A Flexible Global Warming Index for Use in an Integrated Approach to Climate Change Assessment |
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Authors: | Truong P Truong Claudia Kemfert |
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Institution: | 1.German Institute for Economic Research,Berlin,Germany;2.German Institute for Economic Research,Berlin,Germany;3.Humboldt University,Berlin,Germany |
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Abstract: | Global Warming Potential (GWP) is an index used to measure the cumulative radiative forcing of a tonne of greenhouse house
gas (GHG) relative to that of a ‘reference’ gas (CO2). Under the Kyoto Protocol, GWP can be used as a fixed index to govern the trade-off between different GHGs in a multi-gas approach to GHGs abatement. The use of fixed GWPs has
been criticized for not being very cost effective compared to the use of some flexible indices. To gain wider acceptance, however, a flexible index must also prove to be easy to use, and the economic gains from
its adoption must be significant. In this paper, we develop a flexible index based on the concept of marginal rather than cumulative or average global warming potentials. These marginal global warming potentials (MGWPs) can be endogenously
determined within a climate model given a particular climate objective based on radiative forcing level. The MGPWs are then
linked to the marginal abatement costs of the GHGs, which are also endogenously determined within an economic model. When
the two concepts are linked in this way, the result is a cost-effective way of achieving a particular climate change objective
with multigas abatement. We show that the savings in costs when using this flexible MGPWs can be significant, and more importantly,
they are not uniformly distributed across different regions.
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Keywords: | Global warming potential Marginal abatement cost Climate change Integrated assessment Model coupling |
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