How uncertainty in technology costs and carbon dioxide removal availability affect climate mitigation pathways

Anastasis Giannousakis, Jérôme Hilaire, Gregory Nemet, Gunnar Luderer, Robert C. Pietzcker, Renato Rodrigues, Lavinia Baumstark and Elmar Kriegler

Energy, 2021, vol. 216, issue C

Abstract: Limiting global warming to “well below 2°C” as stated in the Paris Agreement requires ambitious emissions reductions from all sectors. Rapid technology cost declines in the energy sector are changing energy investment and emissions, even with the weak climate policies currently in place. We assess how energy supply costs and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) availability affect mitigation by performing a sensitivity analysis with the energy-economy-climate model REMIND. We use new scenarios with carbon price paths that aim to reduce the frequently seen temperature overshoot. Further, we measure the sensitivities of mitigation indicators to the costs of technologies across economic sectors. We assess the sensitivity to nine techno-economic parameters: the costs of wind, solar, biomass, gas, coal, oil, nuclear, and electric/hydrogen vehicles, as well as the injection rate of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). While technology costs play a role in shaping optimal pathways, we find that transport sector costs affect the economics of deep decarbonization, whereas costs of renewables are more important for scenarios under weak climate policies. This further highlights the value of renewable energy deployment as a no-regrets option in climate policy. In terms of the sensitivity of model outputs, economic indicators become more sensitive to costs than emissions, with increasing policy stringency.

Keywords: Technology costs; Carbon dioxide removal; Transport; Electromobility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544220323604
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:eee:energy:v:216:y:2021:i:c:s0360544220323604

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2020.119253

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().