Role and issues of CCS in long-term sustainable emission reductions and toward sustainable development

AbstractThe Copenhagen Accord recognizes the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be below 2 degrees Celsius, and deep cuts in global emissions are required. According to the Fourth Assessment Report of IPCC, the global emissions in 2050 should be reduced by 50% at least compared to the 2000 level in order to achieve below around 2 degrees Celsius and 450 ppmv- CO2eq.. However, the future improvement over 4% p.a. will be needed to achieve halving global emissions within a few percent of GDP losses, while the historical carbon intensity was improved by 1.2% p.a, There are large gaps between historical trends and the required efforts for such a challenging target. In addition, historical trends indicate that it is very difficult to achieve reductions in primary energy consumptions. Therefore, decarbonization of the energy, i.e., carbon intensity improvement, is indispensable for deep emission cuts. Although the developed countries had some trends of the decarbonization, it is also far from such targets of large emission reductions. De-carbonization technologies of nuclear power, renewable energies and Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage (CCS) are significant. Most emission reduction scenarios including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report and the International Energy Agency (IEA) show increase in carbon price to advance carbon emissions for the future under the assumptions on sustainable global cooperation for emission reductions. However, It is difficult to sustain global cooperative intention to tackle global warming over 100 years in a real world. The carbon price rather should be decreased in the long-run for sustainable development and sustainable global actions for emission reductions. In addition, historical and currently planed carbon prices of emission trading schemes in many countries are low in the real world, and high carbon prices, particularly explicit prices, are unacceptable politically. CCS development and deployment has risks of intermittent carbon price in near- and mid-term and of carbon price converging zero in long-term. This paper discusses this gap between proposed scenarios assuming ideal world including continuous increase in carbon price and politically acceptable carbon prices in the real world, and outlook of plausible CCS deployment considering the gap

Analysis of Technological Portfolios for CO2 stabilizations and Effects of Technological Changes

In this study, cost-effective technological options to stabilize CO2 concentrations at 550, 500, and 450 ppmv are evaluated using a world energy systems model of linear programming with a high regional resolution. This model treats technological change endogenously for wind power, photovoltaics, and fuel-cell vehicles, which are technologies of mass production and are considered to follow the “learning by doing” process. Technological changes induced by climate policies are evaluated by maintaining the technological changes at the levels of the base case wherein there is no climate policy. The results achieved through model analyses include 1) cost-effective technological portfolios, including carbon capture and storage, marginal CO2 reduction costs, and increases in energy system cost for three levels of stabilization and 2) the effect of the induced technological change on the above mentioned factors. A sensitivity analysis is conducted with respect to the learning rate.Energy systems model, Global warming, Technological portfolios, Technological changes

Assessment of the Japanese Energy Efficiency Standards Program

Japanese energy efficiency standards program for appliances is a unique program which sets and revises mandatory standards based on the products of the highest energy efficiency in the market. This study assessed the cost-effectiveness of the standard settings for an air conditioner as a major residential appliance or typical example in the program. Based on analysis of empirical data, the net costs and effects from 1999 to 2040 were estimated. When applying a discount rate of 3%, the cost of abating CO2 emissions realized through the considered standards was estimated to be -13,700 JPY/t CO2. The sensitivity analysis, however, showed that the cost turns into positive at a discount rate of 26% or higher. The authors also revealed that the standards’ “excellent” cost-effectiveness largely depends on that of the 1st standard setting, and the CO2 abatement cost through the 2nd standard was estimated to be as high as 26,800 JPY/t CO2. The results imply that the government is required to be careful about the possible economic burden imposed when considering introducing new, additional standards

Assessment of road transportation measures for global net-zero emissions considering comprehensive energy systems

Many countries are seeking to achieve net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. Electrification is a key measure for achieving this goal in all sectors, including the transport sector. Meanwhile, there are several emission reduction options in the road transport sector for achieving net-zero emissions when entire energy systems are considered. It is important to consider entire energy systems not only in the transport sector, but also in the energy supply sectors, including emission offset measures of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) under several conditions of energy supply and transport constraints. This article presents the assessment of scenarios estimated by a global energy systems model—the DNE21+ model—that describes detailed technologies considering differences among regions/countries, followed by the comparative evaluation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), International Energy Agency, and BP scenarios. Hybrid electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles could also be cost-effective, even under the net-zero world, thanks to the emission offset of CDR under the scenarios with the costs and potentials of CDR which are consistent with the IPCC scenarios and broadly reviewed future costs of direct air capture (DAC) which is one of the CDR

A framework to add incentives for managements after CO2 injections

AbstractCarbon capture and storage (CCS) has an issue in the managements after CO2 injection into geological formations, while CCS is expected to contribute large emission reductions in terms of cost-effectiveness. The incentives to conduct CO2 monitoring and to prevent CO2 leakage for long time should be considered as well as those for CO2 injection. This paper proposes a baseline-credit scheme for the purpose and discussed its virtues and shortcomings. The scheme is similar to Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD) scheme for preventing deforestation. In addition, numerical example calculations for the expected monitoring costs under the scheme were shown

Economic impacts of power supply and CO2 emission reductions of Japan after the Fukushima nuclear power accident

This paper discusses the energy strategies of Japan after the severe accident of the Fukushima-daiichi nuclear power plant. Firstly, this paper presents the economic analyses of the three options of “Options for Energy and Environment”, proposed by the Energy and Environmental Council of the Japanese government. This paper presents the quantitative analysis on economic impacts of Japan by sector in 2020 and 2030 for CO2 emission reduction targets on the consideration of international industrial relationships using DEARS (Dynamic Energy-economic Analysis model with multi-Regions and multi-Sectors). From the simulation results, the GDP losses in all the three scenarios are beyond 4% relative to the reference case while the marginal abatement costs are beyond $400 per ton of CO2. However, these analyses on the options are at least three controversial issues. The first is the drastic energy savings even in the baseline. The second is the considerable increases in renewable energies beyond 25$150 per ton of CO2. Our results reveal that the GDP losses in 2030 are within about 2% relative to the revised baseline, where the economic growths can reach the government’s growth scenario of 1.0%/year for 2010-2030. These analyses help further discussions on a more realistic strategy

The economic impacts of climate policies under the shared socioeconomic pathways

This paper discusses economic impacts of climate policies under the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) on population, GDP and technology. The concepts and storylines on the SSPs have been discussed by the international communities on integrated assessment model (IAM) and impact, adaptation, and vulnerability (IAV). This economic analysis, focusing on climate mitigation, is conducted by using an energy-economic model, DEARS (Dynamic Energy-economic Analysis model with multi-Regions and multi-Sectors) having economic and energy modules. We assume the climate policy cases as the CO2 emission pathways with the radiative forcings of 4.5, 3.7 and 3.0W/m2 in 2100. The results reveal that the industrial structure changes from energy-intensive to service sectors in all the cases. To compare the results of SSP4 (inequality world) to those of SSP5 (conventional development), the adverse economic impacts in SSP4 with the high prices of fossil fuels are relatively small. On the other hand, the adverse impacts in SSP5 with the low prices are high because the baseline CO2 emission levels are relatively high and the amounts of emission reductions in the policy cases are relatively large. These results are consistent with the SSPs storylines in which SSP4 and SSP5 have low and high challenges for climate mitigation, respectivel