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Dec 4, 2008 - 1 As recently advocated in a speech by President-elect Obama ... to development in a climate constrained world, Second Edition (Baer et al.,.
Exploring the 2020 global emissions mitigation gap Analysis for the Global Climate Network Paul Baer Woods Institute for the Environment Stanford University, Palo Alto, California 4 December, 2008∗

Abstract This is an assessment of the consistency of emissions reductions that are currently under discussion in the international climate negotiations with the necessary effort to have a high likelihood of staying below 2ºC. The analysis examines both the commonly referenced “25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels” Annex I targets, and the reductions implied by the current US and EU policy proposals. In particular this paper estimates the gap between projected global emissions and global “emergency pathways” of increasing stringency, given low and high estimates of non-Annex I baseline emissions and various proposed levels of Annex I reductions. Our key results show that even with the most stringent of the emissions reductions that have currently been tabled, based on the EU’s proposal to reduce emissions to 30% below 1990 levels by 2020 if there is comparable effort from other Annex I countries, substantial additional reductions would be required to stay on track for even a relatively weak global target of 50% below 1990 levels in 2050. The EU’s 30% target translates, using a simple extrapolation to the rest of Annex I, to a roughly 23% cut in emissions below 1990 levels and a 20 percent cut of CO2 emissions below 1990 levels (assuming the ratio of CO2 to non-CO2 GHGs remains at its 2010 value). The US’s proposal to reduce emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and the EU’s unilateral proposal to reduce emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels both imply an Annex I reductions goal of about 14 percent below 1990 levels for all GHGs and 11 percent for CO2 only. In all these cases, a substantial “mitigation gap” remains between projected emissions, given either low or high non-Annex I baseline CO2 emissions, and a global target defined by an “emergency pathway” with a high likelihood of staying below a 2ºC increase. Only in the case of the highest Annex I reduction target (40 percent below 1990 levels in 2020) and the weakest mitigation trajectory (with an estimated 25-54 percent risk of exceeding 2ºC) are estimated global emissions below the 2020 target without additional effort. In the worst case, with high non-Annex I emissions baseline and a 10 percent reduction in Annex I emissions below 1990 levels in 2020, there is a 1.7 GtC gap between projected emissions and the least stringent emergency pathway, and a 4.3 GtC gap between projected emissions and the most stringent emergency pathway. This highlights the distance between the current willingness to pay of the parties to the UNFCCC and their declared objective of avoiding dangerous interference with the climate system. This version dated 4 December, 2008, released for COP14 in Poznan, Poland, is still undergoing minor revisions. Revisions and updates will be posted at www.globalclimatenetwork.info For more information contact the author at [email protected]. ∗

Introduction The nominal objective of the UNFCCC to “prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system” would appear to require scientifically informed efforts to specify global limits on emissions, and indeed one of the tracks of the ongoing talks is tasked with negotiating a “shared vision for long-term cooperative action, including a long-term global goal for emission reductions” (UNFCCC 2007). Nonetheless, negotiating proposals for reductions in the period 2012-2020 are proceeding in a bottomup manner, based on national (or, in the case of the European Union, regional) considerations of industrial competitiveness and continued economic growth. These economic considerations are understandable, but, given the long-term risks of continuing climate change, shortsighted. Many persons, organizations and institutions (including the European Commission) have long endorsed 2ºC as the level of warming that we should aim to stay below. More recently, with evidence of more rapid than expected impacts from climate change to date (only an 0.8ºC rise above pre-industrial temperatures) and predictions of larger impacts sooner than previously considered, even this level would seem to be unwisely risky. Yet, as we show in this paper, the proposals for emissions reductions that are currently on the table (e.g., the US’s “proposal” to return emissions to 1990 levels by 2050,1 and the EU’s proposal to reduce emissions to 30 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 given comparable effort from other Annex I countries2) fall short of the scale that will be required if we are to maintain even a reasonable likelihood (roughly 25-55 percent) of staying below the 2ºC threshold, to say nothing of the more stringent pathway required have a high likelihood (15–30 percent) of staying below that level. Much of the discussion of global 2020 emissions targets that has taken place has been keyed to an oft-cited table in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, which described several published studies of global allocation frameworks and their application to alternative stabilization targets.3 For the lowest category of stabilization targets (450 – 500 ppm CO2-equivalent), the table summarized the reported Annex I emissions allowances as “25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels in 2020.” This figure has been cited frequently in the negotiations4 and in a variety of national communications,5 policy analyses6 and scholarly publications, and is frequently misrepresented as “what the IPCC said is required to stay below 2ºC” (see Appendix III). However, as we show in this study, reductions in this range offer no assurance of staying on a global trajectory 1

As recently advocated in a speech by President-elect Obama (2008) and also embodied in a variety of proposed legislation for national cap-and-trade policies. 2 For example, European Commission 2008. 3 Box 13.7 in the report of Working Group III (Metz et al. 2008). 4 For example, see the report of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP) (UNFCCC 2008b) 5 For example, the report of the South African government (Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism 2008) dated 28 July 2008 states that “According to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, avoiding dangerous climate change requires developed countries to reduce their emissions compared to 1990 levels by 80% to 95% by 2050, and by 25% to 40% by 2020.” 6 For example, Hohne and Ellerman 2008.

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consistent with keeping global warming below 2ºC. The studies summarized in the IPCC’s report explicitly require “substantial deviation below baseline” by 2020 in all non-Annex I regions except Africa and South Asia, and – equally importantly, but rather invisibly – assume that the non-Annex I countries should pay for these reductions through emissions allocations reduced below their baselines. We do not in this study take up the discussion of appropriate effort-sharing frameworks.7 Rather we simply endeavor to show what the “mitigation gap” would be between global emissions and (our view of) an appropriate “emergency pathway”, given alternative nonAnnex I baselines and Annex I emissions reductions in the ranges proposed or discussed. This gap represents the distance between the current level of ambition of the parties to the UNFCCC and the kinds of reductions implied by the UNFCCC’s objectives, or, perhaps more importantly, the kind of scientifically and ethically informed precaution its objective is supposed to reflect. This distance is not small, and the time is getting increasingly short. We hope that this analysis, prepared for the Global Climate Network,8 can contribute to the various efforts among governments and civil society actors to increase the ambition for more stringent emissions reductions in the immediate post-2012 period.

The Emergency Pathways We consider in this paper the consistency of current proposals for 2020 emissions reductions with three “emergency pathway” scenarios, shown in Figure 1 below. These pathways are specified in terms of CO2 only, including estimated emissions from land use. Their estimated temperature consequences are calculated using a model described in Baer and Mastrandrea (2006), and take into account uncertainty in land use emissions, carbon sinks, climate sensitivity, ocean heat uptake, and offsetting aerosol forcing. (Note that while the emissions pathways are specified in terms of CO2 only, projections of future non-CO2 greenhouse gas concentrations are included in the temperature calculations.) More detailed descriptions of these pathways, how they were specified, and some discussion of how the associated risks were calculated, are in Appendix I.

