Suchergebnisse

Shipping emissions in ports are substantial, accounting for 18 million tonnes of CO2 emissions, 0.4 million tonnes of NOx, 0.2 million of SOx and 0.03 million tonnes of PM10 in 2011. Around 85% of emissions come from containerships and tankers. Containerships have short port stays, but high emissions during these stays. Most of CO2 emissions in ports from shipping are in Asia and Europe (58%), but this share is low compared to their share of port calls (70%). European ports have much less emissions of SOx (5%) and PM (7%) than their share of port calls (22%), which can be explained by the EU regulation to use low sulphur fuels at berth. The ports with the largest absolute emission levels due to shipping are Singapore, Hong Kong (China), Tianjin (China) and Port Klang (Malaysia). The distribution of shipping emissions in ports is skewed: the ten ports with largest emissions represent 19% of total CO2 emissions in ports and 22% of SOx emissions. The port with the lowest relative CO2 emissions (emissions per ship call) is Kitakyushu (Japan); the port of Kyllini (Greece) has the lowest SOx emissions. Other ports with low relative emissions come from Japan, Greece, UK, US and Sweden. Shipping emissions have considerable external costs in ports: almost EUR 12 billion per year in the 50 largest ports in the OECD for NOx, SOx and PM emissions. Approximately 230 million people are directly exposed to the emissions in the top 100 world ports in terms of shipping emissions. Most shipping emissions in ports (CH4, CO, CO2 and NOx) will grow fourfold up to 2050. This would bring CO2-emissions from ships in ports to approximately 70 million tonnes in 2050 and NOx-emissions up to 1.3 million tonnes. Asia and Africa will see the sharpest increases in emissions, due to strong port traffic growth and limited mitigation measures. In order to reduce these projected emissions, strong policy responses will be needed. This could take the form of global regulation such as more stringent rules on sulphur content of ship fuel, or more emission control areas than the four that are currently in place. In addition, shipping could be included in global emissions trading schemes and climate finance schemes. A lot could also be gained by policy initiatives of ports themselves. Various ports have developed infrastructure, regulation and incentives that mitigate shipping emissions in ports. [.]

UK demand for energy-intensive materials is growing, driving increased emissions in the UK and abroad. UK FIRES is a research programme sponsored by the UK Government, aiming to support a renaissance of UK Industry, compatible with our legal commitment to zero emissions by 2050 by placing Resource Efficiency at the heart of the UK's Future Industrial Strategy. Industry is the most challenging sector for climate mitigation - it's energy efficient and there are no substitutes available at scale for the energy-intensive bulk materials - steel, cement, plastic, paper and aluminium. UK FIRES is therefore working towards an industrial renaissance in the UK, with high-value climate-safe UK businesses delivering goods and services compatible with the UK's legal commitment to zero emissions and with much less new material production. ; EPSRC (EP/S019111/1)

Low emission prices have stirred up discussion about political measures that aim to increase emission prices. District heating system operators, often municipal utilities, use a variety of heat generation technologies that are affected by the emission trading system. We examine whether district heating system owners have an incentive to support measures that increase emission prices in the short term. Therefore, we (i) develop a simplified analytical framework to analyse optimal decisions of a district heating operator, and (ii) investigate the market-wide effects of increasing emission prices, in particular the pass-through of emission prices to power prices. Using the clustered unit commitment model MEDEA of the common Austrian and German power system, we estimate a pass-through from emission prices to power prices between 1.1 and 0.75, depending on the absolute emission price level. Under reasonable assumptions regarding heat generation technologies, the pass-through from higher emission prices to power prices is about twice as high as required to make low-emission district heating system owners better off.

