Climate Ambition Research Articles

Paris Agreement: Ship Moves Out of the Drydock

Last year's conference of the global climate change regime took place from 2 until 15 December 2018 in Katowice, Poland. The conference had two main objectives: operationalis-ing the Paris Agreement by adopting detailed rules for its implementation, and starting the process of strengthening Parties' climate protection contributions. This article covers the negotiations on these two sets of issues and also includes a discussion of other recent climate activities by Parties and non-Party actors. Success of the negotiations in Katowice was far from assured, but in the end COP24 concluded with the adoption of the ‘Katowice Climate Package’ setting out detailed guidelines on how to implement its various elements. However, the conference fell short on the first objective, none of the major emitting countries was ready to step up its climate ambition. The most important aspect of the Katowice outcome is therefore that it has brought the wrangling about implementation procedures to a close, making way for the true task at hand: the strengthening of national and international activities to protect the climate and the implementation of the existing pledges. Arguably, a key factor that has been slowing down climate policy is the power of entrenched interests. The article therefore concludes with a reflection on how such barriers to climate action may be overcome and what role future COPs may play in this regard.

Energy Supply and Decarbonisation Beyond Brexit: Politics and Policy

Energy Supply and Decarbonisation Beyond Brexit: Politics and Policy

Networking Cities after Paris: Weighing the Ambition of Urban Climate Change Experimentation

AbstractOver the past few decades, cities have repeatedly demonstrated high levels of ambition with regard to climate action. Global environmental governance has been marked by a proliferation of policy actions taken by local governments around the world to demonstrate their potential to advance climate change mitigation and adaptation. Leading ‘by example’ and demonstrating the extent of action that it is possible to deliver, cities have aspired to raise the ambition of national and international climate governance and put action into practice via a growing number of ‘climate change experiments’ delivered on the ground. Yet accounts of the potential of cities in global environmental governance have often stopped short of a systematic valuation of the nature and impact of the networked dimension of this action. This article addresses this by assessing the nature, and challenges faced by, urban climate governance in the post‐Paris era, focusing on the ‘experimentation’ undertaken in cities and the city networks shaping this type of governance. First, we unpack the concept of ‘urban climate change experimentation’, the ways in which it is networked, and the forces driving it. In the second and third parts of the article, we discuss two main pitfalls of networked urban experimentation in its current form, focusing on issues of scaling experiments and the nature of experimentation. We call for increased attention to ‘scaling up’ experiments beyond urban levels of governance, and to transformative experimentation with governance and politics by and in cities. Finally, we consider how these pitfalls allow us to weigh the potential of urban climate ambition, and consider the pathways available for supporting urban climate change experimentation.

Realist climate ethics: Promoting climate ambition within the Classical Realist tradition

AbstractWhat is a Classical Realist analysis of climate ethics and politics? Classical Realist ethical analysis differs from ideal normative theory in that it addresses state decision-makers rather than individuals, assumes highly imperfect compliance with the demands of justice, and is concerned with feasibility and transition rather than end-states. Classical Realists urge leaders to prioritise state security over private moral concerns, to assess rival policies against their likely consequences and to seek the ‘lesser evil’ among feasible choices. But how does Realism respond when the prudent pursuit of state security risks rendering much of the planet uninhabitable? In the 1950s, the development of the hydrogen bomb created just such a dilemma as status quo politics now carried a significant risk of thermonuclear omnicide. In response, Hans Morgenthau argued that states should manage systemic risk by working in concert to safeguard expanded, collective national interests. The Classical Realist mode of thought suggests an analogous response to systemic climate risks: states’ conceptions of national interest must expand to include cooperative system-preservation alongside traditional security concerns. Classical Realist arguments might then be mobilised to overcome resistance from vested interests and to support state-directed low carbon innovation, adaptation and mitigation agreements that prioritise ambition over distributional justice.

