Yang, Pu; (2023) Reviewing national climate commitments from an economic perspective. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This thesis reviews the national climate commitments from an economic efficiency perspective, aiming to better track national climate efforts and facilitate more ambitious climate commitments. This research contributes to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP) by enabling collective action on Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) and motivating more ambitious mitigation targets by acknowledging the corresponding benefits. It is crucial to track the results of national CDR liabilities and guide future development efforts. At present, effort sharing is still the best way to determine national responsibilities for negative emissions. This thesis allocates cost-effective global CDR pathways to countries using the principle of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDR–RC). As the biophysical endowment and physical storage capability are constraining countries from deploying CDR, the equitable liability is further compared with national cost-effective CDR capability (including land-used CDR capability and geophysical storage capability). Equitable allocations of CDR, in many cases, exceed implied land and carbon storage capacities. This mismatch between CDR liability and capability thus highlights the need for a more diverse set of CDR technologies and mechanisms to facilitate the equitable international distribution of CDR. In light of the increasing recognition of mitigation benefits, this thesis developed a solely economic approach to review both the first and post-2020 updated NDCs from a cost-benefit-efficient perspective. Climate change mitigation is treated as solely economic behaviour motivated by avoiding future climate damage. The results show that countries from the US, the EU, China, and Japan have proposed more ambitious NDCs that are consistent with 1.5℃ in the post-2020 NDCs. Other developing countries, such as Brazil, South Africa, and Other Asian countries, are lagging behind in ratcheting up ambitions, with their NDCs less ambitious than the first NDCs. The evaluation reveals an increasing differentiation of national climate efforts, which opens up opportunities for leadership effects and climate clubbing in future climate negotiations. With uncertainty in national emission accounting, the author estimates the social cost of carbon as an indicator to track national climate policies and informs further action beyond emission control. While the social cost of carbon used in current policy appraisals satisfies national cost-benefit efficiency, they are significantly lower than the Paris consistent level. This thesis generally reinforces the recognition of economic efficiency in the Paris discussion. The proposed solely economic strategy motivates climate actions with the avoided climate damage and provides associated policy indicators to track national efforts. The results of the analysis of the economic tradeoffs justify more ambitious NDCs and point to the urgent need for clear CDR development goals.

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