Thomas Longden

Long-Term Transport Energy Demand and Climate Policy: Alternative Visions on Transport Decarbonization in Energy Economy Models

Decarbonizing transport will be necessary to limit global warming below 2 °C. Due to persistent reliance on fossil fuels, it is posited that transport is more difficult to decarbonize than other sectors. To test this hypothesis, we compare long-term transport energy demand and emission projections for China, USA and the world from five large-scale energy-economy models. We diagnose the models characteristics by subjecting them to three climate policies. We systematically analyze mitigation levers along the chain of causality from mobility to emissions, finding that some models lack relevant mitigation options. We partially confirm that transport is less reactive to a given carbon tax than the non-transport sectors: in the first half of the century, transport mitigation is delayed by 10–30 years compared to non-transport mitigation. At high carbon prices towards the end of the century, however, the three global models achieve deep transport emission reductions by >90% through the use of advanced vehicle technologies and low-carbon primary energy; especially biomass with CCS (carbon capture and sequestration) plays a crucial role. The extent to which earlier mitigation is possible strongly depends on implemented technologies and model structure. Compared to the global models, the two partial-equilibrium models are less flexible in their reaction to climate policies.

Light duty vehicle transportation and global climate policy: The importance of electric drive vehicles

With a focus on establishing whether climate targets can be met under different personal transport scenarios we introduce a transport sector representing the use and profile of light domestic vehicles (LDVs) into the integrated assessment model WITCH. In doing so we develop long term projections of light domestic vehicle use and define potential synergies between innovation in the transportation sector and the energy sector. By modelling the demand for LDVs, the use of fuels, and the types of vehicles introduced we can analyse the potential impacts on the whole economy. We find that with large increases in the use of vehicles in many regions around the globe, the electrification of LDVs is important in achieving cost effective climate targets and minimising the impact of transportation on other sectors of the economy.

Rugby League in Australia between 2001 and 2012: an Analysis of Home Advantage and Salary Cap Violations

Within this paper, we review whether incidences of salary cap circumvention within the Australian professional rugby league competition led to improved home team wins during the period between 2001 and 2012. In doing so, we show that while the salary cap breach amounts can be attributed to an improved home team win record in the case of the Melbourne Storm, success during the period can also be attributed with other factors such as the management of the club, talent identification and the quality of the coach and/or captain. This raises an important issue surrounding the effectiveness of a salary cap to create a level playing field when uncertainty over the quality and performance of players exists. A notable role of the salary cap violations was the retention of a core group of players that were instrumental in the success that occurred in the 2007 season. As part of the analysis we also review home team advantage. A focus on the NRL is justified due to the peculiar nature of having multiple stadium types within the same city and team. For the year 2012 we find that a match at a traditional Sydney stadium against a non-Sydney team had the highest probability of a home team win when the two teams have had a similar level of success during the season.

Deviations in Kilometres Travelled: The Impact of Different Mobility Futures on Energy Use and Climate Policy

The importance of a focus on mobility and the kilometres travelled using light duty vehicles is reflected in the persistence of strong demand for personal mobility and emissions that tend to be linked with population and economic growth. Simulation results using the WITCH model show that changes in the kilometres driven per year using light duty vehicles have a notable impact on investments in alternate transport options. As a result, different mobility futures have notably different optimal vehicle fleet compositions. As climate policy becomes more stringent, achieving abatement with increased mobility implies large investments in battery related technologies and less investments in technologies related to the conversion of biofuel from biomass. Climate policy consistent with a 2°C temperature increase above pre-industrial levels in 2100 leads to a quick transition to plug-in hybrid drive vehicles. Without decreases in mobility trends the cost effective achievement of such a target results in the electrification of passenger vehicles commencing between 2020 and 2035.

Quantifying Catastrophic and Climate Impacted Hazards Based on Local Expert Opinions

Quantifying the potential costs of catastrophic and climate impacted hazards is a challenging but important exercise as the occurrence of such events is usually associated with high damage and uncertainty. At the local level, there is often a lack of information on rare extreme events, which means that the available data is not sufficient to fit a distribution and derive parameter values for frequency and severity distributions. This paper discusses the use of local assessments of extreme events and utilises expert elicitation in order to obtain values for distribution parameters that will feed into management decisions with regards to quantifying catastrophic risks. We illustrate a simple approach, where a local expert is required to only specify two percentiles of the loss distribution in order to provide an estimate for the severity distribution of climate impacted hazards. In our approach we use heavy-tailed distributions to capture the severity of events. Our method allows local government decision makers to focus on extreme losses and the tail of the distribution. An illustration of the method is provided utilising an example that quantifies property losses from bushfires for a local area in northern Sydney. We further illustrate how key variables, such as discount rates, assumptions about climatic change and adaptation measures, will impact the estimates of losses.