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The views of the author about effort-sharing are exhaustively described in The Greenhouse Development Rights Framework: The right to development in a climate constrained world, Second Edition (Baer et al., 2008). 8 The newly established Global Climate Network, the sponsor of this study, is a collaboration of independent, progressive research and policy organisations in the United Kingdom, Brazil, China, Germany, India, Malaysia, Nigeria and the US. It describes its mission as “to help bridge the divide between industrialised and developing countries on climate change policy.” (www.globalclimatenetwork.info)

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Figure 1. Three “emergency pathways” intended to have a high likelihood of keeping global temperature increase below 2ºC above pre-industrial. See text and Appendix I. From least to most stringent, the pathways are as follows:

Scenario 1 • • •

Global emissions peak in 2017 and reduce to 50 per cent of 1990 levels in 2050 Annual global emissions would peak at 11 GtC and reduce to 10.7 GtC in 2020. Estimated to carry a 25-54 per cent risk of exceeding 2°C.

Scenario 2 • • •

Global emissions peak in 2015 and reduce to 65 per cent below 1990 levels in 2050. Annual global emissions peak at 10.7 GtC and reduce to 9.7 GtC in 2020. Estimated to carry a 20-46 per cent risk of exceeding 2°C.

Scenario 3 • • •

Global emissions peak in 2013 and reduce by 80 per cent in 2050. Annual global emissions peak at 10.5 GtC and reduce to 8.2 GtC in 2020. Estimated to carry a 14-32 per cent risk of exceeding 2°C.

The pathways are not designed to achieve stabilization of CO2 or CO2-equivalent concentrations; rather these are “peak and decline” scenarios, with CO2 concentrations reaching between 420 ppm and 440 ppm CO2 (with somewhat higher equivalent concentrations counting non-CO2 gases and offsetting aerosols) and then declining steadily through 2100. Actual CO2 concentrations achieved would depend on the behavior of oceanic and terrestrial carbon sinks, and the peak levels could be higher or lower.

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Emissions baselines Most of the analysis in this paper is based on reductions in Annex I emissions that are specified relative to 1990 emissions levels, and thus the projected “baseline” emissions for Annex I do not play a large role in the subsequent calculations. Nonetheless, we do calculate a “reference case” for Annex I. We also use a “low” and “high” baseline for non-Annex I emissions to account for the substantial uncertainty in the growth rates in driving forces, especially (but not only) economic growth. It is important to recognize that baselines are necessarily fictional, particularly in an environment such as the present when the creation of policies which will reduce emissions relative to a no-policy future are precisely what is being negotiated. Nonetheless, inasmuch as emissions baselines effectively quantify the implementation of “business as usual” technological choices applied to plausible economic growth projections, they give an important benchmark against which proposed policies can be evaluated. The Annex I baseline and the non-Annex I low baseline are both derived from the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook 2007. More specifically, growth rates for different countries and regions in the WEO reference scenario are applied to the most recent available emissions data for non-Annex I countries and, for Annex I countries, to our own projections of emissions through 2012.9 This gives somewhat higher non-Annex I emissions levels than reported in WEO and somewhat lower Annex I emissions levels. The non-Annex I high baseline is roughly halfway between WEO 2007 and the much higher baseline of Sheehan (2008), which has been incorporated into work of the Australian Garnaut team10 but has not yet been widely reviewed elsewhere. Thus it is by no means the highest plausible non-Annex I emissions baseline. In our low baseline, CO2 emissions growth averages 3.4 percent per year between 2007 and 2020, and in the high baseline, 4.2 percent per year; in Sheehan (2008), non-Annex I emissions growth between 2010 and 2020 averages 4.8 percent annually, while actual emissions growth in the non-Annex I countries between 2000 and 2007 averaged over 6 percent annually. Neither the Annex I nor non-Annex I baselines take account of “no-regrets” reductions, that is, emissions reductions which would have negative or net-zero costs when accounting for (for example) life-cycle fuel savings. Recent estimates by McKinsey & Company (Enkvist et al., 2007) suggest that on the order of 1300 MtC of “no regrets” reductions could be available in 2030, about 10 percent of the global baseline. There are several reasons we don’t include them here. For the Annex I countries, they are simply not relevant, since we are primarily concerned with reductions quantified against the 9

These Annex I projections in most cases represent published estimates of Kyoto compliance, or, in some cases like the US or Australia, our own best guesses. 10 The Garnaut Review, led by economist Ross Garnaut, peformed a comprehensive evaluation of climate policy for the Australian government paralleling the UK’s Stern Review. Their final report (Garnaut 2008) is available chapter-by-chapter on their website (www.garnautreview.org.au); Chapter 3, “Emissions in the Platinum Age” addresses emissions projections.

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1990 baseline, not anything having to do with costs. For the non-Annex I countries, it might be relevant to consider no-regrets reductions, as they could plausibly be counted against the “mitigation gap” we describe. However, there are many substantial obstacles to capturing emissions reductions that are nominally no-regrets in life-cycle terms, including technical and institutional capacity and capital availability. In a recent analysis (Baer et al. 2008) we hypothesized the effective no-regrets reductions available to nonAnnex I countries to be half of the full McKinsey estimate on theses grounds. And, because that amount turns out to be only about 140 MtC in 2020, much smaller than the uncertainty in the non-Annex I baseline, we have chosen not to include it here. The Annex I and non-Annex I baselines are shown below in Figure 2. The “global” baselines also include an adjustment which accounts for approximately 1.5 GtC annually from land use emissions as well as smaller adjustments for emissions from bunker fuels and inconsistency in the treatment of emissions from cement manufacture; the adjustment is such that the global total matches the estimate of the Global Carbon Project11 (2008) for the period 1990-2007, and is fixed at the 2007 level thereafter (see Appendix II).

Figure 2. Annex I, non-Annex I and global baselines used in this analysis. See text and Appendix II.

Annex I targets The core of this analysis is the calculation of global emissions levels given the specified non-Annex I baselines and alternative Annex I reduction targets, and the comparison of

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The Global Carbon Project (www.globalcarbonproject.org) is an international scientific advisory committee that collects and publishes information about the global carbon cycle.

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those emissions levels with the “emergency pathways” (shown above) intended to have a high likelihood of keeping temperature increase below 2ºC. The analysis takes two different starting points. First, we simply examine the “25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels in 2020” range that has become a benchmark in the policy discussion because of its use in the summary of low-emissions scenarios given in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, specifically Box 13.7 of the report of Working Group III (Metz et al. 2007). (See Appendix III for a reproduction and discussion of this table.) The second starting point is the range of proposals that are currently on the table in the European Union (20 to 30 percent below 1990 levels in 2020) and the United States (a return to 1990 levels in 2020). Whereas our first set of cases are rather trivial, given the more-or-less well established 1990 benchmark, these latter cases require us to determine plausible estimates of “comparable effort” in order to generate a full Annex I projection. We will return to this problem below. The Annex I trajectories associated with 25 to 40 percent reductions below 1990 levels in 2020 are here calculated based on CO2 only, and based on a linear reduction in emissions between 2012 and 2020. The trajectories are shown continuing to decline at the same linear rate through 2030.12

Figure 3. Projected Annex I CO2 emissions with increasing levels of emissions reductions.

