Climate Change Mitigation Policies Research Articles

Quantifying methane emissions from United States landfills.

Methane emissions from solid waste may represent a substantial fraction of the global anthropogenic budget, but few comprehensive studies exist to assess inventory assumptions. We quantified emissions at hundreds of large landfills across 18 states in the United States between 2016 and 2022 using airborne imaging spectrometers. Spanning 20% of open United States landfills, this represents the most systematic measurement-based study of methane point sources of the waste sector. We detected significant point source emissions at a majority (52%) of these sites, many with emissions persisting over multiple revisits (weeks to years). We compared these against independent contemporaneous in situ airborne observations at 15 landfills and established good agreement. Our findings indicate a need for long-term, synoptic-scale monitoring of landfill emissions in the context of climate change mitigation policy.

Climate Change Mitigation in Agriculture beyond 2030: Options for Carbon Pricing and Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanisms

SummaryIn the EU's climate policy, agriculture is covered as an Effort‐Sharing (ESR) sector, i.e. a sector beyond the Emission Trading System and LULUCF. Despite ambitious climate targets for the ESR sectors and an emerging focus on the need for agriculture to make a substantial contribution to climate change mitigation, agriculture has contributed much less to achieving climate targets than other ESR sectors in most EU Member States. A more radical mitigation instrument is required since the potential to increase climate efficiency in EU agriculture is limited. Carbon pricing is considered an effective instrument and is widely adopted in other sectors worldwide. Options on how to reduce related carbon leakage are discussed. Our recommendations for efficient climate change mitigation policy in agriculture are threefold. First, the agricultural sector needs more precise guidance and clear climate targets. Second, although preventing all conflicts between climate change mitigation actions and other policy goals is impossible and inefficient, a policy could minimise adverse effects. Third, since agricultural GHG emissions can only be minimised and compensated by negative emissions in other sectors, well‐defined intersectoral coordination is required.

Determinants and their spatial heterogeneity of carbon emissions in resource-based cities, China

Global climate change associated with increased carbon emissions has become a global concern. Resource-based cities, by estimations, have emerged as major contributors to carbon emissions, accounting for approximately one-third of the national total. This underscores their pivotal role in the pursuit of carbon neutrality goals. Despite this, resource-based cities have long been neglected in current climate change mitigation policy discussions. Accordingly, using exploratory spatial data analysis and Geographical Weighted Regression method, this study investigates the determinants of carbon emissions and their spatial pattern in 113 resource-based cities in China. It can be concluded that: (1) The proportion of carbon emissions from resource-based cities in the national total has shown a marginal increase between 2003 and 2017, and the emissions from these cities have not yet reached their peak. (2) A relatively stable spatial pattern of “northeast high, southwest low” characterizes carbon emissions in resource-based cities, displaying significant spatial autocorrelation. (3) Population size, economic development level, carbon abatement technology, and the proportion of resource-based industries all contribute to the increase in carbon emissions in these cities, with carbon abatement technology playing a predominant role. (4) There is a spatial variation in the strength of the effects of the various influences.

The Role of Renewable Energies for Sustainable Energy Governance and Environmental Policies for the Mitigation of Climate Change in Nigeria

In response to the escalating global challenges posed by climate change, this research investigates the role of renewable energies in shaping sustainable energy governance and environmental policies for climate change mitigation in Nigeria. The study underscores the pivotal relationship between renewable energies and governance structures, emphasizing the need for innovative policy approaches. In Nigeria, a country grappling with a surge in energy demand, particularly in densely populated urban areas, this research delves into the current state of renewable energy adoption, technological aspects, and the policy and regulatory frameworks governing its integration. The study scrutinizes the technological aspects of solar, wind, hydropower, and biomass energy in Nigeria, exploring advancements in solar photovoltaic, hydropower, bioenergy, and geothermal technologies. Additionally, it dissects the nation's policy landscape, assessing key initiatives such as the National Energy Policy, the National Policy and Guidelines on Renewable Electricity, and Feed-in Tariffs. Furthermore, the research examines the alignment of environmental policies with renewable energy goals, highlighting the importance of targets, incentives, and regulatory frameworks. It also scrutinizes incentives for sustainable practices in Nigeria, including investment tax credits, the Renewable Energy Development Fund, and concessional import duty rates for renewable equipment. The study assesses the impact of renewable energy initiatives in Nigeria, gauging investment trends, ongoing projects, and the effectiveness of policy frameworks. It also delves into the economic, social, and environmental co-benefits of renewable energy projects, emphasizing their role in job creation, investment attraction, and reduction in energy costs. Finally, the research evaluates the effectiveness of renewable energy initiatives in reducing the nation's carbon footprint and fostering environmental sustainability. It highlights progress in achieving climate change mitigation goals through increased renewable energy capacity, policy frameworks, and off-grid electrification initiatives.

