Least-cost and 2 °C-compliant mitigation pathways robust to physical uncertainty, economic paradigms, and intergenerational cost distribution

Abstract

Each run of an integrated assessment models produces a single mitigation pathway consistent with stated objectives (e.g. maximum temperature) and optimizing some objective function (e.g. minimizing total discounted costs of mitigation). Even though models can be run thousands of times, it is unclear how built-in assumptions constrain the final set of pathways. Here we aim at broadly exploring the space of possible mitigation scenarios for a given mitigation target, and at characterizing the sets of pathways that are (near-)optimal, taking uncertainties into account. We produce an extensive set of CO2 emission pathways that stay below 2 °C of warming using a reduced-form climate-carbon model with a 1000 different physical states. We then identify 18 sets of quasi ‘least-cost’ mitigation pathways, under six assumptions about cost functions and three different cost minimization functions embarking different visions of intergenerational cost distribution. A first key outcome is that the absence or presence of inertia in the cost function plays a pivotal role in the resulting set of least-cost pathways. Second, despite inherent structural differences, we find common pathways across the 18 combinations in 96% of the physical states studied. Interpreting these common pathways as robust economically and in terms of intergenerational distribution, we shed light on some of their characteristics, even though these robust pathways differ for each physical state.