Near-linear cost increase to reduce climate-change risk

One approach in climate-change policy is to set normative long-term targets first and then infer the implied emissions pathways. An important example of a normative target is to limit the global-mean temperature change to a certain maximum. In general, reported cost estimates for limiting global warming often rise rapidly, even exponentially, as the scale of emission reductions from a reference level increases. This rapid rise may suggest that more ambitious policies may be prohibitively expensive. Here, we propose a probabilistic perspective, focused on the relationship between mitigation costs and the likelihood of achieving a climate target. We investigate the qualitative, functional relationship between the likelihood of achieving a normative target and the costs of climate-change mitigation. In contrast to the example of exponentially rising costs for lowering concentration levels, we show that the mitigation costs rise proportionally to the likelihood of meeting a temperature target, across a range of concentration levels. In economic terms investing in climate mitigation to increase the probability of achieving climate targets yields ¿constant returns to scale,¿ because of a counterbalancing rapid rise in the probabilities of meeting a temperature target as concentration is lowered

Bibliographic Details

Main Authors:	Schaeffer, M., Kram, T., Meinshausen, M., van Vuuren, D.P., Hare, W.L.
Format:	Article/Letter to editor biblioteca
Language:	English
Subjects:	benefit-analysis, integrated assessment, sensitivity, uncertainty,
Online Access:	https://research.wur.nl/en/publications/near-linear-cost-increase-to-reduce-climate-change-risk
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