How Does VR Affect Emotional Appeal and Persuasiveness of Gain Versus Loss-Framed Messages?

Can virtual reality (VR) lead to more desirable persuasion effects than videos in communicating the science of contentious issues like climate change? And, will these effects differ between messages that offer hope versus fear? We addressed these questions with a 2 (Modality: Desktop VR vs. Unidirectional video) × 2 (framing: Gain vs. Loss) between-subjects experiment ( N = 130), and found that VR triggered more fearful responses, which in turn led to more persuasive outcomes. It also increased individuals’ attitudes toward climate change mitigation policy when the experience was loss-framed, but backfired when the experience was gain-framed. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Is carbon footprint reduction always preferred over offsetting? An analysis of tourists' preferences in the Mallorca region

This research is devoted to the analysis of tourists’ preferences for climate change (CC) mitigation policies in the Mallorca region. The stated choice experiment, used for evaluation, was designed combining a set of alternatives, characterised by carbon footprint reduction and offset policies, taking into account the existence of environmental direct benefits, but also indirect benefits that improve tourist experience or co-benefits derived from the location of policy projects. Economic welfare in form of willingness to pay (WTP) was estimated, and the alternatives were compared using compensating variation values. The study's findings validate the prevailing preference for carbon reduction policies over offsetting measures, except when the first don't have co-benefits and the latter are implemented locally. In the latter case, there is no significant difference in WTP between reducing the carbon footprint and locally offsetting it. Results not only contributes to the ongoing economic debate surrounding CC mitigation policies but also provides key information for designing mitigation schemes in diffuse emission sectors such as tourism.

Using climate financing wisely to address multiple crises

A convergence of several risk drivers creates the compound crises we see across the globe today. At the same time, the global humanitarian community and national institutions in affected countries are increasingly resource constrained. In this context, existing financing mechanisms should be evaluated for their potential to create synergies between social protection, peace, and inclusion objectives on the one hand and climate resilience outcomes on the other. The existing international architecture of climate change mitigation and adaptation policy and financing holds, in principle, the potential to address not only its main purpose of climate action, but also to contribute to development outcomes and address multiple risk drivers. Examples of this exist, but for these mutual benefits to emerge, and for climate finance to contribute more significantly to crises prevention, the agendas must become more aligned. Aligning several factors may enable coherence: i) Timeframes, from short-term response to multi-year programming; ii) Planning and targeting, moving towards conflict-sensitive area-based approaches and universal access to services; iii) Institutional arrangements and partnerships, coordinated national planning and jointly implemented local action.

Economic Policies for Climate Change Mitigation in the United States

Economic Policies for Climate Change Mitigation in the United States

THE FAIRNESS CONTROVERSY OVER CBAM AND ITS POLICY IMPLICATIONS

The idea of a carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) has aroused fervent discussion recently. It is proposed as an effective tool to address the competitiveness loss and carbon leakage induced by unilateral carbon policies. Yet on the brink of this policy being rolled out, its ethical justification seems insufficiently clarified. CBAM implementation would provoke a huge fairness controversy. This paper illustrates the main ethical challenges impeding CBAM’s fairness perception. Two stand out in particular: The first is the lack of a global consensus on appropriate climate equity principles. This means that there is no basis for determining the fairness of CBAM’s burden shifting impact. The second is that CBAM is likely to undermine the procedural justice of the current quantity-oriented responsibility distribution regime under the Paris Agreement. We conclude that CBAM is not well-suited for solving the free-rider problem of the current climate change mitigation policies and emphasize that incentivizing innovation is key for an ambitious mitigation strategy.

