The ongoing global financial crisis has been preceded by a steady rise in global current account imbalances. Recently, in the course of the global recession, global imbalances have declined, albeit without having disappeared completely. As the outlook for global growth gets brighter, it is important to be aware of the possibility of again arising global imbalances in the future, since many of the structural reasons for the foregoing build up of imbalances remain largely in place. This is particularly important against the background of a close relationship between the global imbalances and the financial crisis. Important steps that would help to avoid the reoccurrence of unsustainable global imbalances and contribute to stabilize the global economy in the medium run are a tighter regulation of financial markets, the strengthening of the role of the IMF in monitoring global capital markets, and the development of social security systems and financial markets in emerging economies.
In one of the central scenarios for meeting an European Union-wide net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions target by 2050, the emissions cap in the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) becomes net negative. Despite this ambition, no mechanism allows for the inclusion of CO2 removal credits (CRCs) in the EU ETS to date. Amending the EU ETS legislation is required to create enabling conditions for a net negative cap. Here, we conceptually discuss various economic, legal, and political challenges surrounding the integration of CRCs into the EU ETS. To analyze cap-and-trade systems encompassing negative emissions, we introduce the effective (elastic) cap resulting from the integration of CRCs in addition to the regulatory (inelastic) cap, the latter now being binding for the net emissions only. Given current cost estimates for BECCS and DACCS, minimum quantities for the use of removals, as opposed to ceilings as currently discussed, would be required to promote the near-term integration of such technologies. Instead of direct interaction between the companies involved in emissions trading and the providers of CRCs, the regulatory authority could also transitionally act as an intermediary by buying CRCs and supplying them in turn conditional upon observed allowances prices, for example, by supporting a (soft) price collar. Contrary to a price collar without dedicated support from CRCs, in this case (net) compliance with the overall cap is maintained. EU legislation already provides safeguards for physical carbon leakage concerning CCS, making Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) and Direct Air Capture and Storage prioritized for inclusion in the EU ETS. Furthermore, a special opportunity might apply for the inclusion of BECCS installations. Repealing the provision that installations exclusively using biomass are not covered by the ETS Directive, combined with freely allocated allowances to these installations, would allow operators of biomass installations to sell allowances made available through the use of BECCS. Achieving GHG neutrality in the EU by 2050 requires designing suitable incentive systems for CO2 removal, which includes the option to open up EU emissions trading to CRCs.
Under the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), operators must surrender allowances corresponding to the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) from their installations. The supply of allowances in the EU ETS decreases linearly and, all else equal, is expected to end around 2057. An earlier cut-off date is likely to follow from the European Council's recent decision that the EU should reach net-zero GHG emissions by 2050. Scenarios published by the European Commission even anticipate a net-negative cap in the EU ETS from 2045 onwards, generated through carbon dioxide (CO2) removals. Upholding emissions trading, in the long run, therefore entails significant use of credits resulting from atmospheric CO2 removal activities. However, in its current form, the ETS Directive does not contain any legal basis for generating CO2 removal credits. Integrating CO2 removal into the EU ETS would, thus, require fundamental amendments of the ETS Directive, waiving the currently mandatory association binding emitting activities to the adoption of emission abatement technologies. The next policy window for such amendments will open in 2021, following the decision on a more ambitious EU 2030 emission reduction target. This conceptual paper explores various design options for integrating negative emissions technologies (NETs) into the EU ETS. We discuss their potential implications for emissions trading at large and address the specificity of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS); repealing the provision that installations exclusively using biomass are not covered by the ETS Directive, BE(CCS) installations could in principle fall within the scope of the ETS Directive. Theoretically, it would be possible to consider free allocation of biogenic credits to BE(CCS) installations. Bioenergy operators could avoid having to surrender these biogenic allowances through the use of CCS and instead sell them on the EU ETS market, having implicitly received credits for the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere.
Highlights • European Union Blue Growth is assessed by set of 18 indicators for 15 EU coastal states. • The results put into question that the EU has achieved comprehensive blue growth. • Unsustainable development is in particular driven by increasing fishing mortality. Abstract The Sustainable Development Goal for the oceans and coasts (SDG 14) as part of the 2030 Agenda can be considered as an important step towards achieving comprehensive blue growth. Here, we selected a set of 18 indicators to measure progress against SDG 14 for 15 EU coastal countries in the Baltic and the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean since 2012. In our assessment we distinguish between a concept of weak and strong sustainability, assuming high and low substitution possibilities, respectively. Our results indicate that there are countries which managed to achieve sustainable development under both concepts of sustainability (most notably Estonia, achieving the strongest improvement), but that there are also countries which failed to achieve sustainable development under both concepts (most notably Ireland and Belgium, experiencing the strongest decline). Unsustainable development is in particular driven by increasing fishing mortality and reduced willingness to set total allowable catch in accordance with scientific advice.