Targeted policies can compensate most of the increased sustainability risks in 1.5 °C mitigation scenarios

Meeting the 1.5 °C goal will require a rapid scale-up of zero-carbon energy supply, fuel switching to electricity, efficiency and demand-reduction in all sectors, and the replenishment of natural carbon sinks. These transformations will have immediate impacts on various of the sustainable development goals. As goals such as affordable and clean energy and zero hunger are more immediate to great parts of global population, these impacts are central for societal acceptability of climate policies. Yet, little is known about how the achievement of other social and environmental sustainability objectives can be directly managed through emission reduction policies. In addition, the integrated assessment literature has so far emphasized a single, global (cost-minimizing) carbon price as the optimal mechanism to achieve emissions reductions. In this paper we introduce a broader suite of policies—including direct sector-level regulation, early mitigation action, and lifestyle changes—into the integrated energy-economy-land-use modeling system REMIND-MAgPIE. We examine their impact on non-climate sustainability issues when mean warming is to be kept well below 2 °C or 1.5 °C. We find that a combination of these policies can alleviate air pollution, water extraction, uranium extraction, food and energy price hikes, and dependence on negative emissions technologies, thus resulting in substantially reduced sustainability risks associated with mitigating climate change. Importantly, we find that these targeted policies can more than compensate for most sustainability risks of increasing climate ambition from 2 °C to 1.5 °C.

A political economy of niche-building: Neoliberal-developmental encounters in photovoltaic electrification in Kenya

International agreements on energy access and climate change, formulated according to neoliberal orthodoxy, will drive significant finance to developing countries for clean technology investments. But critics call for more active state intervention – a developmental approach – arguing that free markets alone will not deliver what is required. This creates the potential for confrontation between contradictory ideologies in national policymaking and implementation: neoliberalism in global agreements versus developmentalism in national policy.The Kenyan photovoltaics (PV) market has long-experienced neoliberal-developmental policy interactions, reflecting on which can illuminate how such encounters might unfold in the future. We construct a new ‘niche political economy’ theoretical framework to analyse these past interactions, constituting one of three contributions we offer. The second is empirical, showing how PV practitioners, national policymakers and global development actors have negotiated their policymaking encounters over time. Our third contribution offers reflections on the issues explored, discussing what this might mean for future neoliberal-developmental encounters.We find that action on the ground will emerge from messy negotiated interactions between competing ideologies rather than be determined by powerful neoliberal actors. As such, realising global energy and climate ambitions becomes even more uncertain unless long-term active niche-building resources are secured in international agreements.

A Bridge to Somewhere? Progressive Democrats’ “Climate Ambition” Must Confront Energy Realities

A Bridge to Somewhere? Progressive Democrats’ “Climate Ambition” Must Confront Energy Realities

Changing the game: the Paris Agreement and the role of scientific communities

Scientific communities were instrumental in building the momentum that led to the success of the Twenty-first Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21), held in Paris in December 2015. Less than a year after its adoption, the Paris Agreement has entered into force. The Paris Agreement is now, and will stay, a reality. Now more than ever, with an unprecedented mobilization all over the world to implement and enhance climate actions, advances in science are needed to inform the negotiations and guide political choices to raise climate ambition. This article proposes several areas where scientific communities could help to implement the Paris Agreement and promote low carbon, climate-resilient economies and societies. In doing so, it focuses on the role of science in several key areas. Firstly, the article explores the relationship between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the new climate regime, with a focus on the 1.5°C special report and future global stocktakes. The article then considers how science can contribute to the preparation of long-term low greenhouse gas (GHG) emission development strategies, before focusing on the role of science in advancing on adaptation issues. Now more than ever, scientific advances and inputs are needed to strengthen the upward revision of ambition, and inform sound concrete actions.Policy relevanceThe climate change negotiations have always been informed by science; the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015 benefitted from the fifth assessment report of the IPCC released a few months before COP21. The new era of global climate policy after the entry into force of the Paris Agreement will require stronger interactions between scientists and policy makers. This ‘perspectives’ article proposes, from the point of view of the former French Presidency of COP21, areas where links and interactions could be strengthened to help implement the Paris Agreement, and to place science at the centre of the transformation towards low emission and resilient societies.