Calculation of the “mitigation shortfall”

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Note that the rate of decline is not identical to the rate that would be calculated by setting the target on the basis of all GHGs; because for all of Annex I there has been a slight decrease in non-CO2 gases but a slight increase in CO2 since 1990, the rate of decline calculated for CO2 is slightly steeper (See Appendix IV).

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Next, taking as an example only a single one of the Annex I reduction scenarios, and the higher of the two reference case projections for non-Annex I countries, we show how we estimate the “shortfall” in global mitigation, prior to any additional emissions reductions. In Figure 4, the blue dashed line is the Annex I reference case and the blue solid line shows Annex I emissions falling linearly to 25 percent below 1990 levels in 2020. The orange dashed line shows the original global reference case based on the high non-Annex I emissions scenario (including the adjustment for land use and other emissions described above), and the orange solid line shows global emissions after the specified reduction of Annex I emissions. The two black arrows show that the reduction below the global baseline is identical to the reduction below the Annex I baseline (1.2 GtC). The gap between the orange solid line and the emergency pathway (here the least stringent of our three, peaking in 2017), indicated by the red arrow, is the “mitigation shortfall” or “mitigation gap”; in this case, it amounts to 1.1 GtC in 2020.

Figure 4. Annex I and global emissions compared to “emergency pathway” with 2017 peak, given high non-Annex I reference case and 25 percent reduction below 1990 levels in Annex I. The red arrow represents a “mitigation gap” of 1.1 GtC in 2020. Based on the example shown in Figure 4, we show in Figure 5 the combination of global emissions (given the high Non-Annex I baseline) and four different Annex I reduction targets (25,30, 35 and 40 percent below 1990 levels) with the three emergency pathways. Again, the arrow indicates the gap between the pathway with 25 percent reductions and the least stringent pathway, but the figure shows the increasing size of the gap as the stringency of the target increases, even with stronger Annex I reduction targets.

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Figure 5. Mitigation shortfall for alternative Annex I reduction targets (25, 30, 35 and 40 percent below 1990 levels in 2020) and three “emergency pathways,” given non-Annex I high baseline. The following tables present numerically the information shown graphically in the preceding figures. In Table 1, for the high non-Annex I baseline case, we show the mitigation shortfall between each of the global emissions trajectories specified by increasing rates of Annex I reductions, and the three emergency pathways. NA1 2020 Global Global Mitigation Shortfall A1 Reduction A1 2020 Baseline 2020 2020 shortfall as percent 2020 (pct emissions fossil only emissions Target ("gap") of NA1 below 1990) (GtC) (GtC) (GtC) (GtC) (GtC) baseline Least stringent emergency pathway (peak in 2017, 50 percent below 1990 in 2050 25 3.0 7.0 11.8 10.7 1.1 15 % 30 2.8 7.0 11.6 10.7 0.9 13 % 35 2.6 7.0 11.4 10.7 0.7 10 % 40 2.4 7.0 11.2 10.7 0.5 7% Intermediate emergency pathway (peak in 2015, 65 percent below 1990 in 2050 25 3.0 7.0 11.8 9.7 2.1 30 % 30 2.8 7.0 11.6 9.7 1.9 27 % 35 2.6 7.0 11.4 9.7 1.7 25 % 40 2.4 7.0 11.2 9.7 1.5 22 % Most stringent Emergency pathway (peak in 2013, 80 percent below 1990 in 2050 25 3.0 7.0 11.8 8.2 3.6 52 % 30 2.8 7.0 11.6 8.2 3.4 49 % 35 2.6 7.0 11.4 8.2 3.2 46 % 40 2.4 7.0 11.2 8.2 3.0 43 %

Table 1. Annex I, non-Annex I and global emissions, mitigation target and mitigation shortfall with non-Annex I high baseline, least stringent (2017 peak) emergency pathway, Annex I emissions between 25-40 percent.

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Table 1 demonstrates that even with the most stringent Annex I reductions modeled, global emissions are still 0.5 GtC above the weakest of the emergency pathways in 2020, given the assumed non-Annex I baseline emissions. At the other extreme, if the Annex I emissions target is only 25 percent below 1990 levels in 2020, but the global target is the steepest emergency pathway, the mitigation gap in 2020 will be 3.6 GtC. It’s simple math to calculate that, given our assumptions about the non-Annex I baseline and the “other” components of CO2 emissions (land use change, bunker fuels and nonAnnex I cement manufacture), which collectively add to 1.8 GtC, even if Annex I emissions went to zero, global emissions would still be 8.8 GtC in 2020, well above the lowest emergency pathway (which falls to 8.2 GtC in 2020). Now, it’s important to recall that what we are calculating can be thought of as emissions allocations rather than physical emissions; zero or negative permit allocations are theoretically possible in a global cap-and-trade model, and indeed the Greenhouse Development Rights framework (Baer et al. 2008) calculates negative emissions for most Annex I countries sometime between 2020 and 2030. But given plausible assumptions about feasible rates of reductions, it is pretty clear that, independent of the allocation of emissions rights, physical emissions will have to fall rapidly in developing countries as well as in the Annex I countries if we are to stay on or close to any of the emergency pathways described here. The rightmost column shows the mitigation shortfall as a percentage of the non-Annex I baseline emissions (using the fossil-only emissions baseline shown in the third column). In the language of the IPCC’s Box 13.7, these numbers represent the “substantial deviation from baseline” that would be required, for all of non-Annex I taken together, if Annex I countries made the specified level of emissions reductions. Now, as explained in greater detail in Appendix III, the “25–40 percent reductions below 1990” that are the benchmark for the studies reported by the IPCC are emissions allocations calculated on the basis of particular effort-sharing frameworks, and have no particular standing in terms of specifying where emissions reductions ought to be made. Nonetheless, one possible way to interpret this table is to note that, if physical emissions were reduced in Annex I countries at the specified rate, then physical emissions would have to be reduced below baseline by the amount shown in the last column in order to stay on the emergency pathway.13 This way of considering the problem leaves aside the question of “who pays.” However, the fact is that, as I noted above, these specified Annex I reductions are generally assumed to be allocations, and thus, by default, any additional global reductions would be paid for by reducing non-Annex I emissions allocations by the necessary amount. That is to say, the “substantial deviation from baseline” described in table 13.7 (see Appendix III) is assumed to be a reduction burden imposed on non-Annex I countries.

