Suchergebnisse

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich. ; This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively. ; It is often argued that, ethically, resource rents should accrue to all citizens. Yet, in reality, the rents from exploiting national resources are often concentrated in the hands of a few. If resource rents were to be taxed, on the other hand, substantial amounts of public money could be raised and used to cover the population's infrastructure needs, such as access to electricity, water, sanitation, communication technology and roads, which all play important roles in a nation's economic development process. Here, the authors examine to what extent existing resource rents could be used to provide universal access to these infrastructures.

International audience ; This article proposes a new method to assess the health impact of populations exposed to fine particles (PM2.5) during their whole lifetime, which is suitable for comparative analysis of energy scenarios. The method takes into account the variation of particle concentrations over time as well as the evolution of population cohorts. Its capabilities are demonstrated for two pathways of European energy system development up to 2050: the Baseline (BL) and the Low Carbon, Maximum Renewable Power (LC-MRP). These pathways were combined with three sets of assumptions about emission control measures: Current Legislation (CLE), Fixed Emission Factors (FEFs), and the Maximum Technically Feasible Reductions (MTFRs). Analysis was carried out for 45 European countries. Average PM2.5 concentration over Europe in the LC-MRP/CLE scenario is reduced by 58% compared with the BL/FEF case. Health impacts (expressed in days of loss of life expectancy) decrease by 21%. For the LC-MRP/MTFR scenario the average PM2.5 concentration is reduced by 85% and the health impact by 34%. The methodology was developed within the framework of the EU's FP7 EnerGEO project and was implemented in the Platform of Integrated Assessment (PIA). The Platform enables performing health impact assessments for various energy scenarios.

International audience ; This article proposes a new method to assess the health impact of populations exposed to fine particles (PM2.5) during their whole lifetime, which is suitable for comparative analysis of energy scenarios. The method takes into account the variation of particle concentrations over time as well as the evolution of population cohorts. Its capabilities are demonstrated for two pathways of European energy system development up to 2050: the Baseline (BL) and the Low Carbon, Maximum Renewable Power (LC-MRP). These pathways were combined with three sets of assumptions about emission control measures: Current Legislation (CLE), Fixed Emission Factors (FEFs), and the Maximum Technically Feasible Reductions (MTFRs). Analysis was carried out for 45 European countries. Average PM2.5 concentration over Europe in the LC-MRP/CLE scenario is reduced by 58% compared with the BL/FEF case. Health impacts (expressed in days of loss of life expectancy) decrease by 21%. For the LC-MRP/MTFR scenario the average PM2.5 concentration is reduced by 85% and the health impact by 34%. The methodology was developed within the framework of the EU's FP7 EnerGEO project and was implemented in the Platform of Integrated Assessment (PIA). The Platform enables performing health impact assessments for various energy scenarios.

The central pillar of European climate policy, the European Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), is currently under scrutiny, as the allowance price is persistently low at around 5€/tCO2. The cap was met and emissions actually declined in recent years, ensuring the environmental effectiveness of the scheme. However, the low price may affect the long-term cost-effectiveness of the instrument by reducing the incentive for investment and deployment of low carbon technologies. No significant increase in the allowance price is expected before 2020, and probably not beyond, without reform. While the reasons for the price decline are controversial, empirical analysis shows that only a small portion of price fluctuations can be explained by factors such as the economic crisis, renewable deployment or international offsets. Therefore, it is likely that political factors and regulatory uncertainty have played a key role in the price decline. As a consequence, any reform of the EU ETS has to deliver a mechanism that reduces such uncertainty and stabilizes expectations of market participants. The Market Stability Reserve proposed by the EU Commission is unlikely to address the current problem of price uncertainty and insufficient dynamic efficiency. The key element of the alternative reform proposal described in this paper is to set a price collar in the EU ETS with lower and upper boundaries. This is likely to reinforce the long-term credibility and reliability of the price signal. In addition, a price for GHG emissions not covered by the EU ETS has to be set. If additional market failures prevent the market from functioning efficiently, specific policy instruments related to innovation and technology diffusion should be implemented in addition to carbon pricing. Carbon leakage could be addressed through tailor-made trade policies. In parallel, increasing the coalition of countries included in the carbon pricing should remain a priority. This reform package would bring the EU ETS back to life, while avoiding a relapse into potentially costly and inefficient national climate and energy policies.

