Informing transparency in the Paris Agreement: the role of economic models

Abstract

Establishing a credible and effective transparency regime to support the Paris Agreementbroader than its formal 'transparency framework'-will be both crucial and challenging. The Agreement provides for review of achievements under national pledges (Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs), but much of this information will become available only well after key steps in the launch of this latest attempt to control human influence on the climate. Still, in these early years, information and understanding of individual and collective performance, and of relative national burdens under the NDCs, will play an important role in the success or failure of the Agreement. However, because of the phasing of various steps in the 5-year cycles under the Agreement and the unavoidable delays of two or more years to produce and review government reports, the Climate Convention and other intergovernmental institutions are illsuited to carry out timely analyses of progress. Consequently, in advance of formal procedures, academic and other non-governmental groups are going to provide analyses based on available data and their own methodologies. The paper explores this transparency challenge-using the MIT Economic Projection and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model to construct sample analyses-and considers ways that efforts outside official channels can contribute to the success of the Agreement.

Toward a consistent modeling framework to assess multi-sectoral climate impacts

“…The integrated economic and climate scenarios are developed following three typical approaches in business, government and academia to explore the future: the desired, a normative scenario aimed at limiting global warming in 2100 to 2 °C from pre-industrial (named 2C) using a global economy-wide carbon tax; the likely, an outlook based on existing policy, here an assessment of the results from the UN COP-21 meeting 42 (named Paris Forever), assuming no additional climate policy after 2030, resulting in 3.5 °C warming in 2100, emphasizing that the current pledges are not sufficient to meet the goal to stay “well below 2 °C” 43 ; and the plausible, two exploratory scenarios to assess the potential development of low-carbon energy technologies (named Oceans and Mountains ) 44 , with warmings of 2.7 °C and 2.4 °C in 2100, respectively. Compared to the RCP scenarios (Fig.…”

Catalyzing mitigation ambition under the Paris Agreement: elements for an effective Global Stocktake

“…For many sectors, a great deal of ambiguity remains of what the 1.5°C goal actually means. While the challenges are largely known for the power sector and the electrification of passenger transport, they remain relatively vague for example on emission intensive industries, agriculture and land-use including forestry (IPCC, 2018;Kuramochi et al, 2018).…”

“…Despite the important role of the GST, the corresponding academic literature remains relatively scarce (exceptions that touch upon the GST in various ways include Friedrich, 2017;Holz & Ngwadla, 2016;Huang, 2018;Jacoby, Chen, & Flannery, 2017;Milkoreit & Haapala, 2017;Milkoreit & Haapala, 2018;Müller & Ngwadla, 2016;Northrop et al, 2018;Tompkins, Vincent, Nicholls, & Suckall, 2018;van Asselt, Pauw, & Saelen, 2015;Winkler, Mantlana, & Letete, 2017). With the adoption of the modalities of the GST as part of the Paris Agreement 'Rulebook' at the 24th Conference of the Parties (COP24) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Katowice in 2018, the foundations for the first GST in 2023 have been laid.…”

The Climate PoLicy ANalysis (C-PLAN) Model, Version 1.0

“…Although these models represent multiple regions, analyses using these models typically focus on major countries/regions and/or global outcomes. For example, Jacoby et al (2017) use the MIT-EPPA model to compare carbon prices and welfare costs from Paris pledges in eight large countries/regions. Vandyck et al (2016) use the GEM-E3 model to analyse the impact of Paris pledges on GHG emissions and energy and economic outcomes in 25 countries/regions and the world.…”