3.4 The role of technologies in long-term mitigation and stabilization: research, development, deployment, diffusion and transfer

Technology is among the central driving forces of GHG emissions. It is one of the main determinants of economic development, consumption patterns and thus human well-being. At the same time, technology and technological change offer the main possibilities for reducing future emissions and achieving the eventual stabilization of atmospheric concentrations of GHGs (see Chapter 2, Section 2.7.1.2, which assesses the role of technology in climate change mitigation, including long-term emissions and stabilization scenarios).

The ways in which technology reduces future GHG emissions in long-term emission scenarios include:

• Improving technology efficiencies and thereby reducing emissions per unit service (output). These measures are enhanced when complemented by energy conservation and rational use of energy.
• Replacing carbon-intensive sources of energy by less intensive ones, such as switching from coal to natural gas. These measures can also be complemented by efficiency improvements (e.g. combined cycle natural gas power plants are more efficient than modern coal power plants) thereby further reducing emissions.
• Introducing carbon capture and storage to abate uncontrolled emissions. This option could be applied at some time in the future, in conjunction with essentially all electricity generation technologies, many other energy conversion technologies and energy-intensive processes using fossil energy sources as well as biomass (in which case it corresponds to net carbon removal from the atmosphere).
• Introducing carbon-free renewable energy sources ranging from a larger role for hydro and wind power, photovoltaics and solar thermal power plants, modern biomass (that can be carbon-neutral, resulting in zero net carbon emissions) and other advanced renewable technologies.
• Enhancing the role of nuclear power as another carbon-free source of energy. This would require a further increase in the nuclear share of global energy, depending on the development of ‘inherently’ safe reactors and fuel cycles, resolution of the technical issues associated with long-term storage of fissile materials and improvement of national and international non-proliferation agreements.
• New technology configurations and systems, e.g. hydrogen as a carbon-free carrier to complement electricity, fuel cells and new storage technologies.
• Reducing GHG and CO₂ emissions from agriculture and land use in general critically depends on the diffusion of new technologies and practices that could include less fertilizer-intensive production and improvement of tillage and livestock management.

Virtually all scenarios assume that technological and structural changes occur during this century, leading to relative reductions in emissions compared to the hypothetical case of attempting to ‘keep’ emissions intensities of GDP and structure the same as today (see Chapter 2, Section 2.7.1.1, which discusses the role of technology in baseline scenarios). Figure 3.32 shows such a hypothetical range of cumulative emissions under the assumption of ‘freezing’ technology and structural change in all scenarios at current levels, but letting populations change and economies develop as assumed in the original scenarios (Nakicenovic et al., 2006). To show this, the energy intensity of GDP and the carbon intensity of energy are kept constant. The bars in the figure indicate the central tendencies of the scenarios in the literature by giving the cumulative emissions ranges between the 25^th and the 75^th percentile of the scenarios in the scenario database.^[21] The hypothetical cumulative emissions (without technology and structural change) range from about 9000 (25^th percentile) to 12000 (75^th percentile), with a median of about 10400 GtCO₂ by 2100.

Figure 3.32: Median, 25^th and 75^th percentile of global cumulative carbon emissions by 2100 in the scenarios developed since 2001.

Note: The range labelled ‘frozen technology’ refers to hypothetical futures without improvement in energy and carbon intensities in the scenarios; the range labelled ‘frozen energy intensity’ refers to hypothetical futures where only carbon intensity of energy is kept constant, while energy intensity of GDP is left the same as originally assumed in scenarios; the range labelled CO₂ baseline refer to the 83 baseline scenarios in the database, while the region labelled CO₂ intervention includes 211 mitigation and/or stabilization scenarios.

Source: After Nakicenovic et al. (2006)

The next bar in Figure 3.32 shows cumulative emissions by keeping carbon intensity of energy constant while allowing energy intensity of GDP to evolve as originally specified in the underlying scenarios. This in itself reduces the cumulative emissions substantively, by more than 40% to almost 50% (75^th and 25^th percentiles, respectively). Thus, structural economic changes and more efficient use of energy lead to significant reductions of energy requirements across the scenarios as incorporated in the baselines, indicating that the baseline already includes vigorous carbon saving. In other words, this means that many new technologies and changes that lead to lower relative emissions are assumed in the baseline. Any mitigation measures and policies need to go beyond these baseline assumptions.