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Recall however, that land-use emissions and “other” emissions are kept constant from 2007; obviously any reductions in these emissions would reduce the “required” reductions in non-Annex I countries’ fossilfuel emissions.

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Now, it is not necessary to make such an assumption, and we do not make such an assumption here. It is true by definition that, if total permits were in accordance with the emergency pathway, and if permits for Annex I countries were based on the specified reduction target, the allocation to non-Annex I countries would have to be exactly enough below its baseline to reduce the calculated gap to zero. We do not however endorse this kind of “burden-sharing by default”; rather we simply point out that, given a specific level of Annex I reductions, there remains an additional “mitigation gap” that will have to be covered if global emissions are to stay in line with the “emergency pathway.” (Indeed, many NGOs have called for 40% domestic reductions in Annex I countries and additional financial and technological support for reductions in developing countries.) Table 2 shows the same information as Table 1, but assuming the lower non-Annex I baseline. NA1 2020 Global Global Mitigation Shortfall A1 Reduction A1 2020 Baseline 2020 2020 shortfall as percent 2020 (pct emissions Fossil only emissions Target ("gap") of NA1 below 1990) (GtC) (GtC) (GtC) (GtC) (GtC) baseline Least stringent emergency pathway (peak in 2017, 50 percent below 1990 in 2050 25 3.0 6.4 11.2 10.7 0.5 8% 30 2.8 6.4 11.0 10.7 0.3 4% 35 2.6 6.4 10.8 10.7 0.1 1% 40 2.4 6.4 10.6 10.7 -0.1 -2 % Intermediate emergency pathway (peak in 2015, 65 percent below 1990 in 2050 25 3.0 6.4 11.2 9.7 1.5 24 % 30 2.8 6.4 11.0 9.7 1.3 21 % 35 2.6 6.4 10.8 9.7 1.1 17 % 40 2.4 6.4 10.6 9.7 0.9 14 % Most stringent emergency pathway (peak in 2013, 80 percent below 1990 in 2050 25 3.0 6.4 11.2 8.2 3.0 47 % 30 2.8 6.4 11.0 8.2 2.8 44 % 35 2.6 6.4 10.8 8.2 2.6 41 % 40 2.4 6.4 10.6 8.2 2.4 38 %

Table 2. Same as Table 1 but for low non-Annex I baseline emissions. Note that there is in this table one case (Annex I 40 percent reductions and the weakest emergency pathway) in which in which emissions reductions actually exceed those required by they pathway. Nonetheless, even with this lower baseline – unrealistically low, given recent history, at least until we see how the current financial crisis plays out – in all other cases there is mitigation gap, frequently a large one, still to be met, even with emissions reductions in Annex I larger than those currently being tabled. To the most prominent emissions reductions goals that have actually been proposed in some Annex I countries, we now turn.

Annex I and global emissions given EU and US proposals

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In this section, we analyze the Annex I and global emissions levels associated with the extrapolation of current EU and US reduction proposals, specifically the EU’s proposed 20-30 percent reduction below 1990 levels in 2020, and the US’s proposed return to 1990 levels by 2020.14 This extrapolation can be done in a variety of ways, with varying assumptions of greater or lesser simplicity. For example, a simple – but rather implausible – extrapolation of the US’s proposal would be to assume an equal annual percentage reduction in all Annex I countries between 2010 and 2020. A more plausible assumption would be an equal percentage reduction in all Annex II countries (the Annex I countries that are not Economies in Transition, also excluding Turkey), and flat emissions in the EITs and Turkey, and indeed this is the method that we will use here. A still more complex example might involve extrapolating from the principles reflected in the EU’s internal effort-sharing scheme, which keys the allocation of emissions to per capita income, or from principles like the Greenhouse Development Rights framework (Baer et al 2008) which incorporate per capita income and historical emissions. Nonetheless, for our purpose here, which is to plausibly estimate overall Annex I reductions rather than to estimate targets for particular countries, the simpler method seems adequate. The results of this calculation are shown in Table 3. We assume that the US’s mitigation objective is specified in terms of all (Kyoto) greenhouse gases, and that US GHG emissions will be roughly flat through 2010 at about 15 percent over 1990 levels. This implies a 13 percent reduction below 2010 levels in 2020, which is what we apply to the EU15 and other Annex II countries. Because Annex I CO2 emissions are currently higher relative to 1990 than total GHG emissions, the overall Annex I reductions reach 14 percent below 1990 levels for all GHGs but only 11 percent below 1990 levels for CO2. (See Appendix III for further discussion of these issues).

United States EU 15 EU 12 EU 27 Other Annex II EITs and Turkey All Annex I

Est All GHGs in 2010 pct of 1990

Est CO2 in 2010 pct of 1990

Percent reduction to 2020

All GHGs in 2020 pct of 1990

CO2 in 2020 pct of 1990

115.0

118.7

-13.0

100.0

103.2

89.4 80.2

94.5 81.8

-13.0 0.0

77.7 80.2

82.1 81.8

87.2

91.5

-10.2

78.3

82.0

112.0 71.3

116.7 69.6

-13.0 0.0

97.4 71.3

101.5 69.6

95.7

99.1

-8.7

86.2

88.9

Table 3. Estimated Annex I emissions in 2020 based on extrapolation of US commitment to return all GHG emissions to 1990 levels. See text. We can also see in Table 3 that this method of calculating comparable effort leads to reductions for the EU27 that are very close to the 20 percent below 1990 reductions proposed (in the absence of a global agreement) in the European Commission’s Climate 14

Note again that the “US proposal” we refer to is reflected in the announced intent of President-elect Obama (2008) and is also reflected in legistlation that failed to pass the last Congress, and is not national policy or a negotiating proposal of the current administration.

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and Energy Plan (European Commission 2008); calculated on an all GHGs basis, EU27 emissions comparable to the US proposal would be about 78 percent of 1990 levels, vs. about 82 percent calculated on a CO2-only basis (since EU27 CO2 emissions are currently higher relative to 1990 than total GHG emissions). Furthermore, since this calculation leads to EU27 emissions slightly lower than the 20 percent reduction level, but leads to CO2 emissions for all of Annex I equal to an 11 percent reduction below 1990, we can reasonably conclude that both the US proposal and the EU 20 percent reduction proposal amount to a roughly 10 percent reduction in Annex I CO2 below 1990 levels, and calculate the resulting “mitigation gap” on that basis. The results are shown for both the higher and lower non-Annex I pathways in Figure 6.