Despite large uncertainties in the fertilization efficiency, natural iron fertilization studies and some of the purposeful iron enrichment studies have demonstrated that Southern Ocean iron fertilization can lead to a significant export of carbon from the sea surface to the ocean interior. From an economic perspective the potential of OIF is far from negligible in relation to other abatement options. Comparing the range of cost estimates to the range of estimates for forestation projects they are in the same order of magnitude, but OIF could provide more carbon credits even if high discount rates are used to account for potential leakage and non-permanence. However, the uncertainty about undesired adverse effects of purposeful iron fertilization on marine ecosystems and biogeochemistry has led to attempts to ban commercial and, to some extent, scientific experiments aimed at a better understanding of the processes involved, effectively precluding further consideration of this mitigation option. As regards the perspective of public international law, the pertinent agreements dealing with the protection of the marine environment indicate that OIF is to be considered as lawful if and to the extent to which it represents legitimate scientific research. In this respect, the precautionary principle can be used to balance the risks arising out of scientific OIF activities for the marine environment with the potential advantages relevant to the objectives of the climate change regime. As scientific OIF experiments involve only comparatively small negative impacts within a limited marine area, further scientific research must be permitted to explore the carbon sequestration potential of OIF in order to either reject this concept or integrate it into the flexible mechanisms contained in the Kyoto Protocol.
The Sustainable Development Goal for the oceans and coasts (SDG 14) as part of the 2030 Agenda can be considered as an important step towards achieving more comprehensive blue growth. Here, we selected a set of 18 indicators to measure progress against SDG 14 for EU coastal states in the Baltic and the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean since 2012. In our assessment we distinguish between a concept of weak and strong sustainability, assuming high and low substitution possibilities, respectively. Overall, we show that the majority of countries in our assessment fail to achieve comprehensive blue growth. Sweden, Spain, Ireland, and in particular Portugal experienced a considerable reduction in scores since 2012. The only exemption is Estonia which managed to improve its scores over time under both concepts of sustainability. The unsustainable development at the EU level is mainly driven by deteriorations in indicators related to fisheries.
[Einleitung. Radiation Management als klimapolitische Option?] Naturwissenschaftliche Messungen bestätigen mittlerweile eindeutig eine weltweite Veränderung des Klimas, als dessen wesentliche Ursache die anthropogene Freisetzung von Kohlendioxid (CO2) gilt. Anstrengungen, diese CO2-Emissionen global zu kontrollieren, sind bislang gescheitert, und die auf zukünftigen Emissionspfaden basierenden Schätzungen lassen eine weitere deutliche Zunahme der globalen Temperatur und eine Veränderung des Klimas erwarten. Entsprechend beschränkt sich die klimapolitische Diskussion schon lange nicht mehr allein auf die Vermeidung bzw. Verringerung des Klimawandels (mitigation), sondern hat auch die Anpassung an den Klimawandel (adaptation) in den Blick genommen. Aufgrund der großen Unsicherheiten über die tatsächliche Temperaturreaktion und über nichtlineare Reaktionen innerhalb des komplexen Klimasystems wird seit ein paar Jahren aber auch über direkte technologische Eingriffe in das Klima diskutiert, die es teilweise erlauben, relativ schnell auf den Klimawandel zu reagieren. Grundsätzlich werden diese Technologien unter dem Sammelbegriff Climate Engineering (CE) zusammengefasst. Dabei soll der Teilbegriff Engineering aber nicht die ingenieurstechnische Kontrolle des Klimas suggerieren sondern verdeutlichen, dass diese Eingriffe gezielt vorgenommen werden, um das Klima zu beeinflussen bzw. den Klimawandel zu begrenzen. Dabei umfasst der Sammelbegriff Climate Engineering sowohl Technologien zur ursächlichen Rückführung des Strahlungsantriebs, welche die Konzentration des atmosphärischen CO2 (und ggf. anderer Treibhausgase) senken, als auch Technologien zur symptomatischen Kompensation des Strahlungsantriebs, welche die Strahlungsbilanz direkt beeinflussen. Erstere werden als Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) bezeichnet und die zweite Technologiegruppe als Radiation Management (RM). [.]