The next bar in Figure 3.32 also allows carbon intensities of energy to change as originally assumed in the underlying scenarios. Again, the baseline assumptions lead to further and substantial reductions of cumulative emissions, by some 13% to more than 20% (25^th and 75^th percentile, respectively), or less than half the emissions, as compared to the case of no improvement in energy or carbon intensities. This results in the original cumulative emissions as specified by reference scenarios in the literature, from 4050 (25^th percentile) to 5400 (75^th percentile), with a median of 4730 GtCO₂ by 2100. It should be noted that this range is for the 25^th to the 75^th percentile only. In contrast, the full range of cumulative emissions across 56 scenarios in the database is from 2075 to 7240 GtCO₂.^[22]

The next and final step is to compare the cumulative emissions across baseline scenarios with those in the mitigation and stabilization variants of the same scenarios. Figure 3.32 shows (in the last bar) yet another significant reduction of future cumulative emissions from 2370 to 3610 (corresponding to the 25^th to the 75^th percentile of the full scenario range), with a median of 3010 GtCO₂ by 2100. This corresponds to about 70% emissions reduction across mitigation scenarios, compared to the hypothetical case of no changes in energy and carbon intensities and still a large, or about a 30%, reduction compared to the respective baseline scenarios.^[23]

This illustrates the importance of technology and structural changes, both in reference and mitigation scenarios. However, this is an aggregated illustration across all scenarios and different mitigation levels for cumulative emissions. Thus, it is useful to also give a more specific illustrative example. Figure 3.33 gives such an illustration by showing the importance of technological change assumptions in both reference and mitigation scenarios for a 550 ppmv concentration target based on four SRES scenarios. Such analyses are increasingly becoming available. For instance, Placet et al. (2004) provide a detailed study of possible technology development pathways under climate stabilization for the US government Climate Change Technology Program. To illustrate the importance of technological change, actual projected scenario values in the original SRES no-climate policy scenarios are compared with a hypothetical case with frozen 1990 structures and technologies for both energy supply and end-use. The difference (denoted by a grey shaded area in Figure 3.33) illustrates the impact of technological change, which leads to improved efficiency and ‘decarbonization’ in energy systems already incorporated into the baseline emission scenario.

The impacts of technological options leading to emission reductions are illustrated by the colour-shaded areas in Figure 3.33, regrouped into three categories: demand reductions (e.g. through deployment of more efficient end-use technologies, such as lighting or vehicles), fuel switching (substituting high-GHG-emitting technologies for low- or zero-emitting technologies such as renewables or nuclear), and finally, CO₂ capture and storage technologies. The mix in the mitigative technology portfolio required to reduce emissions from the reference scenario level to that consistent with the illustrative 550 ppmv stabilization target varies as a function of the baseline scenario underlying the model calculations (shown in Figure 3.33), as well as with the degree of stringency of the stabilization target adopted (not shown in Figure 3.33). An interesting finding from a large number of modelling studies is that scenarios with higher degrees of technology diversification (e.g. scenario A1B in Figure 3.33) also lead to a higher degree of flexibility with respect of meeting alternative climate (e.g. stabilization) targets and generally also to lower overall costs compared with less diversified technology scenarios. This illustrative example also confirms the conclusion reached in Section 3.3 that was based on a broader range of scenario literature.

Figure 3.33: Impact of technology on global carbon emissions in reference and climate mitigation scenarios.

Note: Global carbon emissions (GtC) in four scenarios developed within the IPCC SRES and TAR (A2, B2 top and bottom of left panel; A1FI and A1B top and bottom of right panel). The grey-shaded area indicates the difference in emissions between the original no-climate policy reference scenario compared with a hypothetical scenario assuming frozen 1990 energy efficiency and technology, illustrating the impact of technological change incorporated already into the reference scenario. Colour-shaded areas show the impact of various additional technology options deployed in imposing a 550 ppmv CO₂ stabilization constraint on the respective reference scenario, including energy conservation (blue), substitution of high-carbon by low- or zero-carbon technologies (orange), as well as carbon capture and sequestration (black). Of particular interest are the two A1 scenarios shown on the right-hand side of the panel that share identical (low) population and (high) economic growth assumptions, thus making differences in technology assumptions more directly comparable.

Source: Adapted from Nakicenovic et al. (2000), IPCC (2001a), Riahi and Roehrl (2001), and Edmonds (2004).

This brief assessment of the role of technology across scenarios indicates that there is a significant technological change and diffusion of new and advanced technologies already assumed in the baselines and additional technological change ‘induced’ through various policies and measures in the mitigation scenarios. The newer literature on induced technological change assessed in the previous sections, along with other scenarios (e.g. Grübler et al., 2002; and Köhler et al., 2006, see also Chapter 11), also affirms this conclusion.