The distributive politics of the green transition: a conjoint experiment on EU climate change mitigation policy

ABSTRACT In the fight against climate change, the European Union has developed a new growth strategy to transform Europe into the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. To support EU member states in their transition towards greener economies, climate change mitigation policies are being implemented at the EU-level. However, such policies can be designed in different ways, and gaining citizens’ support is crucial for the political feasibility of the European green transition. Drawing on data from an original conjoint experiment conducted in Germany (N = 5,796), this article investigates how policy design shapes public support for EU climate change mitigation. To this end, the study theoretically and empirically distinguishes four policy dimensions that address the distributive politics of the European green transition: sectoral scope, social spending, financing structure and cross-country distribution. The results confirm that all four policy dimensions significantly impact public support. Specifically, the study reveals that support is greatest for EU policy packages that target financial support at the renewable energy sector, include social investment policies, are financed by increasing taxes on the rich, and distribute resources across EU member states based on population size. Furthermore, citizens’ sensitivity to the policy design varies slightly by income position, left-right ideology and climate attitudes.

Interplay of Climate Change and Air Pollution- Projection of the under-5 mortality attributable to ambient particulate matter (PM2.5) in South Asia

Ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5) pollution is a leading health risk factor for children under- 5 years, especially in developing countries. South Asia is a PM2.5 hotspot, where climate change, a potential factor affecting PM2.5 pollution, adds a major challenge. However, limited evidence is available on under-5 mortality attributable to PM2.5 under different climate change scenarios. This study aimed to project under-5 mortality attributable to long-term exposure to ambient PM2.5 under seven air pollution and climate change mitigation scenarios in South Asia. We used a concentration-risk function obtained from a previous review to project under-5 mortality attributable to ambient PM2.5. With a theoretical minimum risk exposure level of 2.4 μg/m3, this risk function was linked to gridded annual PM2.5 concentrations from atmospheric modeling to project under-5 mortality from 2010 to 2049 under different climate change mitigation scenarios. The scenarios were developed from the Aim/Endues global model based on end-of-pipe (removing the emission of air pollutants at the source, EoP) and 2 °C target measures. Our results showed that, in 2010–2014, about 306.8 thousand under-5 deaths attributable to PM2.5 occurred in South Asia under the Reference (business as usual) scenario. The number of deaths was projected to increase in 2045–2049 by 36.6% under the same scenario and 7.7% under the scenario where EoP measures would be partially implemented by developing countries (EoPmid), and was projected to decrease under other scenarios, with the most significant decrease (81.2%) under the scenario where EoP measures would be fully enhanced by all countries along with the measures to achieve 2 °C target (EoPmaxCCSBLD) across South Asia. Country-specific projections of under-5 mortality varied by country. The current emission control strategy would not be sufficient to reduce the number of deaths in South Asia. Robust climate change mitigation and air pollution control policy implementation is required.

Spatiotemporal patterns and drivers of the urban air pollution island effect for 2273 cities in China

Air pollution levels tend to be higher in urban areas than in surrounding rural areas, and this air pollution has a negative effect on human health. However, the spatiotemporal patterns of urban–rural air pollution differences and the determinants of these differences remain unclear. Here, we calculate the Urban Air Pollution Island (UAPI) intensity for PM2.5 and PM10 on a monthly, seasonal, and annual scale for 2273 cities in China from 2000 to 2020. Subsequently, we analyze the influence of urban characteristics using a combined approach of a two-way fixed effects model and a spatial Durbin model. Results show a strong downward trend in the UAPI intensity since 2013, with reductions ranging from 42 % to 61 % until 2020, for both pollutants and in summer as well as winter. Consistently, the proportion of the cities experiencing the UAPI phenomenon decreased from 94.5 % to 77.3 % for both PM2.5 and PM10. We find a significant influence of urban morphology on UAPI. Specifically, urban sprawl, polycentric development, and an increase in urban green spaces are associated with a reduction in UAPI, while dense urban areas intensify it. Our study also reveals a robust inverted U-shaped relationship between stages of economic development and UAPI. Moreover, economic development and air pollution itself show spillover effects that oppose their direct impacts. These results suggest that urban and regional planning and more ambitious climate change mitigation policies could be more effective strategies for mitigating air pollution in cities than end-of-pipe control.

Political trust and climate policy choice: evidence from a conjoint experiment

AbstractWhy do citizens support or reject climate change mitigation policies? This is not an easy choice: citizens need to support the government in making these decisions, accept potentially radical behavior change, and have altruism across borders and for future generations. A substantial literature argues that political trust facilitates citizen support for these complex policy decisions by mitigating the cost and uncertainty that policies impose on individuals and buttressing support for government intervention. We test whether this is the case with a pre-registered conjoint experiment fielded in Germany in which we vary fundamental aspects of policy design that are related to the cost, uncertainty, and implementation of climate change policies. Contrary to strong theoretical expectations and previous work, we find no difference between those with low and high trust on their support for different policy attributes, assuaging the concern that low and declining trust inhibits climate policymaking.

