Guiding science and policy to robust climate action

To create truly effective climate policy it is important that policymakers are aware of the non-negotiable limits that they must abide by to prevent dangerous rises in temperature. To shed light on these “geophysical limits” IIASA researchers examined a case where there was a greater than two-out-of-three chance that warming was limited to below 2°C. To achieve this, global CO₂ emissions from 2016 onwards should not exceed 590–1,240 billion tons of CO₂, the researchers found [3].

Oil resources and their markets play an essential part in climate change mitigation. In a 2016 study, ENE researchers demonstrated that sustained high or low oil prices could have a substantial impact on CO₂ emissions. In fact, the two price extremes could result in an increase or decrease in emissions of 55-194 gigatons of CO₂ by 2050—amounting to 5-20% of the cumulative emissions allowable for keeping temperature change under the 2°C threshold.

When oil prices are high, there is an effect on demand, as consumers increase efficiency to save money. However, the emissions savings are not larger than one would expect because at high oil prices other carbon-intensive fuels, such as coal, are more likely to be used—either for electricity or liquid fuel production. The team found that the emissions impact depends not just on future oil prices, but other uncertainties such as whether oil and gas prices decouple going forward; the future potential of sustainable bioenergy supplies; and the costs and availability of electric vehicles.

If the goal is to mitigate carbon substantially, the researchers conclude, high oil prices offer no substitute for climate policies [4].

Finally, in the afterglow of the Paris Agreement, many important, policy-relevant questions arose. However, these questions were often unclear to scientists without a strong understanding of policy. Capitalizing on its expertise at the science-policy interface, ENE published two perspective articles that will help catalyze policy-relevant research. One piece directly addressed the geoscience research community [5], while a second targeted the broader global environmental change community, with a focus on the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal [6].