CO2 Intensity and the Importance of Country Level Differences: An Analysis of the Relationship Between per Capita Emissions and Population Density

Previous studies have found an inverse (or negative) correlation between urban population density and per capita emissions from land transport. In contrast, this paper finds a positive relationship between per capita CO2 emissions from transport and population density using a dataset of over 200 cities from 28 countries. This positive relationship holds when a range of variables are accounted for and the specification of the regression analysis captures the distinction between country level differences, high/low emission intensity or city specific fixed effects. Separating the cities into two groups based on the clustering that occurs on either side of a crucial point of three tonnes of CO2 emissions per capita highlights the peculiarity of the higher emission intensity of North American cities. Rather than finding a consistent relationship across all cities, this paper finds that cities in North America are distinct from those located in other countries and that the estimated relationship between urban population density and emissions from transport is different across the two groups of countries. The results of this paper have consequences for policy prescriptions that are related to previous results that find that a reduction in per capita emissions tends to occur with an increase population density.

The prevalence of persistence and related health status: An analysis of persistently high healthcare costs in the short term and medium term

Understanding whether high healthcare costs for individuals persist over time is critical for the development of policies that aim to reduce the prevalence of high cost patients. And while high healthcare costs will occur in any given year based on the prevalence of certain morbidities and acute conditions, a large random component of the distribution means that it is rarely the same people driving the bulk of healthcare expenditures. Using administrative data for over 250,000 Australian residents for the years between 2006 and 2011, we analyse the persistence of high annual healthcare costs. We examine the prevalence of high cost persistence in this sample, and then, we use endogenous switching models to identify the morbidity groups that are related with high cost persistence. These models also measure cases of cost amplification that are associated with a history of high cost healthcare. This analysis uses data from multiple categories of healthcare, specifically medical services, pharmaceuticals and admitted patient care. While there is a relatively low number of patients with persistent high cost (approximately 3% of the sample), this group accounted for 19% of aggregate expenditure. Pharmaceuticals were the most persistently high cost category of healthcare with 5% of the sample accounting for 32% of aggregate pharmaceutical expenditure. The morbidities associated with notable cost amplifications are morbidities that are hard to prevent or involve escalations of adverse health states that are difficult to avert. This casts doubt on whether broad policies can reduce the prevalence of individuals with persistently high healthcare costs.

Measuring temperature-related mortality using endogenously determined thresholds

Heat-related mortality tends to be associated with heatwaves that do not allow for sufficient acclimatisation to hot temperatures. In contrast, damage functions and most heatwave emergency response plans do not account for acclimatisation. Using an excess heat measure that accounts for acclimatisation, this paper produces estimates of temperature-related mortality for the five largest Australian capital cities. Fixed effects panel threshold regressions are applied to establish the thresholds that coincide with heightened mortality during extreme temperature events. The estimated parameters associated with these thresholds are then used to develop hindcast estimates for cold temperatures, moderate temperatures, hot temperatures and extreme heat. The estimated thresholds coincide with a notable impact of hot temperatures on mortality, but a limited cold temperature impact. This shows that the burden of risk associated with mortality related to future temperatures and climate change within Australia coincides with heatwaves rather than coldwaves. This is in contrast to recent studies that found that cold temperature-related mortality within Australian capital cities has and will continue to be notable. These studies also found a net benefit from climate change in Australia due to reduced cold temperature deaths.

The Potential Role of Gas in Decarbonizing Europe: A Quantitative Assessment

This chapter analyses a set of new scenarios for energy markets in Europe to evaluate the role of natural gas across a range of assumptions on climate policy (including the post-Copenhagen Pledges and the EU Roadmap ). The goal is to identify whether current trend and policies are leading to an economically efficient and, at the same time, climate-friendly energy mix in Europe. Economic costs and environmental objectives are balanced to identify the welfare-maximizing development path, the related investment strategies in the energy sector and the resulting optimal energy mix. Our results show that a suitable and sustained carbon price is necessary to move energy markets in Europe closer to the optimal energy mix. An appropriate carbon pricing is also sufficient to achieve both the emission target and the renewable target. Policy costs are limited if climate policy is not too ambitious and/or it is internationally coordinated. Finally, our results show that natural gas is the key transitional fuel within the cost-effective achievement of a range of climate policy targets.

The Regularity and Irregularity of Travel: An Analysis of the Consistency of Travel Times Associated with Subsistence, Maintenance and Discretionary Activities

Regular and irregular travel patterns coincide with different underlying purposes of travel and days of the week. Within this paper, it is shown that the balance between subsistence (i.e. work) and discretionary (i.e. leisure) activities is related to differences in travel patterns and explains consistency across years. Using eight years of time use diary entries this paper finds that travel time related to subsistence activities tends to be regular and stable. In contrast, travel time associated with discretionary activities tends to be more unpredictable and varies greatly between discretionary and non-discretionary days. These findings have consequences for the travel time budget literature as consistency of average travel time is found to be driven by work days, which are frequent and have stable travel times. This is offset by discretionary days as they tend to have longer travel times with greater variability but are fewer in number.