Abstract
We study international cooperation regarding climate policy when solar geoengineering is a policy option available to nations. Employing an analytical theoretical model, we show how the equilibrium levels of emissions abatement and geoengineering are affected by the level of cooperation between countries, with more cooperation leading to lower emissions and more geoengineering. To quantify these results, we modify a numerical integrated assessment model, DICE, to include solar geoengineering and cooperation among nations. The simulation results show that the effect of cooperation on policy depends crucially on whether damages from geoengineering are local or global. With local damages, more cooperation leads to more geoengineering, but the opposite is true for global damages.
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Notes
- 1.
See, e.g., John Latham et al., Climate engineering: exploring nuances and consequences of deliberately altering the Earth’s energy budget, PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. SERIES A, MATHEMATICAL, PHYSICAL, AND ENGINEERING SCIENCES 372, 2031 (2014) and CLIMATE INTERVENTION: REFLECTING SUNLIGHT TO COOL EARTH (2015) for reviews of the science behind solar geoengineering, and see Gernot Klepper, and Wilfried Rickels, Climate engineering: Economic considerations and research challenges, 8(2) REV. ENVT’L ECON. & POLICY 270, 289 (2014);Garth Heutel, Juan B. Moreno-Cruz, and Katharine Ricke, Climate engineering economics, 8 ANNUAL REV. RESOURCE ECON. 99, 118 (2016) for reviews of the economics of solar geoengineering.
- 2.
See, e.g., Juan B. Moreno-Cruz, Mitigation and the geoengineering threat, 41 RESOURCE AND ENERGY ECONOMICS} 248, 263 (2015) and Katharine L. Ricke, Juan B. Moreno-Cruz, and Ken Caldeira, Strategic incentives for climate geoengineering coalitions to exclude broad participation, 8(1) ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH LETTERS 014021 (2013) and Martin L. Weitzman, A Voting Architecture for the Governance of Free-Driver Externalities, with Application to Geoengineering, 117(4) The Scandinavian Journal of Economics 1049, 1068 (2015).
- 3.
William Nordhaus, Estimates of the social cost of carbon: concepts and results from the DICE-2013R model and alternative approaches, 1(1/2) JOURNAL OF THE ASSOCIATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND RESOURCE ECONOMISTS 273, 312 (2014).
- 4.
Johannes Emmerling, and Massimo Tavoni, Quantifying non-cooperative climate engineering (2017).
- 5.
See, e.g., Juan B. Moreno-Cruz, Mitigation and the geoengineering threat, 41 RESOURCE AND ENERGY ECONOMICS} 248, 263 (2015) and Juan B. Moreno-Cruz, and Sjak Smulders Revisiting the economics of climate change: the role of geoengineering 71(2) RESEARCH IN ECONOMICS 212, 224 (2017).
- 6.
Martin L. Weitzman, A Voting Architecture for the Governance of Free-Driver Externalities, with Application to Geoengineering}, 117(4) THE SCANDINAVIAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS 1049, 1068 (2015).
- 7.
William Nordhaus, Estimates of the social cost of carbon: concepts and results from the DICE-2013R model and alternative approaches, 1(1/2) JOURNAL OF THE ASSOCIATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL AND RESOURCE ECONOMISTS 273, 312 (2014) and also available at https://sites.google.com/site/williamdnordhaus/dice-rice
- 8.
Garth Heutel, and Juan Moreno-Cruz, and Soheil Shayegh, Solar geoengineering, uncertainty, and the price of carbon, 87 JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS AND MANAGEMENT 24, 41 (2018)
- 9.
Garth Heutel, and Juan Moreno-Cruz, and Soheil Shayegh, Solar geoengineering, uncertainty, and the price of carbon, 87 JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS AND MANAGEMENT 24, 41 (2018) and Garth Heutel, and Juan Moreno-Cruz, and Soheil Shayegh, Climate tipping points and solar geoengineering, 132 JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR & ORGANIZATION 19, 45 (2016). These papers model epistemic uncertainty over certain parameter values, though here we restrict analysis to the deterministic case.
- 10.
William D. Nordhaus, and Zili Yang, A regional dynamic general-equilibrium model of alternative climate-change strategies, 1996 THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW 741, 765
- 11.
Martin L. Weitzman, A Voting Architecture for the Governance of Free-Driver Externalities, with Application to Geoengineering, 117(4) SCANDINAVIAN J. ECON. 1049, 1068 (2015).
References
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Weitzman, M.L.: A Voting Architecture for the Governance of Free-Driver Externalities, with Application to Geoengineering. Scandinav J Economic. 117(4), 1049–1068 (2015b)
Weitzman, M.L.: A Voting Architecture for the Governance of Free-Driver Externalities, with Application to Geoengineering. Scandinavian J Econ. 117(4), 1049–1068 (2015c)
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Shayegh, S., Heutel, G., Moreno-Cruz, J. (2021). Regulating Geoengineering: International Competition and Cooperation. In: Burns, W., Dana, D., Nicholson, S.J. (eds) Climate Geoengineering: Science, Law and Governance. AESS Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies and Sciences Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72372-9_10
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