The accountability imperative for quantifying the uncertainty of emission forecasts

Fatemeh Bakhtiari, Gissela Landa (), Oswaldo Morales-Nápoles and Daniel Puig
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Gissela Landa: OFCE - Observatoire français des conjonctures économiques (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po
Oswaldo Morales-Nápoles: TNO - The Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research, TU Delft - Delft University of Technology, TU Delft - Delft University of Technology, Department of Civil Engineering and Geosciences [Delft] - TU Delft - Delft University of Technology
Daniel Puig: UNEP - United Nations Environmental Programme - UNESCO

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Abstract: Governmental climate change mitigation targets are typically developed with the aid of forecasts of greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions. The robustness and credibility of such forecasts depends, among other issues, on the extent to which forecasting approaches can reflect prevailing uncertainties. We apply a transparent and replicable method to quantify the uncertainty associated with projections of gross domestic product growth rates for Mexico, a key driver of GHG emissions in the country. We use those projections to produce probabilistic forecasts of GHG emissions for Mexico. We contrast our probabilistic forecasts with Mexico's governmental deterministic forecasts. We show that, because they fail to reflect such key uncertainty, deterministic forecasts are ill-suited for use in target-setting processes. We argue that (i) guidelines should be agreed upon, to ensure that governmental forecasts meet certain minimum transparency and quality standards, and (ii) governments should be held accountable for the appropriateness of the forecasting approach applied to prepare governmental forecasts, especially when those forecasts are used to derive climate change mitigation targets.

Keywords: Climate; CO2 emissions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-07
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Published in Climate Policy, 2018, 18 (6), pp.742 - 751. ⟨10.1080/14693062.2017.1373623⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:spmain:hal-03399622

DOI: 10.1080/14693062.2017.1373623

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