The global carbon budget 1959–2011

Accurate assessments of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere is important to better understand the global carbon cycle, support the climate policy process, and project future climate change. Present-day analysis requires the combination of a range of data, algorithms, statistics and model estimates and their interpretation by a broad scientific community. Here we describe datasets and a methodology developed by the global carbon cycle science community to quantify all major components of the global carbon budget, including their uncertainties. We discuss changes compared to previous estimates, consistency within and among components, and methodology and data limitations. CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement production (EFF) are based on energy statistics, while emissions from Land-Use Change (ELUC), including deforestation, are based on combined evidence from land cover change data, fire activity in regions undergoing deforestation, and models. The global atmospheric CO2 concentration is measured directly and its rate of growth (GATM) is computed from the concentration. The mean ocean CO2 sink (SOCEAN) is based on observations from the 1990s, while the annual anomalies and trends are estimated with ocean models. Finally, the global residual terrestrial CO2 sink (SLAND) is estimated by the difference of the other terms. For the last decade available (2002–2011), EFF was 8.3 ± 0.4 PgC yr−1, ELUC 1.0 ± 0.5 PgC yr−1, GATM 4.3 ± 0.1 PgC yr−1, SOCEAN 2.5 ± 0.5 PgC yr−1, and SLAND 2.6 ± 0.8 PgC yr−1. For year 2011 alone, EFF was 9.5 ± 0.5 PgC yr−1, 3.0 percent above 2010, reflecting a continued trend in these emissions; ELUC was 0.9 ± 0.5 PgC yr−1, approximately constant throughout the decade; GATM was 3.6 ± 0.2 PgC yr−1, SOCEAN was 2.7 ± 0.5 PgC yr−1, and SLAND was 4.1 ± 0.9 PgC yr−1. GATM was low in 2011 compared to the 2002–2011 average because of a high uptake by the land probably in response to natural climate variability associated to La Niña conditions in the Pacific Ocean. The global atmospheric CO2 concentration reached 391.31 ± 0.13 ppm at the end of year 2011. We estimate that EFF will have increased by 2.6% (1.9–3.5%) in 2012 based on projections of gross world product and recent changes in the carbon intensity of the economy. All uncertainties are reported as ±1 sigma (68% confidence assuming Gaussian error distributions that the real value lies within the given interval), reflecting the current capacity to characterise the annual estimates of each component of the global carbon budget. This paper is intended to provide a baseline to keep track of annual carbon budgets in the future.

The global carbon budget 1959–2011

Accurate assessment of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and their redistribution among the atmosphere, ocean, and terrestrial biosphere is important to better understand the global carbon cycle, support the climate policy process, and project future climate change. Present-day analysis requires the combination of a range of data, algorithms, statistics and model estimates and their interpretation by a broad scientific community. Here we describe datasets and a methodology developed by the global carbon cycle science community to quantify all major components of the global carbon budget, including their uncertainties. We discuss changes compared to previous estimates, consistency within and among components, and methodology and data limitations. Based on energy statistics, we estimate that the global emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion and cement production were 9.5 ± 0.5 PgC yr−1 in 2011, 3.0 percent above 2010 levels. We project these emissions will increase by 2.6% (1.9–3.5%) in 2012 based on projections of Gross World Product and recent changes in the carbon intensity of the economy. Global net CO2 emissions from Land-Use Change, including deforestation, are more difficult to update annually because of data availability, but combined evidence from land cover change data, fire activity in regions undergoing deforestation and models suggests those net emissions were 0.9 ± 0.5 PgC yr−1 in 2011. The global atmospheric CO2 concentration is measured directly and reached 391.38 ± 0.13 ppm at the end of year 2011, increasing 1.70 ± 0.09 ppm yr−1 or 3.6 ± 0.2 PgC yr−1 in 2011. Estimates from four ocean models suggest that the ocean CO2 sink was 2.6 ± 0.5 PgC yr−1 in 2011, implying a global residual terrestrial CO2 sink of 4.1 ± 0.9 PgC yr−1. All uncertainties are reported as ±1 sigma (68% confidence assuming Gaussian error distributions that the real value lies within the given interval), reflecting the current capacity to characterise the annual estimates of each component of the global carbon budget. This paper is intended to provide a baseline to keep track of annual carbon budgets in the future.

GHG mitigation of agricultural peatlands requires coherent policies

Acknowledgements The authors thank the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases for facilitating this work. The contribution of P.S. contributed to the EU-funded GHG Europe project.

