AR5 - Mitigation.

Between April 7th (7/4/14) and April 11th (11/4/14) the third working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) met in Berlin, Germany to prepare the third part of it's fifth Assessment Report (AR5) concentrating on mitigation. This final report is not expected to be published until September/October 2014 but a draft of the Summary for Policy Makers was released on Sunday (13/4/14). However being a super-duper nerd I had to wait until Tuesday (15/4/14) when the final draft was released including annexes, technical summaries and explanatory notes. To even get that far I had to sign a waiver acknowledging that even that wasn't the final, published version.

I supposed I should start by addressing the sensationalist and inaccurate way in which AR5/3 was reported in Britain. The headline that most media outlets reported was that AR5/3 recommended that we immediately stop using fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas. This was simply not the case. Having accepted in part one of the report (AR5/1) that humans are responsible for climate change through the release of greenhouse gases (ghg) this mitigation section then looked at where human's ghg emissions are coming from and found that 78% came from energy generation particularly from coal fired power stations. Funnily enough it then observed that if we were to immediately stop generating energy our ghg emissions would drop by around 78%. However it then went on to examine a range of other scenarios such as increasing energy efficiency to reduce the demand for energy production, increasing the number of so-called carbon sinks such as forests to absorb the ghg's that are being emitted and designing more efficient cities to reduce the 11% of emissions that come from transport such as car use.

Rather then recommending any particular course of action the purpose of AR5/3 was simply to establish the facts in order to allow policy makers to decide what action to take that best suits them. For example while in northern Europe people use energy primarily for heat and lighting in many other parts of the world it is used primarily to power air conditioning systems to help people stay cool while the sun is shining. In those nations using solar power over fossil fuel generation simply just makes more sense.

The reason why everybody was so interested in the mitigation section of AR5 was because it is likely to provide much of the scientific guidance to nations as they draw up their Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMA's) and Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Commitments (NAMC's) which will form the basis of the replacement to the Kyoto Protocol (KP) which is scheduled to be signed and ratified at the end of 2015. As such I think it is important to look at the metrics and measures used in AR5/3.

In terms of the definition and measurement of ghg's AR5/3 stuck with the definition used in the KP. That is to say ghg's are defined as methane, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide and flourines (F-gases). However all ghg's are measured in terms of their carbon dioxide equivalent. In part this has been done because due to KP the vast majority of research in the area has been conducted in those terms meaning that data using other metrics is hard to come-by. However given a growing acceptance of carbon intensity over simple emission totals it does seem sensible to continuing to use this metric because although carbon dioxide is only the second most potent ghg it is by far the one that humans release the most of accounting for about 76% of all ghg emissions. As such it is the one that needs to be the most heavily targeted. If any nations do have legitimate problems with this method of doing things now would be the time to raise those issues although there is absolutely nothing stopping nations providing even more detailed ghg inventories.

In terms of financial cost AR5/3 defines currency as the US dollar at the 2010 exchange rate and the price parity rate at the US dollar at the 2005 exchange rate. This is just a standard accounting method when dealing with international trade so should be wholly uncontroversial. There may need to be some discussion about the base years used though because coming in the midst of the financial crisis the 2010 figure might be slightly under valued leading to some inaccurate forecasts as we head into the 2020's and beyond.

The much more interesting element of AR5/3 relating to finance and economics though is the notion of distributional weighting. This addresses one of the core problems in the area that while it is easy to see how mitigation efforts increase costs it is more difficult to calculate the benefits that off-set those costs. For example it is easy to measure how adding carbon scrubbing technology to a power station will increase energy bills but that measure doesn't factor in the benefits and co-benefits that come from reduced emissions. Examples included in AR5/3 include increased rates of death and hospitalisation amongst labourers working in areas experiencing increased temperatures and the health benefits of encouraging people to walk/cycle more rather then driving through better urban design. Things like increased health or a reduced risk of death are generally considered intangibles that cannot be measure in monetary terms because as people like to say "You can't put a price on your health."

The truth though is that in the developed world we do put a price on people's health and even their lives every single day through things like health insurance, pensions and personal injury settlements. The only problem is that  in developing nations insurance products and civil injury/loss settlements are not widely employed with some Islamic societies going so far as to forbid insurance as a form of gambling. In fact I recently read a short but illuminating article in this week's Economist magazine addressing just this issue using "Takaful" which offers Sharia compliant insurance against drought related vegetation loss to Kenyan cattle farmers based on the work of Andrew Mude at Nairobi's International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) as an example.

As such a possible route to finding a common metric to measure intangible costs in NAMA's and NAMC's would be an analysis of  insurance payouts and civil settlements for injury/loss in nations where such things are common. That though is sadly a far too data intensive task for me to undertake on my own. It is also likely to lead to some very controversial negotiations that centre around questions like what is an American life worth compared to a Kenyan life?

The final interesting thing I found in AR5/3 is that it extensively used and highlighted the importance of distinguishing between the main source of ghg emissions (e.g a power station) and the indirect user of the energy produced by those emissions (e.g a cement factory). I think this is an essential methodology to employ when drawing up NAMC's and NAMA's because it becomes a lot easier to reduce emissions both nationally and sectorally once you fully understand what is causing those emissions. For example if a national or local government can track its emissions down to a specific power station and then track down the factory that is buying most of the energy from that power station they can then work with that factory to reduce their need for energy by employing more energy efficient methods. Through things like their "Top Runner" program the Japanese are already well advanced in this way of thinking.

The main problem between distinguishing between the emissions source and the indirect users is that it is a system that relies on double counting with emissions being attributed first to the source then to the indirect users. Unless properly policed this is a recipe for fraud and abuse that plagued the KP to an extent with nations counting the figures for both the source and the indirect user in their final tally allowing them to claim that had cut their emissions by twice as much as they actually did. As such there needs to be a standardised accountancy method and the openness to allow nations to review each other accounts.

That is why NAMA's and NAMC's need to be submitted far in advance of the 2015 Summit in Paris ideally with prototypes being submitted in advance of the Peru's 2014 Summit.

14:30 on 20/4/14 (UK date).