3.6.1.1 Influence of passing from concentration targets to temperature targets in a cost-effectiveness framework
New studies such as Den Elzen et al. (2006) confirm previous results. They establish that reaching a concentration target as low as 450 ppmv CO2-eq, under even optimistic assumptions of full participation, poses significant challenges in the 2030–2040 timeframe, with rapidly increasing emission reduction rates and rising costs. In a stochastic cost-effectiveness framework, reaching such targets requires a significant and early emissions reduction with respect to respective baselines.
But concentration ceilings are a poor surrogate for climate change risks: they bypass many links from atmospheric chemistry to ultimate damages and they only refer to long-term implications of global warming. A better proxy of climate change impacts can be found in global mean temperature: every regional assessment of climate change impacts refers to this parameter, making it easier for stakeholders to grasp the stakes of global warming for their region; one can also take into account the rate of climate change, a major determinant of impacts and damages.
Therefore, with a noticeable acceleration in the last few years, the scientific community has concentrated on assessing climate policies in the context of climate stabilization around various temperature targets. These contributions have mainly examined the influence of the uncertainty about climate sensitivity on the allowable (short-term) GHGs emissions budget and on the corresponding stringency of the climatic constraints, either through sensitivity analyses (Böhringer et al., 2006; Caldeira et al., 2003; Den Elzen and Meinshausen, 2006; Richels et al., 2004) or within an optimal control frame-work (Ambrosi et al., 2003; Yohe et al., 2004).
On the whole, these studies reach similar conclusions, outlining the significance of uncertainty about climate sensitivity. Ambrosi et al. (2003) demonstrates the information value of climate sensitivity before 2030, given the significant economic regrets from a precautionary climate policy in the presence of uncertainty about this parameter. Such information might not be available soon (i.e. at least 50 years could be necessary – Kelly et al., 2000). Yohe et al. (2004) thus conclude: ‘uncertainty (about climate sensitivity) is the reason for acting in the near term and uncertainty cannot be used as a justification for doing nothing’.
A few authors analyze the trade-off between a costly acceleration of mitigation costs and a (temporary) overshoot of targets, and the climate impacts of this overshoot. Ambrosi et al. (2003) did so through a willingness to pay for not interfering with the climate system. They show that allowing for overshoot of an ex-ante target significantly decreases the required acceleration of decarbonization and the peak of abatement costs, but does not drastically change the level of abatement in the first period. However, the overshoot may significantly increase climate change damages as discussed above (see Section 3.5). Another result is that higher climate sensitivity magnifies the rate of warming, which in turn exacerbates adaptation difficulties, and leads to stringent abatement policy recommendations for the coming decades (Ambrosi, 2007). This result is robust for the choice of discount rate; uncertainty about the rate constraint is proven to be more important for short-term decisions than uncertainty about the magnitude of warming. Therefore, research should be aimed at better characterizing early climate change risks with a view to helping decision-makers in agreeing on a safe guardrail to limit the rate of global warming.