Cited by 279Climate Change Policy and EconomicsSustainability and Climate Change GovernanceInternational Environmental Law and Policies

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 25 of the 25 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; none of the 7 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.

Implications of various effort-sharing approaches for national carbon budgets and emission pathways

Open access
van den Berg, Nicole J., van Soest, Heleen L., Hof, Andries F., den Elzen, Michel G. J., van Vuuren, Detlef P., Chen, Wenying, Drouet, Laurent, Emmerling, Johannes, Fujimori, Shinichiro, Höhne, Niklas, Kõberle, Alexandre C., McCollum, David, Schaeffer, Roberto, Shekhar, Swapnil, Vishwanathan, Saritha Sudharmma, Vrontisi, Zoi, Blok, Kornelis·2020·Climatic Change

Abstract

The bottom-up approach of the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in the Paris Agreement has led countries to self-determine their greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction targets. The planned ‘ratcheting-up’ process, which aims to ensure that the NDCs comply with the overall goal of limiting global average temperature increase to well below 2 °C or even 1.5 °C, will most likely include some evaluation of ‘fairness’ of these reduction targets. In the literature, fairness has been discussed around equity principles, for which many different effort-sharing approaches have been proposed. In this research, we analysed how country-level emission targets and carbon budgets can be derived based on such criteria. We apply novel methods directly based on the global carbon budget, and, for comparison, more commonly used methods using GHG mitigation pathways. For both, we studied the following approaches: equal cumulative per capita emissions, contraction and convergence, grandfathering, greenhouse development rights and ability to pay. As the results critically depend on parameter settings, we used the wide authorship from a range of countries included in this paper to determine default settings and sensitivity analyses. Results show that effort-sharing approaches that (i) calculate required reduction targets in carbon budgets (relative to baseline budgets) and/or (ii) take into account historical emissions when determining carbon budgets can lead to (large) negative remaining carbon budgets for developed countries. This is the case for the equal cumulative per capita approach and especially the greenhouse development rights approach. Furthermore, for developed countries, all effort-sharing approaches except grandfathering lead to more stringent budgets than cost-optimal budgets, indicating that cost-optimal approaches do not lead to outcomes that can be regarded as fair according to most effort-sharing approaches.

Overview

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TL;DR

This paper compares effort-sharing approaches for allocating national carbon budgets and GHG emission pathways consistent with 1.5 °C and 2 °C goals. It finds that approaches accounting for historical emissions or allocating reductions relative to baseline budgets can produce negative remaining carbon budgets for developed countries, and that all approaches except grandfathering give developed countries more stringent budgets than cost-optimal allocation.

Key findings

  • The greenhouse development rights (GDR*) approach is most extreme: with default settings (1850 start year, equal capability/responsibility weighting), it gives the largest budgets to China and India and the smallest to the USA, EU and Japan, even leading to negative budgets for these developed countries; China and India together are allocated more than 80% of the global budget.
  • The equal cumulative per capita emissions (ECPC*) approach is next most extreme: it allocates negative budgets to the USA and Russia and roughly zero budgets to Japan and the EU, while India receives relatively large but smaller budgets than under GDR*.
  • For developed countries, all effort-sharing approaches except grandfathering lead to more stringent carbon budgets than cost-optimal allocation, indicating that cost-optimal outcomes are not regarded as fair under most effort-sharing approaches.
  • Sensitivity is large: under GDR*, the India–USA carbon budget difference is 820 GtCO₂ under a 1000 GtCO₂ global budget and 925 GtCO₂ under a 400 GtCO₂ global budget; changing the GDR* start year from 1850 to 1990 gives the EU and USA about 90–100 GtCO₂ more, Russia 33 GtCO₂ more, China 95 GtCO₂ less and India 35 GtCO₂ less.

