EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Managing carbon-intensive materials in a decarbonizing world without a global price on carbon

Amandine Denis-Ryan, Chris Bataille () and Frank Jotzo

Climate Policy, 2016, vol. 16, issue sup1, S110-S128

Abstract: Emissions from the production of iron and steel could constitute a significant share of a 2°C global emissions budget (around 19% under the IEA 2DS scenario). They need to be reduced, and this could be difficult under nationally based climate policy approaches. We compare a new set of nationally based modelling (the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project) with best practice and technical limit benchmarks for iron and steel and cement emissions. We find that 2050 emissions from iron and steel and cement production represent an average 0.28 tCO 2 per capita in nationally based modelling results, very close to the technical limit benchmark of 0.21 tCO 2 per capita, and over 2.5 times lower than the best practice benchmark of 0.72 tCO 2 per capita. This suggests that national projections may be overly optimistic about achievable emissions reductions in the absence of global carbon pricing and an international research and development effort to develop low emissions technologies for emissions-intensive products. We also find that equal per capita emissions targets, often the basis of proposals for how global emissions budgets should be allocated, would be inadequate without global emissions trading. These results show that a nationally based global climate policy framework, as has been confirmed in the Paris Agreement, could lead to risks of overshooting global emissions targets for some countries and carbon leakage. Tailored approaches such as border taxes, sectoral emissions trading or carbon taxes, and consumption-based carbon pricing can help, but each faces difficulties. Ultimately, global efforts are needed to improve technology and material efficiency in emissions-intensive commodities manufacturing and use. Those efforts could be supported by technology standards and a globally coordinated R&D effort, and strengthened by the adoption of global emissions budgets for emissions-intensive traded goods. Policy relevance This article presents new empirical findings on global iron and steel and cement production in a low-carbon world economy, demonstrates the risks associated with a nationally based global climate policy framework as has been confirmed in the Paris Agreement, and analyses policy options to deal with those risks.

Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/14693062.2016.1176008 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:tcpoxx:v:16:y:2016:i:sup1:p:s110-s128

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/tcpo20

DOI: 10.1080/14693062.2016.1176008

Access Statistics for this article

Climate Policy is currently edited by Professor Michael Grubb

More articles in Climate Policy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-20
Handle: RePEc:taf:tcpoxx:v:16:y:2016:i:sup1:p:s110-s128