the non-CO2 GHGs and held at that level through the century. We estimate that such a policy would reduce the global mean surface temperature in 2100 by about 0.55° C; if only methane is covered that alone would achieve a reduction of 0.3° to 0.4° C. We estimate the Kyoto Protocol in its current form would achieve a 0.25° C reduction in 2100 if Parties to it maintained it as is through the century. Furthermore, we estimate the costs of the non-CO2 policies to be a small fraction of the Kyoto policy. Whether as a next step to expand the Kyoto Protocol, or as a separate initiative running parallel to it, the world could well make substantial progress on limiting climate change by pursuing an agreement to abate the low cost non-CO2 GHGs. The results suggest that it would be useful to proceed on global abatement of non-CO2 GHGs so that lack of progress on negotiations to limit CO2 does not allow these abatement opportunities to slip away.

JEL-codes: F0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.iaee.org/en/publications/ejarticle.aspx?id=2208 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to IAEE members and subscribers.

Related works:
Journal Article: The Role of Non-CO2 GHGs in Climate Policy: Analysis Using the MIT IGSM (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aen:journl:2006se_weyant-a26

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.iaee.org/en/publications/ejsearch.aspx

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Energy Journal from International Association for Energy Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by David Williams ().