Methods

  • The paper applies six approaches—per capita convergence (PCC), equal cumulative per capita emissions (ECPC), ability to pay (AP), greenhouse development rights (GDR), grandfathering (GF), and cost-optimal (CO)—plus immediate per capita convergence (IEPC*) in the described framework.
  • It introduces novel methods to derive national carbon budgets directly from a global carbon budget (marked with asterisks) and compares these with more conventional GHG emission pathway calculations; global budgets are about 1000 GtCO₂ for 2 °C with >66% likelihood and about 400 GtCO₂ for 1.5 °C with >66% likelihood over 2011–2100.
  • Data come from the CD-LINKS dataset, PRIMAP historical GHG emissions until 2014 harmonised with IMAGE, IMAGE LULUCF CO₂ data, and Responsibility-Capacity Index values from Kemp-Benedict et al. (2017); default parameter settings were chosen via a questionnaire among the paper’s authors, with sensitivity ranges.

Limitations

  • The paper states that calculating time-dependent abatement costs within time-independent carbon budgets is beyond scope, and that outcomes should not be regarded as top-down calculated targets or budgets; some outcomes are impossible to achieve by domestic emission reductions alone.
  • The paper states that RCI data are only available until 2030, so RCI values were kept constant after 2030 in the budget approach, likely overestimating budget allocations for developing countries and underestimating them for developed countries; pathway calculations corrected for this by assuming linear convergence towards AP results.
  • The paper notes that carbon budgets focus on CO₂ only while GHG emission pathways are time-dependent and include all GHG emissions including LULUCF, so budgets and pathways should not be compared on their absolute numbers; it also notes rare consensus on parameter settings, requiring sensitivity ranges.

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Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1007/s10584-019-02368-y

Cites

25 of 25 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

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  • It may state two separate claims as one. 29
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  • The authors state this as an assumption.

    The marginal abatement cost (MAC) curves used to allocate emission allowances based on mitigation potentials are appropriate.

    “The allocation highly depends on the assumed marginal abatement cost (MAC) curves.”
  • The paper relies on this without support.

    RCI values are likely to converge further after 2030.

    “As RCI values are likely to converge further after 2030, this leads to an overestimation of the budget allocations for developing countries and underestimation for developed countries.”
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Citations

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Research works printed but not linked: 2

  1. IPCC (2014) In: Core Writing Team, Pachauri RK, Meyer LA (eds) Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland
  2. Stocker TF et al. (2013) Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2013. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 1535 pp.

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Metadata

Authors
van den Berg, N. J., van Soest, H. L., Hof, A. F., den Elzen, M. G. J., van Vuuren, D. P., Chen, W., Drouet, L., Emmerling, J., Fujimori, S., Höhne, N., Kõberle, A. C., McCollum, D., Schaeffer, R., Shekhar, S., Vishwanathan, S. S., Vrontisi, Z., & Blok, K.
Affiliations
  • Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (NL)
  • Tsinghua University (CN)
  • RFF-CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment (IT)
  • National Institute for Environmental Studies (JP)
  • NewClimate Institute (DE)
  • International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (AT)
  • Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (BR)
  • Energy and Resources Institute (IN)
  • Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IN)
  • National Technical University of Athens (GR)
  • Delft University of Technology (NL)
Venue
Climatic Change
Published
2019-02-14
Volume
162
Issue
4
Pages
1805-1822
ISSN
  • 0165-0009 (ISSN-L)
  • 1573-1480
OpenAlex
W2913966977
Cited by
278
References
25
Citations by year
2026: 26 · 2025: 54 · 2024: 32 · 2023: 43 · 2022: 51 · 2021: 37 · 2020: 25 · 2019: 9
FWCI
38.07
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Climatic Change (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Socio-Environmental Systems Modeling (acceptedVersion, cc-by)
  • IIASA PURE (International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • Utrecht University Repository (Utrecht University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • VU Research Portal (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • VU Research Portal (submittedVersion)
  • Spiral (Imperial College London) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • Research Repository (Delft University of Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
Utrecht University
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Climate Change Policy and Economics
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Sustainability and Climate Change Governance
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law › International Environmental Law and Policies
Keywords
effort sharing, carbon balance, emission pathways, Nationally Determined Contributions, Paris Agreement, climate equity, contraction and convergence, grandfathering, ability to pay, historical emissions, developed countries, climate justice

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