Fair Shares: Crediting Poor Countries for Carbon Mitigation Agendas - Working Paper 259

David Wheeler

No 259, Working Papers from Center for Global Development

Abstract: This paper computes national carbon mitigation costs using two simple principles: (1) Incrementalcosts for low-carbon energy investments are calculated using the cost of coal-fired power as the benchmark. (2) All low-carbon energy sources are counted, because reducing carbon emissions cannot be separated from other concerns: reducing local air pollution from fossil-fuel combustion;diversifying energy sources to reduce political and economic risks; and building competitive advantage in emerging clean-energy markets. The paper estimates energy growth and incrementalcosts for biomass, solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, and nuclear in 174 countries from 1990 to 2008.Then it compares national mitigation burdens using per-capita mitigation expenditures as shares of per-capita incomes. The results undermine the conventional view of North-South conflict that has dominated global climate negotiations, because they show that developing countries, whether by intention or not, have been critical participants in carbon mitigation all along. Furthermore, they suggest that developing countries have borne their fair share of global mitigation expenditures. But they also show that expenditures for both developed and developing countries have been so modest that low-carbon energy growth could accelerate greatly without undue strain.

Keywords: renewable energy; carbon emissions; climate change; economic development; carbon mitigation cost (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q01 Q42 Q48 Q51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16 pages
Date: 2011-07
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/1425278/

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:cgd:wpaper:259

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Center for Global Development Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Publications Manager ().