Stream

Climate thresholds and heterogeneous regions: Implications for coalition formation

The threat of climate catastrophes has been shown to radically change optimal climate policy and prospects for international climate agreements. We characterize the strategic behavior in emissions mitigation and agreement participation with a potential climate catastrophe happening at a temperature threshold. Players are heterogeneous in a conceptual and two numerical models. We confirm that thresholds…
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The role of the discount rate for emission pathways and negative emissions

The importance of the discount rate in cost-benefit analysis of long term problems, such as climate change, has been widely acknowledged. However, the choice of the discount rate is hardly discussed when translating policy targets—such as 1.5 °C and 2 °C–into emission reduction strategies with the possibility of overshoot. Integrated assessment models (IAMs) have quantified…
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Solar radiation management in cooperative and non-cooperative settings

It’s considered as a new strategy to complement traditional climate policies, but without sufficiently strong institutions, there is a risk that some countries will unilaterally deploy climate engineering to the detriment of other nations. It will be essential that this option is discussed and negotiated within the few existing supra-national institutions and possibly jointly with…
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Scenarios compatible with 1.5 °C

New article “Scenarios towards limiting global mean temperature increase below 1.5 °C” published in NCC. The 2015 Paris Agreement calls for countries to pursue efforts to limit global-mean temperature rise to 1.5 °C. The transition pathways that can meet such a target have not, however, been extensively explored. Here we describe scenarios that limit end-of-century radiative…
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New article in Nature on fossil fuel subsidies

Removing fossil fuel subsidies would have only a small effect on CO2 emissions and renewable energy
use, new research published in Nature has shown…

Negative emissions

‘The Economist’ has a cover story this week on Negative Emissions: here are few links to the scientific publications the article refers to…

System integration, storage, and grid in WITCH

I have started working on modelling improvements to the WITCH model during the outgoing phase of my Fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley…

How many can we be?

To answer this challenging question, we need to go on a journey through time, both in the past and in the future…

Hey we are online!

After 7 years… we thought it was time to refresh our website. Click me to read more about latest changes…

Solar PV learning

The cost evolution of renewable technologies is normally modeled through a learning curve…