The Impact of South Africa’s Carbon Tax Policy on Carbon Leakages on its Top Five African Trading Partners

The carbon leakage phenomenon, whereby decreased carbon emissions in locations with strict constraints on carbon emissions may be offset to some extent by increased carbon emissions in locations with less strict constraints on emissions, has the potential to undermine efforts to mitigating carbon emissions. As such the objective of this study was to use a natural experiment model to estimate the extent of carbon leakage associated with South Africa’s Carbon Tax on the combined carbon emissions of its top five trading African partners (Mozambique, Namibia, Botswana, Nigeria and Eswatini). This was a highly essential study and arguably a first of its kind, to infer causal impact of the carbon tax on carbon leakages using a single group interrupted time-series analysis regression discontinuity design. Results from the study showed that in the long-run, the carbon tax has decreased carbon emission in South Africa by 4.42 percent while increasing carbon emissions in South Africa’s trading partners by 1.003 percent. This shows evidence of a carbon leakage because of the carbon tax, and it is recommended that policymakers should consider trade restrictions to prevent the import of carbon-intensive commodities or institute universal, instead of unilateral, climate change mitigation policies.

The Impact of Climate Forcing Biases and the Nitrogen Cycle on Land Carbon Balance Projections

AbstractEarth System Models (ESMs) project that the terrestrial carbon sink will continue to grow as atmospheric CO2 increases, but this projection is uncertain due to biases in the simulated climate and how ESMs represent ecosystem processes. In particular, the strength of the CO2‐fertilization effect, which is modulated by nutrient cycles, varies substantially across models. This study evaluates land carbon balance uncertainties for the Canadian Earth System Model (CanESM) by conducting simulations where the latest version of CanESM's land surface component is driven offline with raw and bias‐adjusted CanESM5 climate forcing data. To quantify the impact of nutrient limitation, we complete simulations where the nitrogen cycle is enabled or disabled. Results show that bias adjustment improves model performance across most ecosystem variables, primarily due to reduced biases in precipitation. Turning the nitrogen cycle on increases the global land carbon sink during the historical period (1995–2014) due to enhanced nitrogen deposition, placing it within the Global Carbon Budget uncertainty range. During the future period (2080–2099), the simulated land carbon sink increases in response to bias adjustment and decreases in response to the dynamic carbon‐nitrogen interaction, leading to a net decrease when both factors are acting together. The dominating impact of the nitrogen cycle demonstrates the importance of representing nutrient limitation in ESMs. Such efforts may produce more robust carbon balance projections in support of global climate change mitigation policies such as the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Joint-outcome prediction markets for climate risks.

Predicting future climate requires the integration of knowledge and expertise from a wide range of disciplines. Predictions must account for climate-change mitigation policies which may depend on climate predictions. This interdependency, or "circularity", means that climate predictions must be conditioned on emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Long-range forecasts also suffer from information asymmetry because users cannot use track records to judge the skill of providers. The problems of aggregation, circularity, and information asymmetry can be addressed using prediction markets with joint-outcome spaces, allowing simultaneous forecasts of GHG concentrations and temperature. The viability of prediction markets with highly granular, joint-outcome spaces was tested with markets for monthly UK rainfall and temperature. The experiments demonstrate these markets can aggregate the judgments of experts with relevant expertise, and suggest similarly structured markets, with longer horizons, could provide a mechanism to produce credible forecasts of climate-related risks for policy making, planning, and risk disclosure.

Changes in evapotranspiration, transpiration and evaporation across natural and managed landscapes in the Amazon, Cerrado and Pantanal biomes

