Aurélie Méjean

A Survey of Global Climate Justice: From Negotiation Stances to Moral Stakes and Back

Climate change poses immense problems of intergenerational, intragenerational and international justice. This critical survey describes the intellectual landscape of global climate justice, and clarifies the challenges, positions, arguments and theoretical background of this concept. To do so, we review how equity is mobilised in the climate change economics literature and confront arguments about justice used within or at the periphery of climate negotiations with those of moral and political philosophers. We present the stances of States, NGOs and experts. We discuss the principles of justice underpinning the fair sharing of a carbon budget and their moral justifications. We examine the concepts of climate damage and of responsibility and highlight the hurdles to make way for historical emissions in climate justice. We conclude on some implications of the Paris Agreement for climate justice and the way forward.

The ‘Dark Matter’ in the Search for Sustainable Growth: Energy, Innovation and the Financially Paradoxical Role of Climate Confidence

Theories of economic growth have long recognised that innovation is a key but poorly understood force — the ‘residual’ of neoclassical growth models. These models have no representation of intermediate goods, or of the factors that generate and diffuse innovations, including learning-by-doing and scale economies; they are thus unable to picture how a suite of economic and institutional changes triggers waves of long-term economic progress, which in practice has been the long-term historical pattern. The absence of finance in these models is particularly problematic. The centrality of financial structures to understanding patterns of economic growth is acute concerning policies to shape efficiency, innovation and infrastructure in ways compatible with energy and climate security, since these require substantial upfront investment. However, uncertainty and a lack of confidence deter such investment. Environmental policy could reduce risk and thereby shape ultimately profitable investments. The paper outlines deep relationships between energy/carbon-related finance and wider debates about financial systems after the crisis. The paper finally proposes an agenda for future research towards alternatives to classical growth models, intended to address some of their limitations.

Bioenergy and CO2 Sequestration: Climate Policies Beyond Technological Constraints

This paper examines the role of electricity production from biomass with and without carbon capture and storage in sustaining low CO2 emission pathways to 2100. It quantifies the effect of the availability of biomass resources and technologies within a general equilibrium framework. Biomass-fed integrated gasification combined cycle technology is introduced into the electricity module of IMACLIM-R, a hybrid general equilibrium model. We assess the robustness of this technology, with and without carbon capture and storage, as a way of reaching the 550 ppm stabilization target. The impact of a uniform CO2 tax on energy prices and world GDP is examined, together with the structure of the electricity mix. The influence of additional climate mitigation policies, such as alternative recycling of tax revenues and infrastructure policies is also discussed.