Assessing uncertainty in the cost-effectiveness of agricultural greenhouse gas mitigation

Vera Eory, Cairistiona F. E. Topp, Dominic Moran and Adam Butler

No 170784, 88th Annual Conference, April 9-11, 2014, AgroParisTech, Paris, France from Agricultural Economics Society

Abstract: Information on the uncertainty of quantitative results feeding into public decision making is essential for designing robust policies. However, this information is often not available in relation to the economics of greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation in agriculture. This paper analyses the uncertainty of the mitigation estimates provided by a Marginal Abatement Cost Curve (MACC). The case study is based on the GHG MACC developed for Scottish agricultural soils. The qualitative assessment disentangled the different sources and types of uncertainty in the cost-effectiveness analysis of GHG mitigation options. The quantitative assessment estimated the statistical uncertainty of the results by propagating uncertainty through the model, using three uncertainty scenarios. The results show that the uncertainty in the economically optimal abatement in Scottish agricultural soils is high with the medium and high uncertainty scenarios, with the ratio of the 95% CI to the mean being 0.57-1.01 and 0.98-1.4, respectively, while the low uncertainty scenario resulting in a ratio of the 95% CI to the mean of 0.24-0.68. However, the ranking of the measures are relatively robust with all three uncertainty scenarios, especially in terms of which options have cost-effectiveness below the carbon price threshold.

Keywords: Environmental Economics and Policy; Risk and Uncertainty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 17
Date: 2014-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-ene
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/170784/files/Vera_Eory_Eoryetal_full.pdf (application/pdf)

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:ags:aesc14:170784

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.170784

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 88th Annual Conference, April 9-11, 2014, AgroParisTech, Paris, France from Agricultural Economics Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().