Keeping it in the ground? Assessing global governance for fossil-fuel supply reduction

Restricting the international supply of fossil fuels is increasingly acknowledged as a necessary part of achieving long-term global temperature goals. However, the barriers to imposing such restrictions are immense. Issues of economic stability, equity, and associated geo-political tensions, are particularly acute. In theory, a managed decline can be facilitated by international cooperation. In practice, however, despite some apparent rhetorical commitments, adequate institutional responses have not been forthcoming. This paper highlights potentially relevant institutions, and assesses their combined contribution to fulfilling a set of governance functions relevant to decarbonisation in this case. The analysis finds that the governance challenges associated with deciding what fossil fuel carbon should be designated ‘unburnable’, and managing the associated equity-related, geo-political conflicts, are far from being fully recognised. Potential institutional reforms, by which governance gaps could be narrowed, are identified. These highlight the further potential of the G20, UNFCCC and WTO in particular

Taking the slow route to decarbonisation? Developing climate governance for international transport

Despite their significant, growing contribution to global emissions, international aviation and shipping have avoided a significant climate governance response until recently. This paper outlines the urgent need for, but major barriers to, decarbonisation of these industries, including various market failures and sensitivities over restraining demand. The need and potential for international governance to address these issues is seen to vary across aviation and shipping, given different industry structures and characteristics. A range of relevant inter- and transnational governance institutions is highlighted and an assessment of their overall adequacy offered. With a 2018 commitment to significant emission reduction, maritime governance effort has progressed further, although significant implementation challenges remain. Meanwhile aviation-related commitments rely more on out-of-sector offsets. Options for enhancing governance for decarbonisation are outlined, highlighting the importance of, inter alia, coordination between the UNFCCC and sectoral bodies, mechanisms to finance R&D and incentivise investment, and openness in key decision-making fora

Where did the time (series) go? Estimation of marginal emission factors with autoregressive components

This paper offers a novel contribution to the literature on Marginal Emission Factors (MEF) by proposing a robust empirical methodology for their estimation across both time and space. Our Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average models with time-effects not only outperforms the established models in the economics literature but it also proves more reliable than variations adopted in the field of engineering. Utilising half-hourly data on carbon emissions and generation in Great Britain, the results allow us to identify a more stable path of MEFs than obtained with existing methodologies. We also estimate marginal emission effects over subsequent time periods (intra-day), rather than focussing only on individual settlement periods (inter-day). This allows us to evaluate the annual cycle of emissions as a result of changes in the economic and social activity which drives demand. Moreover, the reliability of our approach is further confirmed upon exploring the cross-country context. Indeed, our methodology proves reliable when applied to the case of Italy, which is characterised by a different data generation process. Crucially, we provide a more robust basis for valuing actual carbon emission reductions, especially in electricity systems with high penetration of intermittent renewable technologies

Poverty index as a tool for adaptation intervention to climate change in northeast India

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007) reports that the number of extreme precipitation and temperature events in India are projected to increase in the short term. The negative effects of this on rural populations in India may include crop and livestock loss, livelihood risk, health and sanitation disruptions and shelter risk. Overseas Development Assistance, in the form of aid, will help rural communities to counter these impacts; several development agencies already require that the adaptation to climate change risks be included as project activities in the aid programme. However, it is often difficult to accurately target development aid in developing countries due to uneven and cluster-like development of areas. To help counter this problem, we developed a poverty index intended to help prioritize development aid towards communities at risk, in order of need. The district-wise poverty index was created for seven states of northeast India, a region with highly uneven development, and has been developed from data available from the North-East Data Bank (DoNER). The indicators were selected to adequately represent the poverty of the people as well as to act as a prioritizing mechanism in a data scarce region. The inclusion of a Gini coefficient of land distribution is new to poverty indexes, and helps to capture the pattern of highly unequal land distribution in northeast India, which in turn affects the distribution of income. Although primarily developed for northeast India, the index can be used in other developing countries with imbalances in regional development. If the biophysical factors affecting vulnerability are known, this index can be used in a weighted combination with vulnerability