Open AccessOPTIMAL CLIMATE POLICY IN 3D: MITIGATION, CARBON REMOVAL, AND SOLAR GEOENGINEERING
Author(s) -
Mariia Belaia,
Juan MorenoCruz,
David W. Keith
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
climate change economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.556
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 2010-0086
pISSN - 2010-0078
DOI - 10.1142/s2010007821500081
Subject(s) - discounting , geoengineering , baseline (sea) , environmental science , software deployment , climate change , climate policy , climate change mitigation , greenhouse gas , environmental economics , econometrics , computer science , natural resource economics , economics , ecology , oceanography , finance , biology , geology , operating system
We introduce solar geoengineering (SG) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) into an integrated assessment model to analyze the trade-offs between mitigation, SG, and CDR. We propose a novel empirical parameterization of SG that disentangles its efficacy, calibrated with climate model results, from its direct impacts. We use a simple parameterization of CDR that decouples it from the scale of baseline emissions. We find that (a) SG optimally delays mitigation and lowers the use of CDR, which is distinct from moral hazard; (b) SG is deployed prior to CDR while CDR drives the phasing out of SG in the far future; (c) SG deployment in the short term is relatively independent of discounting and of the long-term trade-off between SG and CDR over time; (d) small amounts of SG sharply reduce the cost of meeting a [Formula: see text]C target and the costs of climate change, even with a conservative calibration for the efficacy of SG.