Contributing Authors: Katherine Calvin (USA), Joana Correia de Oliveira de Portugal Pereira (UK/Portugal), Oreane Edelenbosch (Netherlands/Italy), Johannes Emmerling (Italy/Germany), Sabine Fuss (Germany), Thomas Gasser (Austria/France), Nathan Gillett (Canada), Chenmin He (China), Edgar Hertwich (USA/Austria), Lena Höglund-Isaksson (Austria/Sweden), Daniel Huppmann (Austria), Gunnar Luderer (Germany), Anil Markandya (Spain/UK), David L. McCollum (USA/Austria), Malte Meinshausen (Australia/Germany), Richard Millar (UK), Alexander Popp (Germany), Pallav Purohit (Austria/India), Keywan Riahi (Austria), Aurélien Ribes (France), Harry Saunders (Canada/USA), Christina Schädel (USA/Switzerland), Chris Smith (UK), Pete Smith (UK), Evelina Trutnevyte (Switzerland/Lithuania), Yang Xiu (China), Wenji Zhou (Austria/China), Kirsten Zickfeld (Canada/Germany)

Mitigation Pathways Compatible with 1.5°C in the Context of Sustainable Development

https://cyberleninka.org/article/n/81531.pdf

A framework for assessing and implementing the co-benefits of nature-based solutions in urban areas

The social cost of carbon (SCC) is a commonly employed metric of the expected economic damages from carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions Although useful in an optimal policy context, a world-level approach obscures the heterogeneous geography of climate damage and vast differences in country-level contributions to the global SCC, as well as climate and socio-economic uncertainties, which are larger at the regional level Here we estimate country-level contributions to the SCC using recent climate model projections, empirical climate-driven economic damage estimations and socio-economic projections Central specifications show high global SCC values (median, US$417 per tonne of CO2 (tCO2); 66% confidence intervals, US$177–805 per tCO2) and a country-level SCC that is unequally distributed However, the relative ranking of countries is robust to different specifications: countries that incur large fractions of the global cost consistently include India, China, Saudi Arabia and the United States Global estimates of the economic impacts of CO2 emissions may obscure regional heterogeneities A modular framework for estimating the country-level social cost of carbon shows consistently unequal country-level costs

/pdf/country-level-social-cost-of-carbon-2ln8e5ksah.pdf

Country-level social cost of carbon

The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide guide-posts to society as it attempts to respond to an array of pressing challenges One of these challenges is energy; thus, the SDGs have become paramount for energy policy-making Yet, while governments throughout the world have already declared the SDGs to be 'integrated and indivisible', there are still knowledge gaps surrounding how the interactions between the energy SDG targets and those of the non-energy-focused SDGs might play out in different contexts In this review, we report on a large-scale assessment of the relevant energy literature, which we conducted to better our understanding of key energy-related interactions between SDGs, as well as their context-dependencies (relating to time, geography, governance, technology, and directionality) By (i) evaluating the nature and strength of the interactions identified, (ii) indicating the robustness of the evidence base, the agreement of that evidence, and our confidence in it, and (iii) highlighting critical areas where better understanding is needed or context dependencies should be considered, our review points to potential ways forward for both the policy making and scientific communities First, we find that positive interactions between the SDGs outweigh the negative ones, both in number and magnitude Second, of relevance for the scientific community, in order to fill knowledge gaps in critical areas, there is an urgent need for interdisciplinary research geared toward developing new data, scientific tools, and fresh perspectives Third, of relevance for policy-making, wider efforts to promote policy coherence and integrated assessments are required to address potential policy spillovers across sectors, sustainability domains, and geographic and temporal boundaries The task of conducting comprehensive science-to-policy assessments covering all SDGs, such as for the UN's Global Sustainable Development Report, remains manageable pending the availability of systematic reviews focusing on a limited number of SDG dimensions in each case

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaafe3/pdf

Connecting the Sustainable Development Goals by their energy inter-linkages

The EDGAR (Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research) v4.3 global anthropogenic emissions inventory of several gaseous (SO2, NOx, CO, non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOCs) and NH3) and particulate (PM10, PM2.5, black and organic carbon (BC and OC)) air pollutants for the period 1970–2010 is used to develop retrospective air pollution emission scenarios to quantify the roles and contributions of changes in fuels consumption, technology, end-of-pipe emission reduction measures and their resulting impact on health and crop yields. This database presents changes in activity data, fuels and air pollution abatement technology for the past 4 decades, using international statistics and following guidelines for bottom-up emission inventory at the Tier 1 and Tier 2 levels with region-specific default values. 

