Co-Benefits of CO2 Mitigation for NOX Emission Reduction: A Research Based on the DICE Model

Xi Xie,Wenjia Cai,Yuwei Weng

doi:10.3390/su10041109

Xi Xie, Wenjia Cai + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su10041109

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Journal: Sustainability	Publication Date: Apr 8, 2018
Citations: 8	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Beijing Normal University, Tsinghua University

Abstract

Actions to reduce carbon emissions often entail co-benefits for environmental protection, like air pollutants reduction. Previous studies made contributions to estimate these co-benefits, but few considered the feedbacks from the socioeconomic system and the natural system. This paper extends the Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy (DICE) model, a classical Integrated Assessment model (IAM), into the Dynamic Integrated model of Climate, Air pollution and the Economy (DICAE) model. Through the hard link between a new air pollution module and the other modules in the original DICE, this paper quantifies the co-benefits of mitigating CO2 emissions for NOX emission reduction, and compares the predicted climate change, economic output and social utility under seven mixed policy scenarios. In addition, uncertainty analysis based on Monte Carlo simulation is carried out to verify the robustness of the DICAE model. The results indicate that the NOX emissions co-emitted with CO2 emissions would be over 0.6 Gt/year in a no-policy scenario. In policy scenarios, mitigating CO2 emissions can simultaneously reduce at least 15% of the NOX emissions, and the more severe the climate mitigation target is, the more obvious co-benefits for NOX emission reduction. Although these co-benefits can offset some mitigation costs, it will not be cost-effective when NOX emission reduction is achieved completely depending on ambitious carbon mitigation, so the end-of-pipe technology for NOX emission is also indispensable. For policymakers, they should recognize the co-benefits of climate policies, actively taking mitigation actions. Moreover, they are encouraged to combine CO2 mitigation with NOX emission reduction and coordinate their policy intensities to make wise use of the co-benefits.

Highlights

The world today faces the dual challenge of global warming and air pollution, and the two issues are not independent
We unify NOX emissions into the no policy scenario (NP) and divide CO2 emissions into three scenarios of different policy intensity (REF, MIT550 and MIT450), so that we can discuss the co-benefits under three combined scenarios (REF-NP, MIT550-NP and MIT450-NP)
Integrated Assessment Models (IAM) that do not consider co-benefits would inevitably underestimate the real benefits of climate mitigation actions and may hamper policy makers from selecting the optimal mitigation pathways

Summary

Introduction

The world today faces the dual challenge of global warming and air pollution, and the two issues are not independent. The commonly used modeling tools can be divided into two categories: the top-down model (TD model) and bottom-up model (BU model) They have differences in characterizing the avoided cost of air pollutant reduction due to the co-benefits from mitigation actions. TD models often reflect the co-benefits with the avoidance of total economic output loss or total social utility loss [5], while BU models represent the avoided cost of certain mitigation technologies [6] As both kinds of models have inevitable limitations, some researchers began to use hybrid models in recent years, which combine the TD model with the BU model and capture both macroeconomic changes and technology details [7,8]. Even in developed countries such as the United States, there are studies which have found that co-benefits will significantly offset the net cost of greenhouse gas mitigation [11]

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