Research area: Climate Policy

More priorities, more problems? Decision-making with multiple energy, development and climate objectives

Summary

The Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement pose new conceptual challenges for energy decision makers by compelling them to consider the implications of their choices for development and climate mitigation objectives. This is a nontrivial exercise as it requires pragmatic consideration of the interconnections between energy systems and their social and environmental contexts and working with a plurality of actors and values. There are an increasing number of indices, frameworks and academic studies that capture these interconnections, yet policy makers have relatively few ex-ante tools to pragmatically aid decision-making. This paper, based on a collation of 167 studies, reviews how multi-criteria decision approaches (MCDA) are used in energy policy decisions to explicitly consider multiple social and environmental objectives, and the conceptual usefulness of doing so. First, MCDA can be used to distil a finite set of objectives from those of a large number of actors. This process is often political and objectives identified are aligned with vested interests or institutional incentives. Second, MCDA can be used to build evidence that is both qualitative and quantitative in nature to capture the implications of energy choices across economic, environmental, social and political metrics. Third, MCDA can be used to explore synergies and trade-offs between energy, social and environmental objectives, and in turn, make explicit the political implications of choices for actors. The studies reviewed in this paper demonstrate that the use of MCDA is so far mainly academic and for problems in the Global North. We argue for a mainstreaming of such a multi-criteria and deliberative approaches for energy policy decisions in developing countries where trade-offs between energy, development and climate mitigation are more contentious while recognizing the data, capacity and transparency requirements of the process.

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India and Climate Change: Evolving Ideas and Increasing Policy Engagement

Summary

India is a significant player in climate policy and politics. It has been vocal in international climate negotiations, but its role in these negotiations has changed over time. In an interactive relationship between domestic policy and international positions, India has increasingly become a testing ground for policies that internalize climate considerations into development. This article critically reviews the arc of climate policy and politics in India over time. It begins by examining changes in knowledge and ideas around climate change in India, particularly in the areas of ethics, climate impacts, India’s energy transition, linkages with sustainability, and sequestration. The next section examines changes in politics, policy, and governance at both international and national scales. The article argues that shifts in ideas and knowledge of impacts, costs, and benefits of climate action and shifts in the global context are reflected and refracted through discourses in India’s domestic and international policies.

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National climate change mitigation legislation, strategy and targets: a global update

Summary

Global climate change governance has changed substantially in the last decade, with a shift in focus from negotiating globally agreed greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets to nationally determined contributions, as enshrined in the 2015 Paris Agreement. This paper analyses trends in adoption of national climate legislation and strategies, GHG targets, and renewable and energy efficiency targets in almost all UNFCCC Parties, focusing on the period from 2007 to 2017. The uniqueness and added value of this paper reside in its broad sweep of countries, the more than decade-long coverage and the use of objective metrics rather than normative judgements. Key results show that national climate legislation and strategies witnessed a strong increase in the first half of the assessed decade, likely due to the political lead up to the Copenhagen Climate Conference in 2009, but have somewhat stagnated in recent years, currently covering 70% of global GHG emissions (almost 50% of countries). In comparison, the coverage of GHG targets increased considerably in the run up to adoption of the Paris Agreement and 89% of global GHG emissions are currently covered by such targets. Renewable energy targets saw a steady spread, with 79% of the global GHG emissions covered in 2017 compared to 45% in 2007, with a steep increase in developing countries.

