Topic
Carbon lock-in
About: Carbon lock-in is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 78 publications have been published within this topic receiving 5837 citations.
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that industrial economies have been locked into fossil fuel-based energy systems through a process of technological and institutional co-evolution driven by path-dependent increasing returns to scale.
2,424 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors estimated the commitment to future emissions and warming represented by existing carbon dioxide-emitting devices and concluded that sources of the most threatening emissions have yet to be built.
Abstract: Slowing climate change requires overcoming inertia in political, technological, and geophysical systems. Of these, only geophysical warming commitment has been quantified. We estimated the commitment to future emissions and warming represented by existing carbon dioxide–emitting devices. We calculated cumulative future emissions of 496 (282 to 701 in lower- and upper-bounding scenarios) gigatonnes of CO 2 from combustion of fossil fuels by existing infrastructure between 2010 and 2060, forcing mean warming of 1.3°C (1.1° to 1.4°C) above the pre-industrial era and atmospheric concentrations of CO 2 less than 430 parts per million. Because these conditions would likely avoid many key impacts of climate change, we conclude that sources of the most threatening emissions have yet to be built. However, CO 2 -emitting infrastructure will expand unless extraordinary efforts are undertaken to develop alternatives.
1,033 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the climate policy implications of the arguments made in "Understanding carbon lock-in" (Unruh, 2000), which posited that industrial countries have become locked-into fossil fuel-based energy systems through path dependent processes driven by increasing returns to scale.
885 citations
TL;DR: A systematic review of carbon lock-in can be found in this article, where the authors characterize the types and causes of carbon-lock-in, or quantitatively assess and evaluate its policy implications.
Abstract: Existing technologies, institutions, and behavioral norms together act to constrain the rate and magnitude of carbon emissions reductions in the coming decades. The inertia of carbon emissions due to such mutually reinforcing physical, economic, and social constraints is referred to as carbon lock-in. Carbon lock-in is a special case of path dependency, which is common in the evolution of complex systems. However, carbon lock-in is particularly prone to entrenchment given the large capital costs, long infrastructure lifetimes, and interrelationships between the socioeconomic and technical systems involved. Further, the urgency of efforts to avoid dangerous climate change exacerbates the liability of even small lock-in risks. Although carbon lock-in has been recognized for years, efforts to characterize the types and causes of carbon lock-in, or to quantitatively assess and evaluate its policy implications, have been limited and scattered across a number of different disciplines. This systematic review of ...
529 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors extended the arguments surrounding carbon lock-in elaborated in Unruh (Energy Policy 28 (2000) 817; 30 (2002) 317) to countries currently undergoing industrialization.
301 citations