Figure 6. Global CO2 emissions and “mitigation gap” for both low and high non-Annex I baselines, with Annex I emissions 10 percent below 1990 levels in 2020. Finally we consider the Annex I emissions that would be implied by the EU’s proposal to return emissions to 30 percent below 1990 levels, “provided that other developed countries commit themselves to comparable emission reductions and economically more advanced developing countries commit themselves to contributing adequately according to their responsibilities and capabilities.” (European Commission 2008). Again, the simplest way to estimate “comparable effort” is simply to apply one rate of reductions to all the Annex II countries and one rate to all non-Annex II countries (EITs and Turkey). Again, this does not account for differentiation within these groups, but it gives a broad indication of the average level of effort in each. There are of course multiple combinations that could be applied, but, given that we are using as our “key” here the rate of reductions required by the EU15 and EU12 to lead to 30 percent below 1990 levels in 2020, the EU’s proposed effort sharing framework gives us a plausible rough guide. In the original EU proposal the average annual rate of reductions was roughly 2 percentage points higher (greater reductions) for the EU 15 than for the EU 13

12.15 Here we use 2.7 percent and 0.7 percent respectively, so that all Annex II countries (including the US, which is not here shown separately) reduce by 24 percent below their 2010 levels, while the EITs (including the EU12) reduce by 7 percent below their 2010 levels. Table 4 shows the results. Est. all GHGs 2010 (MtCO2-e)

Est all GHGs 2010 pct of 1990

EU 15 EU 12

1036 289

89.4 80.2

EU 27

1325

Other Annex II EITs and Turkey

2673 891

All Annex I

4888

95.7

Annual decline 2010-2020

Percent reduction to 2020

All GHGs 2020 (MtC)

Est 2020 pct of 1990

-2.7 -0.7

-24 -7

791 269

68 75

87.2

-2.2

-20

1060

70

114.2 71.3

-2.7 -0.7

-24 -7

2040 830

87 67

-2.2

-20

3931

77

Table 4. Annex I reductions consistent with a reduction of EU27 Emissions to 30 percent below 1990 levels in 2020. Table 4 shows that the aggregate reduction for Annex I under this set of assumptions would be 23 percent below 1990 levels in 2020. Given the slightly higher level of CO2 than all GHGs relative to 1990 today, this would imply CO2 emissions about 20 percent below 1990 levels in 2020, and thus a mitigation shortfall slightly larger than that shown in Tables 2 and 3 for the case in which Annex I emissions are reduced 25 percent below 1990 levels. It is not unreasonable to round the other way and to say that the EU’s 30 percent proposal is roughly equal to the 25 percent below 1990 levels that is the upper bound of the scenario range reported in the IPCC’s AR4. However, although we don’t show the calculation in Table 4, the reductions that would be expected of the US are roughly double those proposed recently by President Elect Obama (which are in turn essentially the same as the more aggressive climate legislation that was introduced last year); and, further, these targets require substantial reductions of the EITs as well. All of which is to say that, at the same time that a 20 percent reduction in global CO2 emissions from 1990 levels leaves the world well short of even the weakest of the specified emergency pathways, it would be very difficult to negotiate given current evidence of “willingness to pay” among the non-EU members of Annex I.

Conclusion Fundamentally any global mitigation regime has three primary elements- a global objective, a physical distribution of the reductions that are made, and an allocation of the “bill” for those reductions. A global cap-and-trade system is one way, but not the only 15

In fact the proposed change from 2005 to 2020 was an average reduction of about 1.5 percent annually for the EU15 and an annual average increase of about 0.5% annually for the EU12 (author’s calculations based on European Commission 2008).

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way, to accomplish the first while separating the second and third. The tendency of the climate debate to focus on the “25 to 40 percent reductions below 1990 levels” in Annex I countries has somewhat confused the latter issues; while the studies described in the IPCC’s AR4 clearly discuss the allocation of (presumably) tradable emissions permits, it has also been argued that domestic emissions in the Annex I countries need to be reduced to these levels with additional support for mitigation in non-Annex I countries. The analysis we present in this paper is equally ambiguous; the “mitigation gap” we describe can be understood as either the physical emissions reductions that would be necessary in the non-Annex I countries to keep emissions in line with our “emergency pathways,’ or as the reduction in non-Annex I allocations that would be necessary if Annex I allocations matched the described levels and the global allocation was to be consistent with the 2ºC objective. The inconvenient truth is that, given the historical failure of the Annex I countries to live up to their UNFCCC commitments,16 there can be no reasonable expectation that the nonAnnex I countries will invest in mitigation efforts substantially beyond no-regrets in the immediate post-2012 period. This is in spite of the fact that, as is plainly obvious and easily demonstrated quantitatively,17 there are many citizens and indeed many whole countries in the non-Annex I group who are have greater capacity and responsibility than the poorer (and in some cases even the average) members of Annex I. Thus in the short term the “mitigation gap” will have to be met, if it is to be closed even partially, primarily by the efforts of the Annex I countries. Presumably if strong domestic action by the nonAnnex I countries is supplemented with more than token levels of financial and technological support, the “nationally appropriate mitigation actions” called for in nonAnnex I countries can move beyond no-regrets options and actually achieve a “substantial deviation” from baseline emissions. The analysis here shows how large a gap remains to be crossed.

16

Not merely their commitments to mitigation, but also their commitments to finance, technology transfer, and support for adaptation. 17 See the Greenhouse Development Rights framework, Baer et al. 2008.

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Appendix I “Emergency Pathways” The three scenarios are based on CO2 emissions only, including both fossil fuel emissions, emissions from cement manufacture, and land use emissions. Each scenario begins with historical emissions through 2005 as reported by the Global Carbon Project. The curves then rise along the baseline projections of emissions growth through 2012 described in Appendix II, with growth tapering to zero in the specified peak year (2013, 2015 or 2017), followed by a decline at a rate that increases each year over a four year period until the maximum rate of decline is reached. The pathways then decline exponentially (fixed annual percentage rate decline), with the maximum rate adjusted so that the pathways pass through the specified 2050 target levels (80, 65 and 50 percent below 1990 levels respectively), and continue to decline at the same rate through 2100, which as far as the projections are calculated. Further characteristics of the three pathways are shown in Table A1 below. Non-CO2 emissions and concentrations are assumed to fall such that the radiative forcing from non-CO2 GHGs declines by 50 percent between 2010 and 2050 (from 1 Wm-2 to 0.5 Wm-2). Negative forcing from aerosols is defined to be uncertain with normal probability distribution with a mean of –1 Wm-2 in 2000 and a standard deviation of 0.25 Wm-2, and rises or falls in direct correlation with CO2 emissions, since the majority of aerosol forcing is associated with the combustion of coal or biomass. CO2 and CO2-equivalent levels and the risk of exceeding 2ºC are calculated using the MCCM (Monte Carlo Climate Model) described by Baer and Mastrandrea (2006). For much more detail, see the online technical appendices at http://greenhousedevelopmentrights.org/Appendices. Emissions peak year

Annual CO2 emissions at peak year

Pathway 1

2013

10.5 GtC

Pathway 2

2015

Pathway 3

2017

2050 CO2 emissions relative to 1990

Maximum rate of reductions

Chance of exceeding 2ºC

Estimated peak concentration ppm CO2 /CO2-eq)

80% below

5.6%/yr

14-32%

420/480

10.7 GtC

65% below

4.4%/yr

20-46%

430/490

10.9 GtC

50% below

3.6%/yr

25-54%

440/500

Table A1: Characteristics of three “emergency pathways.”