Linking the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) to the Chinese national ETS promises considerable economic and political benefits. However, different policy choices regarding cap setting between the systems are likely to impede a potential linking. A striking distinction is that the EU ETS relies upon an absolute cap, while the Chinese national ETS appears to apply an 'intensity-based cap' during the early stages. The current linking literature focuses on mapping legal barriers in general and has not yet focused on EU and China, let alone the intricacies of policy design. This article seeks to fill this gap by concentrating on (static and dynamic) efficiency and environmental effectiveness implications of linking and cap design. From the analysis of the cap we derive policy implications for a hypothetical ETS linking between the EU and China. In response, comprehensive and predictable regulation is needed to ensure the attainment of ETS targets and thus facilitate better regulation.

A policy change in the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) provides us with a unique opportunity to measure the impact of carbon pricing on aviation, the most climate-intensive mode of transport. We implement a difference-in-differences strategy on a sample based on all flights within Europe from 2010 to 2016 to examine the causal impact of the EU ETS on emissions and supply. We find that the EU ETS reduced emissions by 4.7% in the regulated routes relative to the counterfactual. When we restrict the sample to short-haul flights, routes on which competition from other means of transport may exist (less than 1,000 km), the reduction in emissions is 10.7%. Finally, the reduction in emissions is also high for low-cost airlines (−11%) but it is not statistically significant for network airlines. In sum, the EU ETS has helped to mitigate emission growth by 3 Mt CO2 per year during the period analyzed, but not to reduce absolute emissions in the sector, as needed.

The purpose of this study is to investigate absolute environmental sustainability in the built environment, by assessing whether contemporary environmentally optimized approaches to building design, with their associated consumption of resources and subsequent emissions, can be considered within the carrying capacity of Earth Systems. A life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted for six dwellings to quantify their environmental footprints. Two methods for absolute environmental sustainability assessment were applied to the resulting life cycle inventories; one where the normalisation step applied normalisation factors reflecting carrying capacities of the Earth System and one where characterisation of elementary flows applied characterisation factors based on the Planetary Boundaries. For the assessment of environmental impact of each house in an absolute perspective, different sharing principles were applied to determine the share of the safe operating space that a single-family stand-alone dwelling should be assigned. The study finds that the approaches tested in two of the dwellings, namely reducing the energy consumption and recycling and reusing materials have the greatest potential to reach an absolute sustainable level of impact. The conclusions drawn are found to be dependent of the applied sharing principle used to assign a share of the safe operating space. Nevertheless, as the results indicate that in our current society absolute sustainability for buildings still appear to be out of reach, even with the best attempts at sustainable building design. It is clear that to achieve e.g. lower energy consumption and a cleaner energy mix, action is needed by consumers and politicians alike.

Brazil is the first developing country to provide an absolute emissions cut as its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), seeking to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 37% below 2005 levels by 2025 and 43% by 2030. The NDC is also noteworthy in focussing on emissions from deforestation control and land use change. Agricultural intensification is a key component of the offer, potentially allowing the country to make credible mitigation commitments that are aligned with a national development strategy of halting deforestation in the Amazon, and increasing livestock production. This apparent contradiction is potentially resolved by understanding the technical, economic and policy feasibility of intensification by pasture restoration. We use bio-economic modelling to demonstrate the extent of cost-effective mitigation that could be delivered by this measure, and to show a result that underpins the target of zero deforestation in Brazil. The analysis was requested by the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture prior to the NDC announcement at COP21 by the Government of Brazil. The study provided the basis of the livestock sector contribution to the NDC and highlights the on-going role of effective deforestation control policies. It also contributes to the global debate on land sparing by sustainable agricultural intensification.

The purpose of this study is to investigate absolute environmental sustainability in the built environment, by assessing whether contemporary environmentally optimized approaches to building design, with their associated consumption of resources and subsequent emissions, can be considered within the carrying capacity of Earth Systems. A life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted for six dwellings to quantify their environmental footprints. Two methods for absolute environmental sustainability assessment were applied to the resulting life cycle inventories; one where the normalisation step applied normalisation factors reflecting carrying capacities of the Earth System and one where characterisation of elementary flows applied characterisation factors based on the Planetary Boundaries. For the assessment of environmental impact of each house in an absolute perspective, different sharing principles were applied to determine the share of the safe operating space that a single-family stand-alone dwelling should be assigned. The study finds that the approaches tested in two of the dwellings, namely reducing the energy consumption and recycling and reusing materials have the greatest potential to reach an absolute sustainable level of impact. The conclusions drawn are found to be dependent of the applied sharing principle used to assign a share of the safe operating space. Nevertheless, as the results indicate that in our current society absolute sustainability for buildings still appear to be out of reach, even with the best attempts at sustainable building design. It is clear that to achieve e.g. lower energy consumption and a cleaner energy mix, action is needed by consumers and politicians alike.

