Reptes biofísics, polítics i econòmics per a assolir els objectius climàtics de parís
- Autores: Lewis C. King
- Directores de la Tesis: Jeroen van den Bergh (dir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona ( España ) en 2020
- Idioma: español
- ISBN: 9788449096044
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Humberto Llavador (presid.), Georgios Kallis (secret.), Mònica Serrano (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Ciencia y Tecnología Ambientales por la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: TDX
- Resumen
Climate change has arguably become the most urgent global environment issues of our times. After decades of ineffective climate policy, global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to rise. In response to this challenge, the Paris Agreement, the first truly global framework to combat climate change, was signed in 2016. Although it was welcomed as a landmark achievement in setting a clear goal of limiting the rise in global temperatures to 2°C, early signs suggest that it will be ineffective at achieving this aim. In this thesis I explore the aspects that make climate change a unique challenge among other environmental issues, which provide inherent barriers to achieving effective climate policy. I separate the problem into three distinct aspects: biophysical, political and economic challenges. Each of these is explored through one detailed case and its likely impact on meeting the Paris Agreement’s 2°C goal.
The biophysical challenge of climate change focused on is reducing fossil fuel consumption while maintaining the flow of energy for sufficient global economic growth and maintenance of current lifestyles. I investigate the biophysical factor of energy supply through the concept of Energy Return on Investment (EROI). This is a measure of how useful an energy source is to society by transforming gross energy to net energy. To stay within the 2°C carbon budget, a rapid transition from fossil fuels will be necessary. However, typical analyses of such transitions overlook the challenge that renewables generally have lower EROI values than the fossil fuels they replace, and EROI values of fossil fuels are themselves declining. Through correcting from gross to net energy, I show how renewables would have to grow two to three times faster than currently believed to meet to maintain society’s energy needs.
The political challenge focused on concerns climate change being a classic case of the ‘free-rider’ problem, as countries have an incentive to not reduce emissions themselves at the expense of their economic growth and development, while hoping others do so. Moreover, the expected impacts of climate change and historical responsibility for emissions are very asymmetric among countries. Here I investigate a political factor behind why the Paris Agreement was unable to produce strong enough ambition in the commitments of parties of sufficient ambition to match its overall goal. Specifically, I look at how a lack of consistency and transparency in the process for countries submitting pledges has produced targets of widely differing ambition that may not have been apparent in the original submissions. This is done by categorising the countries’ submissions and performing a normalisation against a consistent base year, which allows for direct comparability.
The economic challenge of climate change is seen through considering greenhouse gas emissions as a negative externality, which is an unaccounted-for social cost arising from economic activity. However, a challenge arises from the fact that economic decisions are increasingly made at the global level, and the Paris Agreement was unable to set a global carbon price. Here, I investigate how this is likely to lead to carbon leakage. If climate policy is not coordinated to be uniform across countries, those with weaker climate policy will become more competitive than others with respect to carbon-intensive economic activity and associated export of goods. This will result in a change in trade flows and a relocation of industry from countries with stronger policies to those with weaker policies. In effect, some of the emission reductions are ‘lost’ through resultant growth in other countries. My analysis suggests that the rate of leakage in the Paris Agreement could range from 1-9% and roughly double if the US were to withdraw from the Agreement.
