Economic tools to promote transparency and comparability in the Paris Agreement

Authors:
  • WPWilliam Pizer
    William Pizer
  • MTMassimo Tavoni
    Massimo Tavoni
  • LRLara Reis
    Lara Reis
  • KAKeigo Akimoto
    Keigo Akimoto
  • JAJoseph Edgar Aldy
    Joseph Edgar Aldy
  • GBGeoffrey Blanford
    Geoffrey Blanford
  • CCCarlo Carraro
    Carlo Carraro
  • LCLeon Clarke
    Leon Clarke
  • JEJames Edmonds
    James Edmonds
  • GIGokul Iyer
    Gokul Iyer
  • HMHaewon McJeon
    Haewon McJeon
  • RRRich Richels
    Rich Richels
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  • 1 January 2016
Abstract
The Paris Agreement culminates a six-year transition toward an international climate policy architecture based on parties submitting national pledges every five years. An important policy task will be to assess and compare these contributions. We use four integrated assessment models to produce metrics of Paris Agreement pledges, and show differentiated effort across countries: wealthier countries pledge to undertake greater emission reductions with higher costs. The pledges fall in the lower end of the distributions of the social cost of carbon (SCC) and the cost-minimizing path to limiting warming to 2⠰C, suggesting insufficient global ambition in light of leaders’ climate goals. Countries’ marginal abatement costs vary by two orders of magnitude, illustrating that large efficiency gains are available through joint mitigation efforts and/or carbon price coordination. Marginal costs rise almost proportionally with income, but full policy costs reveal more complex regional patterns due to terms of trade effects.
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