Emission pathways to achieve 2.0°C and 1.5°C climate targets

Abstract

AbstractWe investigated the feasibilities of 2.0°C and 1.5°C climate targets by considering the abatement potentials of a full suite of greenhouse gases, pollutants, and aerosols. We revised the inter‐temporal dynamic optimization model DICE‐2013R by introducing three features as follows. First, we applied a new marginal abatement cost curve derived under moderate assumptions regarding future socioeconomic development—the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways 2 (SSP2) scenario. Second, we addressed emission abatement for not only industrial CO2 but also land‐use CO2, CH4, N2O, halogenated gases, CO, volatile organic compounds, SOx, NOx, black carbon and organic carbon. Third, we improved the treatment of the non‐CO2 components in the climate module based on MAGICC 6.0. We obtained the following findings: (1) It is important to address the individual emissions in an analysis of low stabilization scenarios because abating land‐use CO2, non‐CO2 and aerosol emissions also contributes to maintaining a low level of radiative forcing and substantially affects the climate costs. (2) The 2.0°C target can be efficiently reached under the assumptions of the SSP2 scenario. (3) The 1.5°C target can be met with early deep cuts under the assumption of a temperature overshoot, and it will triple the carbon price and double the mitigation cost compared with the 2.0°C case.