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that includes a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) with 169 specific targets could be a step forward in achieving efficient governance and policies for global sustainable development. An essential element will be the global indicator framework for monitoring and assessing progress over and against both the overall goals and the specific targets and to guide policy towards sustainable solutions. In the debate over the current indicator framework, little attention is devoted to conceptual issues. Here, we argue that the inclusion of composite indicators, which can be used to aggregate individual indicators, as complements to the single indicators could support the overall assessment process without necessitating any significant changes to the currently proposed indicator base. While the individual indicators remain the backbone of the indicator framework, serving the purpose for detailed assessment of specific policy measures, the composite indicators allow for an explicit assessment of trade-offs between policies. Our illustrative investigation of the sustainable oceanic development of EU coastal states highlights how much a comprehensive assessment can benefit from the additional inclusion of composite indicators.
Eine rasche Reduktion der Treibhausgasemissionen ist essentiell, wenn ambitionierter Klimaschutz erreicht werden soll. Bei der Abschätzung der dafür notwendigen Anstrengungen und der Bewertung des zukünftigen Beitrags von Technologien, die es erlauben, der Atmosphäre CO2 zu entziehen (negative Emissionstechnologien, NETs), gehen die Meinungen und die Interpretationen des aktuellen Sonderberichts des Weltklimarats stark auseinander. Interpretationen, die sich auf eher große verbleibende CO2-Budgets stützen und damit gleichzeitig die Rolle von NETs für die Erreichung des Temperaturziels herunterspielen, führen nicht zu verantwortungsvollen oder realistischen Einschätzungen der zukünftigen (Forschungs-)Herausforderung: Wir müssen bereits jetzt die Wirksamkeit verschiedenen NETs, ihre Grenzen und ihre Wechselwirkungen verstehen, wenn die international angestrebten CO2-Konzentrationspfade realistisch sein sollen. Eine verfrühte Festlegung auf bestimmte NETs sollte vermieden werden. Sobald die Technologien, die sich als effizient erweisen, ausgereift sind, sollte der Umfang ihres Einsatzes durch die Einbeziehung in CO2-Emissionshandelssysteme oder CO2-Emissionssteuerregime bestimmt werden.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development includes a set of 17 sustainable development goals (SDG) with 169 specific targets. As such, it could be a step forward in achieving efficient governance and policies for global sustainable development. However, the current indicator framework with its broad set of individual indicators prevents straightforward assessment of synergies and trade-offs between the various indicators, targets, and goals, thus, heightening the significance of policy guidance in achieving sustainable development. With our detailed analysis of SDG 14 (Ocean) for European Union (EU) coastal states, we demonstrate how the (complementary) inclusion of composite indicators that aggregate the individual indicators by applying a generalized mean can provide important additional information and facilitate the assessment of sustainable development in general and in the SDG context in particular. Embedded in the context of social choice theory, the generalized mean varies the specification of substitution elasticity and thus allows: (a) for a straightforward distinction between a concept of weak and strong sustainability and (b) for straightforward sensitivity analysis. We show that while in general the EU coastal states have a fairly balanced record at the SDG 14 level, certain countries like Slovenia and Portugal with a fairly balanced and a fairly unbalanced showing, respectively, rank very differently in terms of the two concepts of strong sustainability.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development includes a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) with 169 specific targets. As such, it could be a step forward in achieving efficient governance and policies for global sustainable development. However, the current indicator framework with its broad set of individual indicators prevents straightforward assessment of synergies and trade-offs between the various indicators, targets, and goals thus heightening the significance of policy guidance in achieving sustainable development. With our detailed analysis of SDG 14 (Ocean) for European Union coastal states, we demonstrate how the (complementary) inclusion of composite indicators that aggregate the individual indicators by applying a generalized mean can provide important additional information and facilitate the assessment of sustainable development in general and in the SDG context in particular. Embedded in the context of social choice theory, the generalized mean varies the specification of substitution elasticity and thus allows a) for a straightforward distinction between a concept of weak and strong sustainability and b) for straightforward sensitivity analysis. We show that while in general the EU coastal states have a fairly balanced record at the SDG 14 level, certain countries like Slovenia and Portugal with a fairly balanced and a fairly unbalanced showing, respectively, rank very differently in terms of the two concepts of strong sustainability.
