11 Gaps in Knowledge
Important gaps in own knowledge on which additional research could be useful
to support future assessments include:
- Further exploration of the regional, country, and sector specific potentials
of technological and social innovation options, including:
- The short, medium, and long-term potential and costs of both CO2
and non-CO2, non-energy mitigation options;
- Understanding of technology diffusion across different regions;
- Identifying opportunities in the area of social innovation leading to
decreased greenhouse gas emissions;
- Comprehensive analysis of the impact of mitigation measures on C flows
in and out of the terrestrial system; and
- Some basic inquiry in the area of geo-engineering.
- Economic, social, and institutional issues related to climate change
mitigation in all countries. Priority areas include:
- Much more analysis of regionally specific mitigation options, barriers,
and policies is recommended as these are conditioned by the regions'
mitigative capacity;
- The implications of mitigation on equity;
- Appropriate methodologies and improved data sources for climate change
mitigation and capacity building in the area of integrated assessment;
- Strengthening future research and assessments, especially in developing
countries.
- Methodologies for analysis of the potential of mitigation options and
their cost, with special attention to comparability of results. Examples include:
- Characterizing and measuring barriers that inhibit greenhouse gas-reducing
action;
- Make mitigation modelling techniques more consistent, reproducible,
and accessible;
- Modelling technology learning; improving analytical tools for evaluating
ancillary benefits, e.g. assigning the costs of abatement to greenhouse
gases and to other pollutants;
- Systematically analyzing the dependency of costs on baseline assumptions
for various greenhouse gas stabilization scenarios;
- Developing decision analytical frameworks for dealing with uncertainty
as well as socio-economic and ecological risk in climate policymaking;
- Improving global models and studies, their assumptions, and their consistency
in the treatment and reporting of non-Annex I countries and regions.
- Evaluating climate mitigation options in the context of development,
sustainability, and equity. Examples include:
- More research is needed on the balance of options in the areas of mitigation
and adaptation and of the mitigative and adaptive capacity in the context
of DES;
- Exploration of alternative development paths including sustainable consumption
patterns in all sectors, including the transportation sector, and integrated
analysis of mitigation and adaptation;
- Identifying opportunities for synergy between explicit climate policies
and general policies promoting sustainable development;
- Integration of inter- and intragenerational equity in climate change
mitigation studies;
- Implications of equity assessments;
- Analysis of scientific, technical, and economic aspects of implications
of options under a wide variety of stabilization regimes;
- Determining what kinds of policies interact with what sorts of socio-economic
conditions to result in futures characterized by low CO2 emissions;
- Investigation on how changes in societal values may be encouraged to
promote sustainable development; and
- Evaluating climate mitigation options in the context of and for synergy
with potential or actual adaptive measures.
- Development of engineering-economic, end-use, and sectoral studies of
GHG emissions mitigation potentials for specific regions and/or countries
of the world, focusing on:
- Identification and assessment of mitigation technologies and measures
that are required to deviate from "business-as-usual" in the
short term (2010, 2020);
- Development of standardized methodologies for quantifying emissions
reductions and costs of mitigation technologies and measures;
- Identification of barriers to the implementation of the mitigation technologies
and measures;
- Identification of opportunities to increase adoption of GHG emissions
mitigation technologies and measures through connections with ancillary
benefits as well as furtherance of the DES goals; and
- Linking the results of the assessments to specific policies and programmes
that can overcome the identified barriers as well as leverage the identified
ancillary benefits.
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