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India’s energy and emissions future: An interpretive analysis of model scenarios

Introduction

As a significant emitter of greenhouse gases, but also as a developing country starting from a low emissions base, India is an important actor in global climate change mitigation. However, perceptions of India vary widely, from an energy-hungry climate deal-breaker to a forerunner of a low carbon future. Developing clarity on India’s energy and emissions future is challenged by the uncertainties of India’s development transitions, including its pathway through a demographic and urban transition within a rapidly changing policy context. Model-based scenario analyses provide widely varying projections, in part because they make differing assumptions, often implicit, about these transitions. To address the uncertainty in India’s energy and emissions future, this letter applies a novel interpretive approach to existing scenario studies. First, we make explicit the implied development, technology and policy assumptions underlying model-based analysis in order to cluster and interpret results. In a second step, we analyse India’s current policy landscape and use that as a benchmark against which to judge scenario assumptions and results. Using this interpretive approach, we conclude that, based on current policies, a doubling of India’s CO2 energy-related emissions from 2012 levels is a likely upper bound for its 2030 emissions and that this trajectory is consistent with meeting India’s Paris emissions intensity pledge. Because of its low emissions starting point, even after a doubling, India’s 2030 per capita emissions will be below today’s global average and absolute emissions will be less than half of China’s 2015 emissions from the same sources. The analysis of recent policy trends further suggests a lower than expected electricity demand and a faster than expected transition from coal to renewable electricity. The letter concludes by making an argument for interpretive approaches as a necessary complement to scenario analysis, particularly in rapidly changing development contexts.

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Whose carbon is burnable? Equity considerations in the allocation of a “right to extract”

Introduction

Carbon emissions—and hence fossil fuel combustion—must decline rapidly if warming is to be held below 1.5 or 2 °C. Yet fossil fuels are so deeply entrenched in the broader economy that a rapid transition poses the challenge of significant transitional disruption. Fossil fuels must be phased out even as access to energy services for basic needs and for economic development expands, particularly in developing countries. Nations, communities, and workers that are economically dependent on fossil fuel extraction will need to find a new foundation for livelihoods and revenue. These challenges are surmountable. In principle, societies could undertake a decarbonization transition in which they anticipate the transitional disruption, and cooperate and contribute fairly to minimize and alleviate it. Indeed, if societies do not work to avoid that disruption, a decarbonization transition may not be possible at all. Too many people may conclude they will suffer undue hardship, and thus undermine the political consensus required to undertake an ambitious transition. The principles and framework laid out here are offered as a contribution to understanding the nature of the potential impacts of a transition, principles for equitably sharing the costs of avoiding them, and guidance for prioritizing which fossil resources can still be extracted.

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Cascading biases against poorer countries

Introduction

A recent article by Robiou du Pont et al. suggests that wealthier countries (for example, the members of the EU) have made more ‘equitable’ contributions to the Paris goals than poorer countries (such as India and China), with most other developing countries somewhere in between. These results are counter-intuitive, given that developed countries have the majority of the responsibility for the atmospheric build-up of GHGs and the majority of the financial wherewithal to help solve the climate problem, yet their Paris pledges amount to fewer tons of mitigated emissions than developing countries. This correspondence presents a response to du Pont et. al and points out the biases towards wealthier nations in the approach and methodology adopted.

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Multi-criteria decision analysis in policy-making for climate mitigation and development

Introduction

Greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation policy-making has largely been conducted in isolation of development considerations. An emerging literature, bolstered by the “nationally determined” nature of the Paris Agreement, explores the identification and assessment of the co-impacts of mitigation actions. There is now a recognized need to consider mitigation an integral part of a multi-objective development challenge. However, the literature on how to practically and effectively apply this in policy-making, particularly in developing economies, is limited. This paper explores the potential for using approaches that fall under the umbrella of multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) in guiding analyses and policy-making that relate to the climate mitigation–development interface. It categorizes three distinct types of decision problems in the broad area of climate and development policy-making, and presents lessons from three case studies, in India, Chile, and Peru and Colombia taken together, where aspects of MCDA approaches were explored. Based on these reviews, the paper concludes that MCDA approaches, despite certain limitations, can add substantive and procedural credibility to existing toolkits supporting climate and development decision-making. Key contributions of the approach are to structure the analyses, systematically include stakeholder deliberations, and provide tools to rigorously incorporate quantitative and qualitative co-impacts in multiple objective-based decisions.

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