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Appendix II Emissions baselines Historical Emissions Historical emissions for Annex I from 1990-2006 are taken from the UNFCCC’s compilation of national reports (UNFCCC 2008a) which provides data for all 40 Annex I countries, broken down by gases and (for CO2 and total GHG emissions) including or excluding CO2 emissions from land use. Because of the controversial status of land use emissions for Annex I countries, we use the figures for CO2 and all GHGs excluding land use. These totals include CO2 from fossil fuels and cement manufacture, which, as we note below, introduces some inconsistency with global totals. Historical CO2 emissions for the non-Annex I countries (including some non-UNFCCC territories such as Taiwan and the West Bank and Gaza Strip) are taken from the United States Energy Information Agency’s 2007 report, which covers years through 2005. Emissions for 2007 (Annex I) and 2006-7 (non-Annex I) are estimated by using calculated growth rates from the US Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Center (CDIAC) (2008) and applying them to the 2005 and/or 2006 data from the UNFCCC or US EIA data sets. The global historical CO2 baseline is taken from the estimates of the Global Carbon Project (GCP) (2008). In addition to the domestic fossil fuel emissions in the Annex I and non-Annex I data sets and the emissions from concrete manufacture in the Annex I data set, the GCP estimate includes emissions from land use change, marine and aviation bunker fuels, and cement manufacturing in non-Annex I countries. No effort is made here to further decompose the “residual” between reported Annex I and non-Annex I emissions and the global total, although it should be noted that the GCP itself breaks its total down into fossil fuels (which includes bunker fuels), “other” (cement), and land use. The 2007 value of 1.78 GtC for this residual adjustment, calculated as the difference between the sum of Annex I and non-Annex I emissions and the GCP’s reported total of 9.94 GtC, is, somewhat arbitrarily, held constant in the further evaluation of the global emissions baselines; that is, after 2007, global emissions are estimated each year as the Annex I plus non-Annex I projections plus 1.78 GtC.

Annex I emissions projections Estimates of future Annex I emissions are available from a variety of sources, depending on the time frame in question. Estimates of emissions through 2012 for Kyoto Protocol Parties and 2020 for all Annex I parties are compiled by the UNFCCC based on national communications (UNFCCC 2007). The European Environment Agency compiles projections for both the EU member states and other European countries (EEA 2007, 2008). Various countries also report projected emissions on government web sites. 17

Longer-term projections are fewer and, necessarily, more speculative. One commonly referenced source is the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook Series, which issues annually updated global projections of energy use and associated CO2 emissions, broken down to regions and major countries. Currently (2007 and 2008) the projections go through 2030. The Annex I projections do not take account of compliance among the parties to the Kyoto Protocol. For this study, in which estimates of Annex I emissions in 2010-2012 play an important role and projections through 2030 a lesser role, the 2010-2012 projections are compiled primarily from the European Environment Agency’s 2008 report and, for non-European sources, from national reports and the author’s extrapolation of current trends. Emissions projections from 2012-2030 are based on growth rates implied in the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2007, which gives projected CO2 emissions for the years 2015 and 2030 for the US, Japan, OECD Europe, OECD North America, OECD Pacific, and the Economies in Transition, as well as China, India, Brazil, the Middle East, Latin American and the Caribbean, Africa, and Developing Asia. Growth rates calculated to fit smoothly between the reported points are applied to the most recent historical emissions (2007). This method gives the shape of the curve shown in Figure 2, in which Annex I emissions trend downward till 2012 then upward again till 2030.

Non-Annex I emissions projections This author is not aware of any collected short-term projections for non-Annex I countries equivalent to the EU’s report or the UNFCCC’s compilation of national reports. There may be individual country projections available but they have not been sought out or incorporated. Rather for the low emissions scenario we use the IEA projections and methods described above, based on the reference case scenario from the World Energy Outlook 2007, and applying implied growth rates to the most recent historical data. For the high reference case, we simply take half of the difference between the IEA reference case as we calculate it and the growth rates implied by the projections of Sheehan (2008), who presents a plausible but not yet widely reviewed estimate for non-Annex I emissions based on extrapolations of recent growth trends in China and India. Thus our high case is obviously not the highest plausible baseline, but is intended to be a “conservative” estimate of future non-Annex I emissions if recent high economic growth rates continue and the rate of improvement in carbon intensity does not increase substantially in China and India. The projections in this document are based on ongoing work for the Greenhouse Development Rights project led by EcoEquity and the Stockholm Environment Institute, and further detail and subsequent development of these projections will be available at www.greenhousedevelopmentrights.org/Data.

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Appendix III The IPCC’s Box 13.7 from the Working Group III volume of the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) As will no doubt be familiar to many readers of this report, much of the discussion of future emissions objectives at the UNFCCC climate negotiations in Bali in December of 2007 focused on the “25–40 percent below 1990 levels” reduction target for Annex I countries associated in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) with the lowest risk of temperature increase over 2ºC. Although reference to AR4 was relegated to a footnote in the approved Bali Action Plan (UNFCCC 2008c), more explicit reference is included in the decisions of the Ad-hoc Working Group of the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP) (UNFCCC 2008b), where the US does not have a vote. The source of these numbers – box 13.7 of the contribution of Working Group III to the Fourth Assessment Report (Metz et al. 2007) – is reproduced below.

In many cases, such as the report of the AWG-KP referenced above, the reference to the IPCC’s report is very carefully worded. Elsewhere, however, reference can get quite sloppy, even among experts, and one frequently finds statements such as “The IPCC states that emissions in Annex I countries need to be –25 percent to –40 percent below the 1990 level in 2020 in order to achieve the 450ppm CO2eq. target aiming to limit global temperature rise to 2°C” (Hohne and Ellerman, 2008). Although a detailed exposition of the implications of the IPCC’s analysis is beyond our scope,18 four points stand out: 18

See den Elzen and Hohne (2008) for such an analysis by persons who were involved in the construction of the IPCC’s table.

