The science is unequivocal: stabilizing climate change implies bringing net carbon emissions to zero. This must be done by 2100 if we are to keep climate change anywhere near the 2oC warming that world leaders have set as the maximum acceptable limit. Decarbonizing Development: Three Steps to a Zero-Carbon Future looks at what it would take to decarbonize the world economy by 2100 in a way that is compatible with countries' broader development goals. Here is what needs to be done: -Act early with an eye on the end-goal. To best achieve a given reduction in emissions in 2030 depends on whether this is the final target or a step towards zero net emissions. -Go beyond prices with a policy package that triggers changes in investment patterns, technologies and behaviors. Carbon pricing is necessary for an efficient transition toward decarbonization. It is an efficient way to raise revenue, which can be used to support poverty reduction or reduce other taxes. Policymakers need to adopt measures that trigger the required changes in investment patterns, behaviors, and technologies - and if carbon pricing is temporarily impossible, use these measures as a substitute. -Mind the political economy and smooth the transition for those who stand to be most affected. Reforms live or die based on the political economy. A climate policy package must be attractive to a majority of voters and avoid impacts that appear unfair or are concentrated on a region, sector or community. Reforms have to smooth the transition for those who stand to be affected, by protecting vulnerable people but also sometimes compensating powerful lobbies.
This book is the first stocktaking of what the decarbonization of the world economy means for fossil fuel†“dependent countries. These countries are the most exposed to the impacts of global climate policies and, at the same time, are often unprepared to manage them. They depend on the export of oil, gas, or coal; the use of carbon-intensive infrastructure (for example, refineries, petrochemicals, and coal power plants); or both. Fossil fuel†“dependent countries face financial, fiscal, and macro-structural risks from the transition of the global economy away from carbon-intensive fuels and the value chains based on them. This book focuses on managing these transition risks and harnessing related opportunities. Diversification and Cooperation in a Decarbonizing World identifies multiple strategies that fossil fuel†“dependent countries can pursue to navigate the turbulent waters of a low-carbon transition. The policy and investment choices to be made in the next decade will determine these countries’ degree of exposure and overall resilience. Abandoning their comfort zones and developing completely new skills and capabilities in a time frame consistent with the Paris Agreement on climate change is a daunting challenge and requires long-term revenue visibility and consistent policy leadership. This book proposes a constructive framework for climate strategies for fossil fuel†“dependent countries based on new approaches to diversification and international climate cooperation. Climate policy leaders share responsibility for creating room for all countries to contribute to the goals of the Paris Agreement, taking into account the specific vulnerabilities and opportunities each country faces.
This book sets out some positive directions to move forward including government policy and regulatory options, an innovative GRID (Greening, Regenerative, Improvement Districts) scheme that can assist with funding and management, and the first steps towards an innovative carbon credit scheme for the built environment. Decarbonising cities is a global agenda with huge significance for the future of urban civilisation. Global demonstrations have shown that technology and design issues are largely solved. However, the mainstreaming of low carbon urban development, particularly at the precinct scale, currently lacks sufficient: standards for measuring carbon covering operational, embodied and transport emissions; assessment and decision-making tools to assist in design options; certifying processes for carbon neutrality within the built environment; and accreditation processes for enabling carbon credits to be generated from precinct-wide urban development. Numerous barriers are currently hindering greater adoption of high performance, low carbon developments, many of which relate to implementation and governance. How to enable and manage precinct-scale renewables and other low carbon technologies within an urban setting is a particular challenge.
The report presents an in-depth analysis of various policies that aim to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of urban transport. Decarbonising transport lies at the core of efforts to mitigate climate change and has close links to urban sustainability and housing affordability. The report identifies the drivers of rising emissions in the urban transport sector and offers pathways to reduce them through a combination of transport and land use policies.
Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization in the United States provides a "legal playbook" for deep decarbonization in the United States, identifying well over 1,000 legal options for enabling the United States to address one of the greatest problems facing this country and the rest of humanity. The book is based on two reports by the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project (DDPP) that explain technical and policy pathways for reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% from 1990 levels by 2050. This 80x50 target and similarly aggressive carbon abatement goals are often referred to as deep decarbonization, distinguished because it requires systemic changes to the energy economy. Legal Pathways explains the DDPP reports and then addresses in detail 35 different topics in as many chapters. These 35 chapters cover energy efficiency, conservation, and fuel switching; electricity decarbonization; fuel decarbonization; carbon capture and negative emissions; non-carbon dioxide climate pollutants; and a variety of cross-cutting issues. The legal options involve federal, state, and local law, as well as private governance. Authors were asked to include all options, even if they do not now seem politically realistic or likely, giving Legal Pathways not just immediate value, but also value over time. While both the scale and complexity of deep decarbonization are enormous, this book has a simple message: deep decarbonization is achievable in the United States using laws that exist or could be enacted. These legal tools can be used with significant economic, social, environmental, and national security benefits. Book Reviews "A growing chorus of Americans understand that climate change is the biggest public health, economic, and national security challenge our families have ever faced and they rightly ask, ''What can anyone do?'' Well, this book makes that answer very clear: we can do a lot as individuals, businesses, communities, cities, states, and the federal government to fight climate change. The legal pathways are many and the barriers are not insurmountable. In short, the time is now to dig deep and decarbonize." --Gina McCarthy, Former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator "Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization in the United States sets forth over 1,000 solutions for federal, state, local, and private actors to tackle climate change. This book also makes the math for Congress clear: with hundreds of policy options and 12 years to stop the worst impacts of climate change, now is the time to find a path forward." --Sheldon Whitehouse, U.S. Senator, Rhode Island "This superb work comes at a critical time in the history of our planet. As we increasingly face the threat and reality of climate change and its inevitable impact on our most vulnerable populations, this book provides the best and most current thinking on viable options for the future to address and ameliorate a vexing, worldwide challenge of extraordinary magnitude. Michael Gerrard and John Dernbach are two of the most distinguished academicians in the country on these issues, and they have assembled leading scholars and practitioners to provide a possible path forward. With 35 chapters and over 1,000 legal options, the book is like a menu of offerings for public consumption, showing that real actions can be taken, now and in the future, to achieve deep decarbonization. I recommend the book highly." --John C. Cruden, Past Assistant Attorney General, Environment and Natural Resources Division, U.S. Department of Justice "This book proves that we already know what to do about climate change, if only we had the will to do it. The path to decarbonization depends as much on removing legal impediments and changing outdated incentive systems as it does on imposing new regulations. There are ideas here for every sector of the economy, for every level of government, and for business and nongovernmental organizations, too, all of which should be on the table for any serious country facing the most serious of challenges. By giving us a sense of the possible, Gerrard and Dernbach and their fine authors seem to be saying two things: (1) do something; and (2) it''s possible. What a timely message, and what a great collection." --Jody Freeman, Archibald Cox Professor of Law and Founding Director of the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program
Ending poverty and stabilizing climate change will be two unprecedented global achievements and two major steps toward sustainable development. But the two objectives cannot be considered in isolation: they need to be jointly tackled through an integrated strategy. This report brings together those two objectives and explores how they can more easily be achieved if considered together. It examines the potential impact of climate change and climate policies on poverty reduction. It also provides guidance on how to create a “win-win†? situation so that climate change policies contribute to poverty reduction and poverty-reduction policies contribute to climate change mitigation and resilience building. The key finding of the report is that climate change represents a significant obstacle to the sustained eradication of poverty, but future impacts on poverty are determined by policy choices: rapid, inclusive, and climate-informed development can prevent most short-term impacts whereas immediate pro-poor, emissions-reduction policies can drastically limit long-term ones.