In 1955, after the Korean War, only 35% of the national land area in South Korea was covered by forests. In the 1960s, the Korean Government implemented the national forestation program in order to increase the extent of the forest surface and thereby counteract the negative ecological consequences from deforestation, such as erosion and ground instability. According to previous studies, this led to an increase in carbon (C) accumulated in the forest biomass of 1.48 Gt CO2 (0.40 Gt C) in the period 1954–2012. However, these studies did not take into account the amount of soil organic carbon (SOC) that was accumulated during that period and the influence of management practices on soil ecosystem services. Currently, South Korean authorities are considering the idea of implementing some forest management practices in order to increase timber extraction (e.g., by reducing the cutting age of the trees or by applying thinning and tending measures). In this study, we assess the influence of these management regimes on SOC dynamics and propose a theoretical framework to assess the influence of forest management practices on three ecosystem services, namely, C sequestration, water supply, and biomass production, while considering soil functioning, and especially SOC, as a group of supporting services underpinning the three named ecosystem services. We find that, in terms of SOC sequestration, reducing the cutting age from 80 to 40 years would be suitable only in the case of high biomass production forests, whereas in the case of lower biomass production forests reducing the cutting age would achieve very low SOC levels. However, we propose that increasing tree species diversity, even though it would not lead to a direct increase in the SOC content, could help to lessen the negative effects of reducing the cutting age by improving other soil properties, which in turn positively affect soil functioning (e.g., soil biodiversity, nutrient availability) and the resilience of the forest ecosystem. Finally, we discuss potential policy approaches to incentivize sustainable management practices in South Korean forests from a soil protection perspective. ; Peer Reviewed

Kohlenstoffmanagement (auch Carbon Management) zielt darauf ab, entstandenes Kohlendioxid (CO2) aus der Atmosphäre fernzuhalten oder zu beseitigen, damit es nicht zur Erderwärmung beiträgt oder verbleibende Treibhausgas-Emissionen ausgeglichen werden können. Ein weiteres Ziel ist, Kohlenstoff für die Herstellung von Produkten bereitzustellen, ohne fossile Rohstoffe zu nutzen. Drei Bausteine stehen dafür zur Verfügung: - Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS), - Carbon Capture & Utilization (CCU), - Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR). - Die Bundesregierung möchte mit zwei Strategien, der Carbon Management Strategie (CMS) und der Langfriststrategie Negativemissionen (LNe), einen strategischen Rahmen für das Kohlenstoffmanagement in Deutschland schaffen und hat dazu erste Eckpunkte formuliert. Der vorliegende Impuls des Akademienprojekts "Energiesysteme der Zukunft" (ESYS) ordnet anhand dieser Eckpunkte die Rolle und Grenzen des Kohlenstoffmanagements im Klimaschutz ein: - Können die Ziele im Klimaschutz auch ohne Carbon Management erreicht werden? - In welchem Verhältnis steht das Kohlenstoffmanagement zur Vermeidung von Treibhausgas-Emissionen? - Warum ist die CO₂-Speicherung wichtig? -- In einigen Bereichen wie der Zementindustrie und der Landwirtschaft lässt sich die Entstehung von Treibhausgas-Emissionen absehbar nicht komplett vermeiden. Schon das Ziel der Klimaneutralität bis 2045 wird daher nicht erreichbar sein, ohne CO2 abzuscheiden und dauerhaft zu speichern. Dabei allein auf die Speicherung in Vegetation und Boden zu vertrauen, erscheint zu riskant. Gleichzeitig kann und sollte das Carbon Management nur begrenzte Klimaschutzbeiträge leisten. Die erforderlichen Technologien müssen in die breite Anwendung gebracht und teilweise neu entwickelt werden, was Zeit erfordert und zumindest erste Entscheidungen für den Einstieg in das Carbon Management heute dringlich erscheinen lässt. Gemeinsam genutzte Infrastrukturen, technische Komponenten oder natürliche Ressourcen erfordern zudem eine übergreifende Betrachtung von CCS, CCU und CDR. Der Impuls benennt Herausforderungen und Nachbesserungsbedarfe bei den vorliegenden Eckpunkten, damit CMS und LNe letztlich eine schlüssige Gesamtstrategie für das Carbon Management bilden. Er zeigt zudem regulatorische Handlungsoptionen auf, wie Klimaneutralität und später Netto-negativ-Emissionen erreicht werden können.