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1) The IPCC’s table is based on an analysis of six published studies, which used quite diverse emissions pathways with stabilization levels ranging from 400 ppm CO2equivalent to 450 ppm CO2. Only in two of the studies was any estimate of the likelihood of the pathways staying below 2ºC actually calculated. As noted in the table, even the pathways aiming at 450 ppm CO2-equivalent stabilization assume a period of overshoot, which increases the likelihood of exceeding 2ºC at least temporarily to over 50 percent. Thus it is not really correct to state that these scenarios as a whole “aim to limit global temperature increase to 2ºC.” 2) The 25-40 percent range of Annex I “emissions” in fact represents the allocation of emissions rights (note the words “emissions allowances” in the caption of the box) to the Annex I countries under the various scenarios and allocation frameworks described in the six studies, which generally assume the desirability (indeed, the inevitability) of global emissions trading. As noted in the table, given these Annex I allocations, emissions allocations to the non-Annex I countries representing “substantial deviations from baseline” are required by 2020 in all non-Annex I regions except Africa and South Asia. That is to say, these figures say nothing about where physical emissions reductions need to be made, but rather reflect the specific burden-sharing assumptions of the frameworks used in the original studies summarized by the IPCC. The 40 percent figure is thus easily but mistakenly interpreted to mean that “if annex I emissions were reduced by 40 percent from 1990 levels, the world would be on track to meet the 2ºC target.” In fact all it really means is that “with scenarios that give at best roughly even odds of staying below 2ºC, even an allocation to the Annex I countries of 40 percent below 1990 emissions in 2020 requires that the non-Annex I countries be given emissions allocations significantly below their baseline growth” – that is, the nonAnnex I countries must pay for emissions reductions. Whether this is fair or not, given that both per capita income and emissions in the non-Annex I countries will still be far below Annex I levels in 2020, is not something on which the IPCC did, or should, pass judgment. 3) The 40 percent figure is not even the maximum level of Annex I reductions described in the scenarios that the IPCC did review, to say nothing of alternative emissions pathways or burden sharing frameworks published subsequently to AR4. Indeed, as described in den Elzen and Hohne (2008), two of the studies summarized in Box 13-7 include scenario variants in which Annex I reductions reach 47 percent and 50 percent below 1990 levels respectively; in the IPCC’s summary, these were effectively treated as “outliers” and discarded. Furthermore, in the Greenhouse Development Rights framework, which takes a 2013 peak year and aims for a 15-30 percent likelihood of exceeding 2ºC, and in which emissions allocations are calculated as a share of global obligations subtracted from a “no-regrets” baseline (and in which negative allocations of emissions rights are possible), Annex I reductions in 2020 are over 60 percent in the “reference case” scenario (Baer et al., 2008). 4) Although this is not evident in Box 13.7 itself, all of the low emissions scenarios which it describes have emissions peaks in 2015 or even before. As is shown in the table below, from the Technical Summary of the Working Group three report, the “Category I” 20

scenarios, which are essentially the same as the “Category A” scenarios in Box 13.7, all have their peak year between 2000 and 2015. For the category B scenarios, which have peak years out to 2020, the “best estimate” equilibrium temperatures start at 2.4ºC.

In spite of this, all of the rhetorical attention has been focused on the “25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels,” and essentially no attention has been paid to what kind of policy framework would actually allow a 2015 peak. One would have to conclude that a 2015 peak is currently considered to be “unrealistic.” Now, it is certainly true that, with higher rates of reductions later, the cumulative emissions following a 2020 peak can be held to the same level as if there were a 2015 peak. However, this kind of deferral of stronger action carries enormous risks, as the fossil fuel infrastructure continues to grow in the meanwhile and our discounted costs become the future’s higher current costs.

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Appendix IV CO2 and non-CO2 gases in the modeling of global emissions pathways In the analyses in this paper, we work with limited exception in terms of CO2-only emissions pathways. There are a number of reasons for this choice, notably the lack of reliable measurements, to say nothing of projections, of non-CO2 gases in the non-Annex I countries. Additionally, the inclusion of non-CO2 gases, and the difficulties raised by the necessity to weight annual emissions using Global Warming Potentials, can easily obscure the fact that, with the exception of methane, there is little scope to substantially reduce the level of radiative forcing in this century by reducing Kyoto gases other than CO2. (Indeed, analysis pioneered by James Hansen’s group (e.g., Hansen et al. 2000) makes clear that, after methane, the biggest “gains” in reducing radiative forcing come from reducing black soot and ground level ozone .) Nonetheless, the Kyoto Protocol has left us with a policy conversation in which the majority of quantitative references – at least to Annex I emissions – are keyed to the Kyoto basket of GHGs. According to reported figures, using the GWPs proposed by the IPCC and approved by the UNFCCC, non-CO2 GHGs were 20 percent of total Annex I GHG emissions in 1990; or, equivalently, non-CO2 emissions were equal to 25 percent of CO2 emissions (in both cases excluding CO2 emissions from land-use). For non-Annex I countries, while given the difficulty of measuring emissions from agriculture, available numbers should be treated with some skepticism, one source19 puts the share of non-CO2 gases as almost 40 percent of the non-Annex I total in 2000 (the last year for which data is reported) and about 27 percent of the global total in that year. There are a variety of issues that arise here, of which I will focus on the one that is of greatest concern to this exercise: given that emissions of non-CO2 gases have been reduced substantially more (or grown less) in the Annex I countries since 1990 than have CO2 emissions, (roughly 4 percent decline across all Annex I vs. less than 0.5 percent decline for CO2), and that this is true in the countries/regions (the US and Europe) which are defining the benchmarks for reduction targets, reductions keyed to a fraction of 1990 levels will be less if based on all GHGs than on CO2 only. For the US, for example, emissions of all GHGs were 14.4 percent over 1990 levels in 2006,while CO2 was 18.1 percent over 1990 levels.20 Thus a return to 1990 levels by 2020 implies a 12.6 percent reduction from 2006 levels on an all GHG basis, vs. a 15.3 percent reduction on a CO2only basis; that is, a 22 percent greater rate of reduction if based on CO2 emissions alone. Now, there is of course no fundamental reason why this difference should be of any consequence to policy. If one wished, one could specify (for example) for the US a 15.3 19

WRI’s Climate Analysis Indicators Tool (2008), which is in turn based on estimates published by the US EPA and the Dutch Ministry of the Environment (formerly RIVM). 20 These calculations are based on the numbers reported to the UNFCCC, and the underlying measurements are certainly not precise to the reported decimal place.