AbstractLinking the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) to the Chinese national ETS promises considerable economic and political benefits. However, different policy choices regarding cap setting between the systems are likely to impede a potential linking. A striking distinction is that the EU ETS relies upon an absolute cap, while the Chinese national ETS appears to apply an 'intensity-based cap' during the early stages. The current linking literature focuses on mapping legal barriers in general and has not yet focused on EU and China, let alone the intricacies of policy design. This article seeks to fill this gap by concentrating on (static and dynamic) efficiency and environmental effectiveness implications of linking and cap design. From the analysis of the cap we derive policy implications for a hypothetical ETS linking between the EU and China. In response, comprehensive and predictable regulation is needed to ensure the attainment of ETS targets and thus facilitate better regulation.

AbstractThe sensitivity of air quality model responses to modifications in input data (e.g. emissions, meteorology and boundary conditions) or model configurations is recognized as an important issue for air quality modelling applications in support of air quality plans. In the framework of FAIRMODE (Forum of Air Quality Modelling in Europe, https://fairmode.jrc.ec.europa.eu/) a dedicated air quality modelling exercise has been designed to address this issue. The main goal was to evaluate the magnitude and variability of air quality model responses when studying emission scenarios/projections by assessing the changes of model output in response to emission changes. This work is based on several air quality models that are used to support model users and developers, and, consequently, policy makers. We present the FAIRMODE exercise and the participating models, and provide an analysis of the variability of O3 and PM concentrations due to emission reduction scenarios. The key novel feature, in comparison with other exercises, is that emission reduction strategies in the present work are applied and evaluated at urban scale over a large number of cities using new indicators such as the absolute potential, the relative potential and the absolute potency. The results show that there is a larger variability of concentration changes between models, when the emission reduction scenarios are applied, than for their respective baseline absolute concentrations. For ozone, the variability between models of absolute baseline concentrations is below 10%, while the variability of concentration changes (when emissions are similarly perturbed) exceeds, in some instances 100% or higher during episodes. Combined emission reductions are usually more efficient than the sum of single precursor emission reductions both for O3 and PM. In particular for ozone, model responses, in terms of linearity and additivity, show a clear impact of non-linear chemistry processes. This analysis gives an insight into the impact of model' sensitivity to emission reductions that may be considered when designing air quality plans and paves the way of more in-depth analysis to disentangle the role of emissions from model formulation for present and future air quality assessments.

After Future climate policy regimes may be based on the Kyoto-Protocol or on other policy instruments such as carbon-taxes. Any effective regime based on the Protocol requires the determination of the concrete contributions by each Party. This involves namely the time of contribution and the quantification of the contribution itself. By now many proposals exist for the two issues, as for example thresholds like GDP per capita for the question of timing or emissions per capita for an allocation of emission rights. Based on the two justice principle responsibility and equity of rights that form the basis for the so-called Brazilian Proposal and Contraction & Convergence respectively, a new approach is developed: Future emission rights are allocated on the basis of equal emissions per capita over time. By so doing not only are emissions per capita (EPC) taken into account during the allocation but also their evolution over time. I show that nations with high EPC may even be allocated negative quantities of emissions right due to their historical ?burden?. On the other hand, Parties with low EPC would be allocated large amounts of ?fair air? which can increase the incentive to accept absolute emission targets. Even though this approach may currently lack political acceptability, it offers another analytical reference point for the political bargaining process on future allocations.