"The big issues in climate policy are costs of mitigation and costs of controlling the precursors of climate change," says Charles Kolstad, an economist at UC Santa Barbara's Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management.
On the other hand, issues such as the international burden sharing for the second commitment period or a balancing of the global costs of emission mitigation and the costs of climate change, require a more integrated approach to modeling climate policies that will often require a hybridization of models.
As for the issue of how much it will cost to move to clean energy, the report cites estimates of total annual mitigation and adaptation costs by 2030 as ranging from $249bn to $1,371bn.
The prices of buying power (to pump water when there is surplus power on the grid) and selling power (when stored water is released to generate hydropower), and the amount of power to be bought and sold, must be known to set an upper limit to the construction, mitigation and operation costs.
Large-scale public health responses are expensive and socially disruptive; health authorities often face a difficult tradeoff between mitigation and the costs to society (1).
This paper addresses two key questions: (1) what are the total costs, nitrogen mitigation potential, and cost-effectiveness of a range of conventional and alternative municipal wastewater treatment technologies, and (2) what uncertainties influence these outcomes and how can we improve our understanding of these technologies?
It is now widely recognized that technological change will play a substantial role in reducing GHG emissions without compromising economic growth; hence, any better understanding of the process of technological innovation is likely to increase our knowledge of mitigation possibilities and costs.
Avoiding discounting when modeling health co-benefits is equivalent to selecting a zero rate, which equates mitigation benefits and costs experienced today with those experienced in the very distant future.
It may be of interest to know in detail which industries or which products contribute the most to the total impact, for example, if the aim is to reduce impacts (e.g. climate mitigation, resource efficiency and cost savings) or to increase factors of production (e.g. employment and profits).
