Jérôme Hilaire

Limited impact on decadal-scale climate change from increased use of natural gas

The most important energy development of the past decade has been the wide deployment of hydraulic fracturing technologies that enable the production of previously uneconomic shale gas resources in North America. If these advanced gas production technologies were to be deployed globally, the energy market could see a large influx of economically competitive unconventional gas resources. The climate implications of such abundant natural gas have been hotly debated. Some researchers have observed that abundant natural gas substituting for coal could reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Others have reported that the non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions associated with shale gas production make its lifecycle emissions higher than those of coal. Assessment of the full impact of abundant gas on climate change requires an integrated approach to the global energy–economy–climate systems, but the literature has been limited in either its geographic scope or its coverage of greenhouse gases. Here we show that market-driven increases in global supplies of unconventional natural gas do not discernibly reduce the trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions or climate forcing. Our results, based on simulations from five state-of-the-art integrated assessment models of energy–economy–climate systems independently forced by an abundant gas scenario, project large additional natural gas consumption of up to +170 per cent by 2050. The impact on CO2 emissions, however, is found to be much smaller (from −2 per cent to +11 per cent), and a majority of the models reported a small increase in climate forcing (from −0.3 per cent to +7 per cent) associated with the increased use of abundant gas. Our results show that although market penetration of globally abundant gas may substantially change the future energy system, it is not necessarily an effective substitute for climate change mitigation policy.

Description of the REMIND Model (Version 1.5)

This document describes the REMIND model in its version 1.5. REMIND is an integrated assessment model of the energy-economy-climate system. REMIND stands for “Regional Model of Investments and Development.”

Using importers’ windfall savings from oil subsidy reform to enhance international cooperation on climate policies

Fossil fuel subsidy reform would not only decrease consumption, but also lower the world market price of traded fossil energy carriers, in particular oil. As a consequence, oil importers would lower their import bills by more than US

Divestment prevails over the green paradox when anticipating strong future climate policies

30 bn per year. Recycling at least a part of these savings to support low-carbon energy technologies in countries that reduce their subsidies could provide a mechanism to jointly incentivize transformation of the energy system and alter the political economy of subsidy reform.

Data on fossil fuel availability for Shared Socioeconomic Pathways

Fossil fuel market dynamics will have a significant impact on the effectiveness of climate policies1. Both fossil fuel owners and investors in fossil fuel infrastructure are sensitive to climate policies that threaten their natural resource endowments and production capacities2–4, which will consequently affect their near-term behaviour. Although weak in near-term policy commitments5,6, the Paris Agreement on climate7 signalled strong ambitions in climate change stabilization. Many studies emphasize that the 2 °C target can still be achieved even if strong climate policies are delayed until 20308–10. However, sudden implementation will have severe consequences for fossil fuel markets and beyond and these studies ignore the anticipation effects of owners and investors. Here we use two energy–economy models to study the collective influence of the two central but opposing anticipation arguments, the green paradox11 and the divestment effect12, which have, to date, been discussed only separately. For a wide range of future climate policies, we find that anticipation effects, on balance, reduce CO2 emissions during the implementation lag. This is because of strong divestment in coal power plants starting ten years ahead of policy implementation. The green paradox effect is identified, but is small under reasonable assumptions.Fossil fuel market response to future climate policies could result in divestment in anticipation, or accelerated extraction—the green paradox. This study projects reduced emissions due to anticipation effects prior to policy implementation.

Don’t deploy negative emissions technologies without ethical analysis

The data files contain the assumptions and results for the construction of cumulative availability curves for coal, oil and gas for the five Shared Socioeconomic Pathways. The files include the maximum availability (also known as cumulative extraction cost curves) and the assumptions that are applied to construct the SSPs. The data is differentiated into twenty regions. The resulting cumulative availability curves are plotted and the aggregate data as well as cumulative availability curves are compared across SSPs. The methodology, the data sources and the assumptions are documented in a related article (N. Bauer, J. Hilaire, R.J. Brecha, J. Edmonds, K. Jiang, E. Kriegler, H.-H. Rogner, F. Sferra, 2016) [1] under DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2016.05.088.

Future air pollution in the Shared Socio-economic Pathways

Climate policy advice is being undermined by value-laden choices over risky mitigation strategies, warn Dominic Lenzi and colleagues.Climate policy advice is being undermined by value-laden choices over risky mitigation strategies, warn Dominic Lenzi and colleagues.