With two further retrospective scenarios we assess (1) the impact of the technology and end-of-pipe (EOP) reduction measures in the European Union (EU) by considering a stagnation of technology with constant emission factors from 1970 and with no further abatement measures and improvement in European emissions standards, but fuel consumption occurring at historical pace, and (2) the impact of increased fuel consumption by considering unchanged energy use with constant fuel consumption since 1970, but technological development and end-of-pipe reductions. Our scenario analysis focuses on the three most important and most regulated sectors (power generation, the manufacturing industry and road transport), which are subject of multi-pollutant EU Air Quality regulations. 

If technology and European EOP reduction measures had stagnated at 1970 levels, EU air quality in 2010 would have suffered from 129 % higher SO2, 71 % higher NOx and 69 % higher PM2.5 emissions, demonstrating the large role of technology in reducing emissions in 2010. However, if fuel consumption had remained constant starting in 1970, the EU would have benefited from current technology and emission control standards, with reductions in NOx by even 13 % more. Such further savings are not observed for SO2 and PM2.5. If the EU consumed the same amount of fuels as in 1970 but with the current technology and emission control standards, then the emissions of SO2 and PM2.5 would be 42 % respectively 10 % higher. This scenario shows the importance for air quality of abandoning heavy residual fuel oil and shifting fuel types (from, e.g., coal to gas) in the EU. 

A reduced-form TM5-FASST (Fast Screening Scenario Tool based on the global chemical Transport Model 5) is applied to calculate regional and global levels of aerosol and ozone concentrations and to assess the impact of air quality improvements on human health and crop yield loss, showing substantial impacts of export of EU technologies and standards to other world regions.

/pdf/forty-years-of-improvements-in-european-air-quality-regional-mfg7s0io9x.pdf

Forty years of improvements in European air quality: regional policy-industry interactions with global impacts

We present a model comparison study that combines multiple integrated assessment models with a reduced-form global air quality model to assess the potential co-benefits of global climate mitigation policies in relation to the World Health Organization (WHO) goals on air quality and health. We include in our assessment, a range of alternative assumptions on the implementation of current and planned pollution control policies. The resulting air pollution emission ranges significantly extend those in the Representative Concentration Pathways. Climate mitigation policies complement current efforts on air pollution control through technology and fuel transformations in the energy system. A combination of stringent policies on air pollution control and climate change mitigation results in 40% of the global population exposed to PM levels below the WHO air quality guideline; with the largest improvements estimated for India, China, and Middle East. Our results stress the importance of integrated multisector policy approaches to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/12/124013/pdf

A multi-model assessment of the co-benefits of climate mitigation for global air quality

. This paper describes, documents, and validates the TM5-FAst Scenario Screening
Tool (TM5-FASST), a global reduced-form air quality source–receptor model
that has been designed to compute ambient pollutant concentrations as well as
a broad range of pollutant-related impacts on human health, agricultural crop
production, and short-lived pollutant climate metrics, taking as input annual
pollutant emission data aggregated at the national or regional level. The
TM5-FASST tool, providing a trade-off between accuracy and applicability, is
based on linearized emission-concentration sensitivities derived with the
full chemistry-transport model TM5. The tool has been extensively applied in
various recent critical studies. Although informal and fragmented validation
has already been performed in various publications, this paper provides a
comprehensive documentation of all components of the model and a validation
against the full TM5 model. We find that the simplifications introduced in
order to generate immediate results from emission scenarios do not compromise
the validity of the output and as such TM5-FASST is proven to be a useful
tool in science-policy analysis. Furthermore, it constitutes a suitable
architecture for implementing the ensemble of source–receptor relations
obtained in the frame of the HTAP modelling exercises, thus creating a link
between the scientific community and policy-oriented users.

/pdf/tm5-fasst-a-global-atmospheric-source-receptor-model-for-2te7uku7z6.pdf

Joana Leitao

Papers

A multi-model assessment of the co-benefits of climate mitigation for global air quality

TM5-FASST: a global atmospheric source–receptor model for rapid impact analysis of emission changes on air quality and short-lived climate pollutants

A multi-metric global source-receptor model for integrated impact assessment of climate and air quality policy scenarios