Dec 28, 2021
Approximately seven million population in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau of China, a global climate sensitive region, still rely primarily on yak dung for household cooking and heating. The treatment and combustion of yak dung result in a variety of negative impacts in terms of local alpine grassland degradation, indoor air pollution, public health risk, as well as global climate change. There is an urgent need to explore alternative pathway for affordable and clean energy as indicated in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals for 2030. This perspective has analyzed the key challenges rooted in yak dung use on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau region. Based on this, this perspective has further proposed a new complementary energy system to take advantage of locally available, clean and sustainable energy sources of wind and solar power, and have provided economic analyses. Meanwhile, this perspective has pointed out the potential barriers to promoting the new complementary energy system in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau region due to traditional habits, economic factors and policies. Finally, strategies for transitioning from yak dung to the proposed alternative energy system is discussed at the end. Successful energy transition for the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau region offers an important option to achieving many other sustainable development goals related to climate change, economic development, and environment. The perspective is expected to shed light on the development of sustainable energy in other developing region or countries in the world to address multiple societal goals.
Dec 28, 2021
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is a cap-and-trade system targeting CO2 emissions from the electricity sector in the northeastern United States. As a major power producer and carbon emitter, Pennsylvania plans to join RGGI in 2022, which will affect both the carbon market (i.e., RGGI) and the regional electricity market (i.e., PJM). Combining a PJM power system model with a reduced-form model of CO2 emissions abatement from RGGI states that are not in PJM, we find the annual average emissions from power plants in Pennsylvania can be reduced by 40%, 79%, 68%, and 76% for CO2, SO2, NOx, and PM2.5, respectively, during 2022–2030. Then, based on a range of source-specific marginal damage estimates, we find the cumulative monetized health cobenefits to be 17.7 to 40.8 billion USD. However, the reduced emissions and health damages in Pennsylvania are slightly offset by increases in the other states in PJM that do not participate in RGGI. Our study hence highlights the potential cross-state leakage issue that warrants careful consideration in the policy design and implementation process.
Dec 28, 2021
Existing estimates of optimal climate policy ignore the possibility that carbon tax revenues could be used in a progressive way; model results therefore typically imply that near-term climate action comes at some cost to the poor. Using the Nested Inequalities Climate Economy (NICE) model, we show that an equal per capita refund of carbon tax revenues implies that achieving a 2 °C target can pay large and immediate dividends for improving well-being, reducing inequality and alleviating poverty. In an optimal policy calculation that weighs the benefits against the costs of mitigation, the recommended policy is characterized by aggressive near-term climate action followed by a slower climb towards full decarbonization; this pattern—which is driven by a carbon revenue Laffer curve—prevents runaway warming while also preserving tax revenues for redistribution. Accounting for these dynamics corrects a long-standing bias against strong immediate climate action in the optimal policy literature.
Dec 28, 2021
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions has the ‘co-benefit’ of also reducing air pollution and associated impacts on human health. Here, we incorporate health co-benefits into estimates of the optimal climate policy for three different climate policy regimes. The first fully internalizes the climate externality at the global level via a uniform carbon price (the ‘cooperative equilibrium’), thus minimizing total mitigation costs. The second connects to the concept of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ where nations coordinate their actions while accounting for different national capabilities considering socioeconomic conditions. The third assumes nations act only in their own self-interest. We find that air quality co-benefits motivate substantially reduced emissions under all three policy regimes, but that some form of global cooperation is required to prevent runaway temperature rise. However, co-benefits do warrant high levels of mitigation in certain regions even in the self-interested case, suggesting that air quality impacts may expand the range of possible policy outcomes whereby global temperatures do not increase unabated.
Dec 28, 2021
The United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a framework for national and international efforts to further economic development, end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure peace and prosperity for all people by 2030. In the first four years since the SDGs came into force (2016–2019), little to no progress has been made on 107 of the 169 SDG targets, and the world is even moving away from 39 of the targets. (1) In 2020, COVID-19 has created additional setbacks for SDGs. With the year 2030 less than a decade away, an urgent and more ambitious response is crucial to enable SDGs to be realized globally. We need strong leadership to create secure and cooperative partnerships between governments, the private sector, and civil societies around the globe to move these goals forward at pace. As leading economic powers, the U.S. and China are well positioned to take a leadership role in this action. By building closer collaborations at both governmental and nongovernmental levels and sustained collaborations on science and technology, the U.S. and China can act together to help achieve the SDGs by utilizing complementary expertise and resources. Moreover, the two countries can champion sustainable development through their global reach in trade, investment, aid, technology diffusion, and programs of talent exchange.