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percent reduction in all gases below 2006 levels, which would lead to total emissions equal to 96.9 percent of 1990 levels instead of 100 percent; then one would still be free to make the reductions in such a way as to minimize costs. Or, if it were considered necessary, a country could specify that CO2 emissions would be required to be reduced to a specified level (given the current structure of the Kyoto protocol, this would have to be a domestic policy) and non-CO2 gases could be allowed to rise to higher levels than they might have if they were completely tradable with CO2 reductions. The reality, however, is that given the complete absence of any scientific basis for estimating the consequences of a 3 percent difference in emissions in 2020,21 policy targets are driven by the “law of round numbers” – pick the nearest number ending in zero that is in roughly the right ballpark. Hence the EU’s proposals for 20 percent or 30 percent below 1990 levels in 2020, the US proposal to return to 1990 levels (100 percent) in 2020, or for that matter the widely cited goal of 50 percent reductions below 1990 levels in 2050. Now, in some sense this is completely appropriate – it is more relevant to ask whether emissions in 2020 should be roughly 20 percent or roughly 30 percent below 1990 levels than it is to ask whether they should be 13 percent or 15 percent below 2006 levels. Nonetheless, the consequence of the choice to use all GHGs is to bias the numbers upward, and thus to get lower reductions in CO2 than we would have if the round numbers were applied to CO2. And, given the fact that the inertia of CO2-producing infrastructure may be the largest aspect of the challenge facing us, anything that takes even a slight amount of pressure off the short-term rate of CO2 reductions makes the long-term problem that much more difficult. One final consideration – not decisive here, but relevant in other types of calculations – is simply that an emissions pathway defined in terms of all gases produces a trajectory of radiative forcing that has an extra dimension of uncertainty, and in which the pathway of forcing (and thus temperature) is influenced by the short-term cost-structures and profitmaximizing activities of individual agents, not by a policy decision of the global community. Of course, given uncertainty in the carbon cycle and other gas cycles, even a well-specified pathway for emissions of each gas does not produce a precise pathway of radiative forcing, to say nothing of temperature. But, for example, if methane reductions are cheaper than CO2 reductions in the short run, profit-maximizing agents might choose a pathway with identical GWP-weighted annual emissions but higher forcing in the long run, a different decision than might be made if the global trajectory of radiative forcing, rather than emissions, was being deliberately chosen. In the end, the main consequence of this analysis is simply that, when we specify emissions reductions relative to 1990 or 2006, we are referring to CO2 emissions only. And, by extension, we would encourage activists, analysts and negotiators to put their round numbers on CO2-only figures!

21

With all due respect to those who think that there is a “social cost of carbon” that can be applied to the extra emissions to calculate their eventual impacts, such estimates are driven by values rather than by science.

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Bibliography Baer, P., T. Athanasiou, S. Kartha, and E. Kemp-Benedict. 2008. The Greenhouse Development Rights Framework: The Right to Development in a Climate Constrained World. Second Edition. Heinrich Böll Foundation, Christian Aid, EcoEcquity, and the Stockholm Environment Institute, Berlin and Albany, CA. Available at www.greenhousedevelopmentrights.org Baer, P., and M. Mastrandrea. 2006. High Stakes: Designing emissions pathways to reduce the risk of dangerous climate change. Institute for Public Policy Research, London. November 2006. Available at www.ippr.org Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism of South Africa. 2008. Media Statement By Marthinus Van Schalkwyk, Minister Of Environmental Affairs And Tourism, July 28 2008. Available at http://www.environment.gov.za//NewsMedia/MedStat/2008Jul28_2/280720082.html EEA. 2007. Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trends and Projections in Europe 2007. Available at http://reports.eea.europa.eu/eea_report_2007_5 EEA. 2008. Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trends and Projections in Europe 2008. Available at http://reports.eea.europa.eu/eea_report_2008_5 Enkvist, P.-A., T. Nauclér, and J. Rosander. 2007. A cost-curve for Greenhouse Gas Reductions. The McKinsey Quarterly:35-45. European Commission. 2008. Proposal for a Decision of the European Parliament and Council on the effort of Member States to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to meet the Community’s greenhouse gas emission reduction commitments up to 2020. Available at Garnaut, R. 2008. The Garnaut Climate Change Review: Final Report. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. Global Carbon Project. 2008. Carbon Budget and Trends 2007. September 26, 2008. Available at www.globalcarbonproject.org Hansen, J., M. Sato, R. Ruedy, A. Lacis, and V. Oinas. 2000. Global warming in the twenty-first century: An alternative scenario. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 97:9875-9880. Höhne, N., and C. Ellerman. 2008. The EU's emission reduction target, intended use of CDM and its +2ºC. European Parliament, IP/A/ENVI/NT/2008-14. Kartha, S., T. Athanasiou, P. Baer, and E. Kemp-Benedict. 2008. A Call for Leadership: A Greenhouse Development Rights Analysis of the EU's Proposed 2020 targets. Available at http://greenhousedevelopmentrights.org/A_Call_for_Leadership.pdf Metz, B., O. Davidson, P. Bosch, R. Dave, and L. Meyer, editors. 2007. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK. Obama, B. 2008. President-elect Obama promises “new chapter” on climate change: Statement to Global Climate Summit, Los Angeles CA. November 18, 2008. Video available at http://change.gov/newsroom/entry/president_elect_obama_promises_new_chapter _on_climate_change/ 24

Sheehan, P. 2008. The new global growth path: implications for climate change analysis and policy. Climatic Change 91:211-231. UNFCCC. 2007. UNFCCC Fact Sheet on GHG Projections. November 28, 2007. Available at http://unfccc.int/files/essential_background/background_publications_htmlpdf/cli mate_change_information_kit/application/pdf/fact_sheet_2007_ghg_2_2.pdf UNFCCC. 2008a. National greenhouse gas inventory data for the period 1990-2006. FCCC/SBI/2008/12, November 17, 2008. Available at http://unfccc.int/ghg_data/ghg_data_unfccc/time_series_annex_i/items/3814.php UNFCCC. 2008b. Report of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol on its resumed fourth session, held in Bali from 3 to 15 December 2007 February 5, 2008. Available at UNFCCC. 2008c. Report of the Conference of the Parties on its thirteenth session, held in Bali from 3 to 15 December 2007, Part Two: Action taken by the Conference of the Parties at its thirteenth session March 14, 2008.

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Acknowlegments The author is grateful for the support of Andrew Pendleton and Simon Retallack at the Institute for Public Policy Research in the UK, who commissioned this work, and for Andrew’s constant encouragement and positive feedback. Much of the analysis is drawn from my work on the Greenhouse Development Rights project, and the fingerprints of my GDRs collaborators Tom Athanasiou, Sivan Kartha and Eric Kemp-Benedict are everywhere, even though they have not yet reviewed this draft and cannot be held responsible for anything that is in it.

About the Author Paul Baer is an internationally recognized expert on equity and climate change and on climate risk analysis, with training in ecological economics, ethics, philosophy of science, and simulation modeling. He completed his PhD in 2005 at UC Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group, and is currently a post-doctoral scholar at Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment, pursuing research on expert elicitation and climate risk. Paul has also been the Research Director for EcoEquity since 2000, when he co-founded the group with Tom Athanasiou, with whom he also co-authored the 2002 book Dead Heat: Global Justice and Global Warming (Seven Stories Press). His recent work includes High Stakes:Designing Emissions Pathways to Reduce the Risk of Dangerous Climate Change (2006, with Mike Mastrandrea, published by the Institute for Public Policy Research), and The Greenhouse Development Rights Framework: The right to development in a climate constrained world, with Tom Athanasiou, Sivan Kartha, and Eric Kemp-Benedict, published by the Heinrich Böll Foundation. He can be contacted at [email protected] or [email protected]

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