The 2015 Climate Agreement: Key Lessons Learned and Legal Issues on the Road to Paris

Since 2011, the negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have slowly but steadily built a foundation for a new climate agreement that parties hope will carry the Convention forward more progressively and more universally than ever before. This article endeavors to illustrate the major legal issues that will need to be resolved in Paris, France before the new climate agreement can be judged on its merits. The resolution of these legal questions will have significant ramifications for the breadth of participation and how parties may meet their obligations under the new agreement. This article provides a brief background of the UNFCCC, highlighting key shifts in the global community’s strategies to address climate change and considers the key lessons learned by parties over 23 years of experience regarding the legal form and rigor of climate agreements, differentiation, ambition, transparency and compliance, adaptation, and means of implementation. It then explores some of the legal issues that will need to be decided in Paris, particularly the legal form of the core agreement, which will influence U.S. President Barack Obama’s choice among given options for U.S. acceptance. The Paris agreement is a rare opportunity to bolster international environmental law, strengthening individual climate efforts over time and reinforcing international climate cooperation.

National climate ambition must match international targets

If the Paris climate agreement is to succeed in limiting warming to 1.5 °C, countries need to drastically increase their emissions pledges, says Steffen Kallbekken.

Creating Transformative Force? The Role of Spatial Planning in Climate Change Transitions Towards Sustainable Transportation

Informed by the concept of strategy making, this paper analyses the ability of spatial planning to support local climate change transitions towards sustainable transportation in two case studies of planning in Swedish municipalities with comparatively high climate ambitions. The analysis shows that the expectations on planning to effect change need to be moderated. Not even in these climate-ambitious municipalities did transportation planning result in strategic reorientation. While climate change was clearly filtered into local strategy making, no new climate frame was established. Rather in goals, it was linked to an overall attractive city storyline. Transportation planners have sought to mobilize force through developing new tools and routines to strengthen the role of climate change. In detailed planning, however, when plans become legally binding, agency in relation to climate change was limited by allowing private actors a pivotal position. Also, tools were used selectively and when settling priorities, climate change was subordinate to economic growth interests. While the planning observed can be regarded as weak, its ability to support climate transition would have been even weaker had it not been linked to the attractive city storyline. Consequently, to facilitate climate transition mobilizing force needs to be generated within the current local implementation structure.

Further exploring the potential of residential demand response programs in electricity distribution

Smart grids play a key role in realizing climate ambitions. Boosting consumption flexibility is an essential measure in bringing the potential gains of smart grids to fruition. The collective scientific understanding of demand response programs argues that time-of-use tariffs have proven its merits. The findings upon which this conclusion rests are, however, primarily derived from studies covering energy-based time-of-use rates over fairly short periods of time. Hence, this empirical study set out with the intention of estimating the extent of response to a demand-based time-of-use electricity distribution tariff among Swedish single-family homes in the long term. The results show that six years after the implementation households still respond to the price signals of the tariff by cutting demand in peak hours and shifting electricity consumption from peak to off-peak hours. Studies conducted in the Nordic countries commonly include only homeowners and so another aim of the study was to explore the potential of demand response programs among households living in apartment buildings. The demand-based tariff proved to bring about similar, but not as marked, effects in rental apartments, whereas there are virtually no corresponding evidences of demand response in condominium apartments.

What can we expect from Europe's carbon capture and storage demonstrations?

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) on electricity generation and energy intensive industry is expected to play a considerable role in achieving the European Union's decarbonisation goals. EU CCS demonstration project funding has been created to encourage development and accelerate commercial CCS deployment by providing funds to bridge the capital gap for early commercial-scale CCS installation. Eleven CCS project proposals currently remain at least nominally active, but reduced funding and other constraints suggest at best delivery of around a third of these. To explore how these demonstrations impact on the scale of subsequent CCS deployment in the EU three simple scenarios for post-demonstration CCS activity and deployment (none, limited and considerable) are considered and examined in the context of key factors that have influenced the demonstration programme. Without strong political support for post-demonstration deployment including measures such as strategic storage validation and CO2 pipeline planning, and a clear process to make CCS commercially attractive to investors on a timeline consistent with climate ambitions, even a positive result from the demonstration programme is unlikely to enable CCS to deliver as expected.

German industry counts cost of climate ambitions

German industry counts cost of climate ambitions

The Evil of Politics and the Ethics of Evil

The Evil of Politics and the Ethics of Evil

The Economics of Exhaustible Resources

The discussion is confined in scope to absolutely irreplaceable assets. Topics include peculiar problems of mineral wealth, free competition, maximum social value and state regulation, monopoly, value of a mine monopoly, retardation of production under monopoly, price effects from cumulated production, and the author's mathematically derived optimum solutions. (PCS)