The most recent IPCC assessment has shown an important role for negative emissions technologies (NETs) in limiting global warming to 2 °C cost-effectively. However, a bottom-up, systematic, reproducible, and transparent literature assessment of the different options to remove CO2 from the atmosphere is currently missing. In part 1 of this three-part review on NETs, we assemble a comprehensive set of the relevant literature so far published, focusing on seven technologies: bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), afforestation and reforestation, direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS), enhanced weathering, ocean fertilisation, biochar, and soil carbon sequestration. In this part, part 2 of the review, we present estimates of costs, potentials, and side-effects for these technologies, and qualify them with the authors' assessment. Part 3 reviews the innovation and scaling challenges that must be addressed to realise NETs deployment as a viable climate mitigation strategy. Based on a systematic review of the literature, our best estimates for sustainable global NET potentials in 2050 are 0.5–3.6 GtCO2 yr−1 for afforestation and reforestation, 0.5–5 GtCO2 yr−1 for BECCS, 0.5–2 GtCO2 yr−1 for biochar, 2–4 GtCO2 yr−1 for enhanced weathering, 0.5–5 GtCO2 yr−1 for DACCS, and up to 5 GtCO2 yr−1 for soil carbon sequestration. Costs vary widely across the technologies, as do their permanency and cumulative potentials beyond 2050. It is unlikely that a single NET will be able to sustainably meet the rates of carbon uptake described in integrated assessment pathways consistent with 1.5 °C of global warming. ; BMBF, 01LS1610B, IPCC-Sonderbericht zu 1,5 Grad - Verbundprojekt: Klimapolitische Maßnahmen und Transformationspfade zur Begrenzung der globalen Erwärmung auf 1.5°C (PEP1p5) - Teilprojekt 2: Klimapolitische "Einstiegsluken" ; DFG, 220274451, SPP 1689: Climate Engineering: Risiken, Herausforderungen, Möglichkeiten? ; BMBF, 03EK3046B, Verbundvorhaben START: Strategic Scenario Analysis (START) - A first German-Australian focus project

With the Paris Agreement's ambition of limiting climate change to well below 2 °C, negative emission technologies (NETs) have moved into the limelight of discussions in climate science and policy. Despite several assessments, the current knowledge on NETs is still diffuse and incomplete, but also growing fast. Here, we synthesize a comprehensive body of NETs literature, using scientometric tools and performing an in-depth assessment of the quantitative and qualitative evidence therein. We clarify the role of NETs in climate change mitigation scenarios, their ethical implications, as well as the challenges involved in bringing the various NETs to the market and scaling them up in time. There are six major findings arising from our assessment: first, keeping warming below 1.5 °C requires the large-scale deployment of NETs, but this dependency can still be kept to a minimum for the 2 °C warming limit. Second, accounting for economic and biophysical limits, we identify relevant potentials for all NETs except ocean fertilization. Third, any single NET is unlikely to sustainably achieve the large NETs deployment observed in many 1.5 °C and 2 °C mitigation scenarios. Yet, portfolios of multiple NETs, each deployed at modest scales, could be invaluable for reaching the climate goals. Fourth, a substantial gap exists between the upscaling and rapid diffusion of NETs implied in scenarios and progress in actual innovation and deployment. If NETs are required at the scales currently discussed, the resulting urgency of implementation is currently neither reflected in science nor policy. Fifth, NETs face severe barriers to implementation and are only weakly incentivized so far. Finally, we identify distinct ethical discourses relevant for NETs, but highlight the need to root them firmly in the available evidence in order to render such discussions relevant in practice. ; BMBF, 01LS1610B, IPCC-Sonderbericht zu 1,5 Grad - Verbundprojekt: Klimapolitische Maßnahmen und Transformationspfade zur Begrenzung der globalen Erwärmung auf 1.5°C (PEP1p5) - Teilprojekt 2: Klimapolitische "Einstiegsluken" ; DFG, 220274451, SPP 1689: Climate Engineering: Risiken, Herausforderungen, Möglichkeiten? ; BMBF, 03EK3046B, Verbundvorhaben START: Strategic Scenario Analysis (START) - A first German-Australian focus project