Land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) can dramatically affect the magnitude, seasonality and main drivers of evaporation (E) and transpiration (T), together as evapotranspiration (ET), with effects on overall ecosystem function, as well as both the hydrological cycle and climate system at multiple scales. Our understanding of tropical ecosystem responses to LULCC and global change processes is still limited, mainly due to a lack of ground-based observations that cover a variety of ecosystems, land-uses and land-covers. In this study, we used a network of nine eddy covariance flux towers installed in natural (forest, savanna, wetland) and managed systems (rainfed and irrigated cropland, pastureland) to explore how LULCC affects ET and its components in the Amazon, Cerrado and Pantanal biomes. At each site, tower-based ET measurements were partitioned into T and E to investigate how these fluxes varied between different land-uses and seasons. We found that ET, T and E decreased significantly during the dry season, except in Amazon forest ecosystems where T rates were maintained throughout the year. In contrast to Amazon forests, Cerrado and Pantanal ecosystems showed stronger stomatal control during the dry season. Cropland and pasture sites had lower ET and T compared to native vegetation in all biomes, but E was greater in Pantanal pasture when compared to Pantanal forest. The T fraction of ET was correlated with LAI and EVI, but relationships were weaker in Amazon forests. Our results highlight the importance of understanding the effects of LULCC on water fluxes in tropical ecosystems, and the implications for climate change mitigation policies and land management.

Unlocking nature's hidden treasure: Unveiling forest status, biomass and carbon wealth in the Binsar Wildlife Sanctuary, Uttarakhand for climate change mitigation

In the context of present climate change concerns, the quantification of forest biomass and the comprehension of carbon stock distribution within protected areas are of paramount importance for exact carbon budgeting and the development of effective forest management strategies. This study conducted comprehensive field assessments with the primary objective of quantifying tree biomass and carbon stocks, as well as assessing structural attributes of forest stands. These assessments involved the meticulous collection of ground-based data encompassing various structural attributes, including circumference at breast height (CBH), stem height, basal area, stem density, frequency, girth class by utilizing a simple random sampling methodology. The results of this study unveiled substantial variations in all tree structural attributes across different forest stands along altitudinal gradients. Notably, species richness, tree density and species diversity exhibited an upward trend with increasing altitude. The maximum tree species richness (25) and tree density (1068 ± 102.2 individuals ha−1) were recorded at stand-IV, situated between 2200 to 2400 m, however, stand-I exhibited the maximum basal area. The highest aboveground, belowground, total biomass, and carbon stock was estimated in the stand-IV, with values of 279.12 ± 17.56 Mg ha−1, 65.58±11.20 Mg ha−1, 344.70 ± 20.66 Mg ha−1, and 163.73 ± 10.33 Mg ha−1, respectively. The study further revealed a positive correlation between elevation and species richness, biomass, and carbon stock. Additionally, it demonstrated positive correlations between total biomass and carbon stock with species richness, total basal area, and tree density. These findings convey immediate significance for the development and implementation of climate change mitigation policies and practices, particularly within the context of protected areas in the Himalayan landscape.

Factors and framing effects in support for net zero policies in the United Kingdom.

Achieving ambitious carbon reduction targets requires transformative change to society, with behaviour change playing an important role. Climate change mitigation ('net zero') policies are needed to accelerate and support such behaviour change. This study examined factors and framing effects in public support for net zero policies in the United Kingdom (UK), making use of a large probability sample (ntotal = 5,665) survey conducted in August 2021. It found that net zero policies are widely supported, with only taxes on red meat and dairy products being supported by less than half of the UK public. Climate worry and perceived fairness were the strongest and most consistent predictors of policy support for net zero policies. The results further suggest that support for net zero policies can be increased by emphasising the co-benefits of the policies, in particular where they are beneficial for health. However, the framing effects were very small. In contrast, public support for net zero policies is lower when potential lifestyle and financial costs are mentioned. This suggests that perceived fairness of the distribution of costs and lifestyle implications of policies are crucial for building and maintaining support for net zero.

Towards understanding policy design through text-as-data approaches: The policy design annotations (POLIANNA) dataset

Despite the importance of ambitious policy action for addressing climate change, large and systematic assessments of public policies and their design are lacking as analysing text manually is labour-intensive and costly. POLIANNA is a dataset of policy texts from the European Union (EU) that are annotated based on theoretical concepts of policy design, which can be used to develop supervised machine learning approaches for scaling policy analysis. The dataset consists of 20,577 annotated spans, drawn from 18 EU climate change mitigation and renewable energy policies. We developed a novel coding scheme translating existing taxonomies of policy design elements to a method for annotating text spans that consist of one or several words. Here, we provide the coding scheme, a description of the annotated corpus, and an analysis of inter-annotator agreement, and discuss potential applications. As understanding policy texts is still difficult for current text-processing algorithms, we envision this database to be used for building tools that help with manual coding of policy texts by automatically proposing paragraphs containing relevant information.