As the electric power industry faces the challenges of climate change, technological disruption, new market imperatives, and changing policies, a renowned energy expert offers a roadmap to the future of this essential sector. As the damaging and costly impacts of climate change increase, the rapid development of sustainable energy has taken on great urgency. The electricity industry has responded with necessary but wrenching shifts toward renewables, even as it faces unprecedented challenges and disruption brought on by new technologies, new competitors, and policy changes. The result is a collision course between a grid that must provide abundant, secure, flexible, and affordable power, and an industry facing enormous demands for power and rapid, systemic change. The fashionable solution is to think small: smart buildings, small-scale renewables, and locally distributed green energy. But Peter Fox-Penner makes clear that these will not be enough to meet our increasing needs for electricity. He points instead to the indispensability of large power systems, battery storage, and scalable carbon-free power technologies, along with the grids and markets that will integrate them. The electric power industry and its regulators will have to provide all of these, even as they grapple with changing business models for local electric utilities, political instability, and technological change. Power after Carbon makes sense of all the moving parts, providing actionable recommendations for anyone involved with or relying on the electric power system.
Logistics accounts for around 9-10% of global CO2 emissions and will be one of the hardest economic sectors to decarbonize. This is partly because the demand for freight transport is expected to rise sharply over the next few decades, but also because it relies very heavily on fossil fuel. Decarbonizing Logistics outlines the nature and extent of the challenge we face in trying to achieve deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from logistical activities. It makes a detailed assessment of the available options, including restructuring supply chains, shifting freight to lower carbon transport modes and transforming energy use in the logistics sector. The options are examined from technological and managerial standpoints for all the main freight transport modes. Based on an up-to-date review of almost 600 publications and containing new analytical frameworks and research results, Decarbonizing Logistics is the first to provide a global, multi-disciplinary perspective on the subject. It is written by one of the foremost specialists in the field who has spent many years researching the links between logistics and climate change and been an adviser to governments, international organizations and companies on the topic.
Time is of the essence. Climate change looms as a malignant force that will reshape our economy and society for generations to come. If we are going to avoid the worst effects of climate change, we are going to need to effectively "decarbonize" the global economy by 2050. This doesn't mean a modest, or even a drastic, improvement in fuel efficiency standards for automobiles. It means 100 percent of the cars on the road being battery-powered or powered by some other non-carbon-emitting powertrain. It means 100 percent of our global electricity needs being met by renewables and other non-carbon-emitting sources such as nuclear power. It means electrifying the global industrials sector and replacing carbon-intensive chemical processes with green alternatives, eliminating scope-one emissions—emissions in production—across all industries, particularly steel, cement, petrochemicals, which are the backbone of the global economy. It means sustainable farming while still feeding a growing global population. Responding to the existential threat of climate change, Michael Lenox and Rebecca Duff propose a radical reconfiguration of the industries contributing the most, and most harmfully, to this planetary crisis. Disruptive innovation and a particular calibration of industry dynamics will be key to this change. The authors analyze precisely what this might look like for specific sectors of the world economy—ranging from agriculture to industrials and building, energy, and transportation—and examine the possible challenges and obstacles to introducing a paradigm shift in each one. With regards to existent business practices and products, how much and what kind of transformation can be achieved? The authors assert that markets are critical to achieving the needed change, and that they operate within a larger scale of institutional rules and norms. Lenox and Duff conclude with an analysis of policy interventions and strategies that could move us toward clean tech and decarbonization by 2050.
This edited volume presents the research results of the Collaborative Research Center 1026 “Sustainable manufacturing - shaping global value creation”. The book aims at providing a reference guide of sustainable manufacturing for researchers, describing methodologies for development of sustainable manufacturing solutions. The volume is structured in four chapters covering the following topics: sustainable manufacturing technology, sustainable product development, sustainable value creation networks and systematic change towards sustainable manufacturing. The target audience comprises both researchers and practitioners in the field of sustainable manufacturing, but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students.
