Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK); Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC); Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin)
Date Written: November 2015
Abstract
Achieving a truly sustainable energy transition requires progress across multiple dimensions beyond climate change mitigation goals. This article reviews and synthesizes results from disparate strands of literature on the coeffects of mitigation to inform climate policy choices at different governance levels. The literature documents many potential cobenefits of mitigation for nonclimate objectives, such as human health and energy security, but little is known about their overall welfare implications. Integrated model studies highlight that climate policies as part of well-designed policy packages reduce the overall cost of achieving multiple sustainability objectives. The incommensurability and uncertainties around the quantification of coeffects become, however, increasingly pervasive the more the perspective shifts from sectoral and local to economy wide and global, the more objectives are analyzed, and the more the results are expressed in economic rather than nonmonetary terms. Different strings of evidence highlight the role and importance of energy demand reductions for realizing synergies across multiple sustainability objectives.
von Stechow, Christoph and McCollum, David and Riahi, Keywan and Minx, Jan and Kriegler, Elmar and van Vuuren, Detlef P. and Jewell, Jessica and Robledo-Abad, Carmenza and Hertwich, Edgar and Tavoni, Massimo and Mirasgedis, Sevastianos and Lah, Oliver and Roy, Joyashree and Mulugetta, Yacob and Dubash, Navroz K. and Bollen, Johannes C and Ürge-Vorsatz, Diana and Edenhofer, Ottmar, Integrating Global Climate Change Mitigation Goals with Other Sustainability Objectives: A Synthesis (November 2015). Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Vol. 40, pp. 363-394, 2015, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2688500 or http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-021113-095626
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