Jul 2026· Environmental Research Letters· Vol 21, pp. 154032· 0 citations· 41 references
Physics
Abstract
We compare eight integrated assessment models to analyze the effects of additional climate policies targeting production and energy supply, consumption and energy demand, and the land sector on top of a moderate carbon price. We find that the combination of these additional policies can close the gap between well-below 2 °C and 1.5 °C pathways with overshoot assuming the same carbon price trajectory. While production and energy supply policies are necessary to decarbonize the energy sector in the long run, consumption and demand-side transformations can reduce emissions especially in the short-term, thus enabling lower cumulative emissions leading to lower peak temperature. Additional land policies can not only reduce CO2 emissions further, but also target non-CO2 emissions and reduce global warming even further.
Extended abstract 3-288-26
While the role of energy demand reduction to meet climate objectives is increasingly considered, most scenarios do not fully reflect this potential, and only a few explore low-demand pathways. Literature reviews show that this is not only due to preferences of modellers or scenario users, but also to structural limitations of models.This analysis investigates how main energy and climate scenarios for Europe balance demand and supply-side options and how this is informing policy making, with a particular focus on the setting of EU 2040 targets.
It first focuses on a comparison and benchmark of scenarios. Eight prominent scenarios by institutions, think tanks and an NGO are selected on criteria of comprehensiveness, detail of modelling and compliance with the Paris Agreement. They are then characterised using 14 indicators that reflect their outcomes (GHG budget, fossil fuel consumption) and their use of major levers (renewables, hydrogen, electrification, reduction of consumption, carbon sinks).
These numbers are then compared to targets and thresholds drawn from reports on climate objectives and the potential of various options by the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change (ESABCC). This benchmark of the relative ambition and feasibility of scenarios shows a positive correlation between demand reduction – compared to stronger reliance on supply-oriented options – and climate ambition, feasibility and robustness, providing major lessons for the EU’s 2040 target setting.
The analysis then reviews detailed assumptions on energy demand for buildings and mobility, comparing the low-demand CLEVER scenario with the Commission's S3 – one of the few providing such detail. Beyond the transparency gap in data, this comparison reveals the prevalence in a scenario like S3 of trend-based projections of activity, contrasting with CLEVER’s explicit modelling of energy services. Analysing this gap can help to inform policies about the potential of energy savings.
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Stephane Bourgeois, Y. Marignac, Nicolas Taillard et al.· Eceee ... summer study proce...· 0 citations
Despite being a major source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, agriculture remains one of the least regulated sectors in climate policy. Designing climate policy for agriculture is challenging due to the interaction between GHG emissions, emissions of other pollutants such as ammonia and nitrate, competing land uses, and the risk of GHG leakage. Within a general equilibrium framework, we analyze cost-effective climate policy for the entire economy with a focus on agriculture, assuming a national GHG emissions target and a target for limiting GHG leakage. The first-best policy requires a large set of tax and subsidy instruments to mitigate GHG leakage from all possible channels. We argue that this set of instruments is unlikely to be implemented in practice. We therefore focus on an implementable second-best policy. We show that accounting for all externalities and leakage effects, it is second-best optimal to differentiate GHG taxes across sectors and to allow taxes on other emissions to deviate from their Pigouvian level. To quantify the second-best policy, we simulate a calibrated version of our theoretical model, with leakage coefficients computed using a large-scale global general equilibrium model. Simulations indicate that the domestic environmental co-benefits of GHG reductions may be sufficiently large to ensure that overall household welfare improves even when disregarding global warming effects. However, the government faces a trade-off: if it wishes to limit GHG leakage, it will have to sacrifice the benefits to the domestic environment that could otherwise be gained from the second-best optimal unilateral climate policy.
P. K. Kruse-Andersen, P. Sørensen, Anders Pretzmann Gotfredsen et al.· CESifo working papers· 0 citations
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) agreed in 2024 to boost finance for climate change in developing countries to USD 300 billion by 2035. In this study, we assess how much mitigation of greenhouse gases (GHGs) is possible by generating this amount of revenues from carbon pricing in industrialized regions. We assess a scenario that considers carbon prices differentiated for industrialized, transition and developing regions. We find that such scenario provides 16% more GHG emissions reductions by 2035 compared to a scenario where the existing national mitigation targets (represented by the nationally determined contributions as of 2022) are achieved. Despite this, a considerable gap remains in terms of the revenues needed to achieve emissions reductions aligned with a pathway securing the climate target of 1.5 °C global warming above pre-industrial levels. Therefore, these outcomes suggest that considerably larger climate mitigation actions are needed beyond the climate finance goal agreed by nations under the UNFCCC. In addition, we highlight by means of additional scenarios the implications (in terms of emissions reductions, carbon price revenues and consumption losses) of the absence in the carbon pricing scheme of the major GHG emitters from industrialized regions (USA) and from developing regions (China).
