COSTS AND BENEFITS OF THE PARIS CLIMATE TARGETS

Richard Tol

Climate Change Economics (CCE), 2023, vol. 14, issue 04, 1-18

Abstract: The temperature targets in the Paris Agreement cannot be met without very rapid reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The latter requires large, perhaps prohibitively large subsidies. The central estimate of the costs of climate policy, unrealistically assuming least-cost implementation, is 3.8–5.6% of GDP in 2100. The central estimate of the benefits of climate policy, unrealistically assuming high no-policy emissions and constant vulnerability, is 2.8–3.2% of GDP. The uncertainty about the benefits is larger than the uncertainty about the costs. The Paris targets do not pass the cost-benefit test unless risk aversion is high and discount rate low.

Keywords: Climate policy; net-zero; cost-benefit analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S2010007823400031
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
Working Paper: Costs and Benefits of the Paris Climate Targets (2022)
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:wsi:ccexxx:v:14:y:2023:i:04:n:s2010007823400031

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

DOI: 10.1142/S2010007823400031

Access Statistics for this article

Climate Change Economics (CCE) is currently edited by Robert Mendelsohn

More articles in Climate Change Economics (CCE) from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().