D. Herran, S. Fujimori, Osamu Nishiura· Environmental Research Lette...· 0 citations
Aggregate emission reductions can conceal a redistribution of climate-policy burdens across sectors. This study reanalyses published EU27 Kaya indices and sectoral emission shares for 1990-2022 to ask whether economic-environmental decoupling has been accompanied by a shift toward harder-to-abate activities. The extension introduces five complementary indicators: log-change contribution accounting, mitigation-to-growth leverage, decoupling elasticity, a sectoral reallocation index, and concentration and entropy measures. Per-capita GDP increased by 44.6%, while the combined effects of lower energy and carbon intensity outweighed the scale effect by a factor of 2.50. Per-capita CO₂ emissions consequently fell by 42.5%. At the same time, 20 percentage points of the emissions distribution were reallocated among sectors. Transport, residential, and agriculture/waste increased their combined share from 31% to 51%, while the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index fell from 0.289 to 0.237, indicating a more dispersed and institutionally complex mitigation burden. The findings show that successful aggregate decoupling does not eliminate sectoral lock-in. EU climate policy must preserve power-sector momentum while strengthening coordinated, sector-specific instruments for mobility, buildings, industry, and non-CO₂ agricultural emissions.
H. Tutar, Dilek Baykal· Transformations and Sustaina...· 0 citations
Decarbonizing the economy effectively mitigates climate change, accelerates the transition to sustainable development, and corresponds to the Kyoto Protocol and Paris Climate Accords. The key objective of this research is to estimate the influence of different social, economic, political and technological factors on decarbonization processes. The scientific novelty of the study is that it investigates decarbonization from a dual perspective, assessing it both in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions levels and carbon intensity of gross domestic product (GDP). This research applies random-effects generalized least squares regression, fixed-effects robustness checks and dynamic System GMM for 27 EU economies in 2013–2021. The results indicate that (i) renewable energy is a vital decarbonization driver (a 10-percentage-point increase in the share of renewable energy leads to a decrease in the amount of GHG emissions by 1.52 thousand metric tons and to a decrease in the carbon intensity of GDP by 0.14 metric tons/thousand USD). (ii) A larger service sector and higher technological employment also contribute positively to the low-carbon transition, while (iii) corruption acts as an important institutional barrier. (iv) GDP per capita is associated with lower carbon intensity and emissions, supporting the view that more advanced economies are better positioned to implement sustainable transformation. Research results provide specific policy implications for designing more effective climate and energy policies, including green finance development, virtual economy growth, and innovation implementation.
Meng Li, O. Kubatko, V. Piven et al.· Energy & Environment· 0 citations
As the remaining carbon budget continues to dwindle, economic growth strains efforts to limit global warming to 1.5 °C. Reducing unnecessary production and consumption in high-income regions and among the wealthy, and organising production more around human needs and human well-being, may alleviate pressures on technology-driven decarbonisation strategies. We employ a modified integrated assessment model to explore the interaction between converging per-capita consumption, climate policy stringency and equity. Our pathways demonstrate that lower-consumption futures are associated with substantially lower warming, 0.3–1.1 °C across different carbon price trajectories, relative to high-consumption futures. Comparatively, global convergence of incomes between regions has a small influence on global temperature outcomes (<±0.1 °C). These findings indicate that reducing high per-capita consumption in high-income regions is a primary lever for achieving futures with equitable and decent living standards while meeting global climate targets. While such transformations may face political challenges, our scenarios suggest that unconstrained growth futures make it considerably harder to remain within safe climate limits. The authors use a modified integrated assessment model to show that lower-consumption and more equitable futures could substantially reduce warming, highlighting the importance of reducing high consumption in affluent regions to meet climate targets.
Mengyu Li, J. Kikstra, Lorenz T. Keyßer et al.· Nature Communications· 0 citations
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