Carbon leakage: an overview. CEPS Special Report No. 79, 6 December 2013

Carbon leakage is central to the discussion on climate policy, given the confluence of issues that are currently being debated, including the 2030 Energy and Climate Framework and the review of the EU carbon leakage list by 2014. Carbon leakage is the result of asymmetrical carbon policies, especially carbon pricing, and the resulting carbon cost, which affects the international competitive position of some EU industry and could displace production and/or investment, and the emissions of the activities displaced. This paper identifies the difference between carbon price and carbon cost to leakage exposed industry as one of two fundamental issues to be understood and addressed; lack of visibility on future climate policies and anti-leakage provisions is the other key issue. While this is a global issue, most of the experience has been accumulated in the EU. Carbon leakage is only one of the factors that could affect the competitive position of sectors, but it is difficult to attribute the impact of carbon costs versus other variables such as energy costs, labour, etc. Studies have predicted the risk of a significant amount of production leakage in a number of energy-intensive industries. To address the danger, they were included in the EU ETS carbon leakage list, which gave them access to free allowances. However, a limited number of studies undertaken after the end of the second trading period (2012) show little evidence of production leakage and asks the question whether the issue has not been blown out of proportion. The paper argues that the past may not be a good representation of the future, as it was heavily influenced by a high level of free allocation, the exceptional economic downturn, CO2 prices significantly below what was anticipated, as well as the potential for changes in some fundamental variables such as the shrinking pool of allowances available for free allocation. It emphasises the need for a well-informed debate in the EU on measures to address carbon leakage post-2020, underpinned by a number of options, and objective criteria to evaluate those options. It emphasises that the debate should cover both investment and production leakage, caused by both direct and indirect carbon costs.

Russian belligerence and Europe's energy security. EPC Commentary, 19 March 2014

Recent Russian actions have unequivocally underlined that it does not play by the rules. This provides a wake-up call and should alert not only the countries of the former Soviet Union, but the EU as a whole. For the EU, this has one clear implication: it cannot continue to depend on an unreliable energy supplier, which is prone to use energy as a political tool. Luckily for the EU, summer is approaching and Europeans will need less Russian gas for heating. However, potential gas supply disruptions remind Europe of its energy vulnerabilities, and of the 2006 and 2009 winters, when Russia’s decision to stop the flow of gas to Ukraine led to supply crises in a number of EU Member States. As the EU’s heads of states and governments gather in the European Council on 20 and 21 March, the developments in Ukraine and the possible Russian illegal annexation of Crimea will undoubtedly dominate the discussions. Securing energy supply will figure on the agenda, but energy should also be seen as a means to pressure Russia. It is important that the Member States use the occasion to commit to working together on energy security. If this is addressed in a holistic way, it can also support European industry and climate policy – the other issues on the Council agenda that run the risk of being forgotten.

Paris 2015: What’s in it for the EU? CEPS Commentary, 8 May 2015

The European Union, together with all countries, is making a second effort to reach a comprehensive global climate change agreement at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21 or CMP11) in Paris in December 2015, after the unsuccessful attempt to do so in Copenhagen in 2009. At a time when the EU is still preoccupied with recovery from the economic crisis, and is facing geopolitical challenges and a number of conflicts, why should it see the importance of continuing to offer leadership in the field of climate change? And why would such an agreement be important for the EU? In short: “What’s in it for the EU?” This commentary reviews the wider context of the negotiations, looking not only at the geopolitical shifts that have taken place on the road to Paris, but also at the interests of the EU both as far as its domestic climate policy is concerned, as well as its role as a diplomatic ‘soft power’.

Gas demand for power generation peaked as early as 2010. CEPS Commentary, 12 February 2016

The outlook for natural gas demand is often considered bright, especially for gas used to generate electricity. This is because gas is the cleanest of all fossil fuels. The carbon intensity of modern gas-fired power stations is less than 50% that of modern coal plants. Moreover, gas-fired units are well-suited to follow rapid swings in supply and demand due to their flexibility. In the future, these balancing tasks will become more and more important given the intermittent character of the supply of wind and solar power. Gas seems to hold out the promise of being a key pillar of the energy transition and the perfect partner of renewables. Given the EU’s long-term climate policy goals, however, there is strong evidence that demand for gas for purposes of power generation peaked as early as 2010.

How federal policies affect the allocation of water /

"August 2006."

Uses of frontier efficiency methodologies and multi-criteria decision making for performance measurement in the energy sector

Guest editorial Ali Emrouznejad is a Senior Lecturer at the Aston Business School in Birmingham, UK. His areas of research interest include performance measurement and management, efficiency and productivity analysis as well as data mining. He has published widely in various international journals. He is an Associate Editor of IMA Journal of Management Mathematics and Guest Editor to several special issues of journals including Journal of Operational Research Society, Annals of Operations Research, Journal of Medical Systems, and International Journal of Energy Management Sector. He is in the editorial board of several international journals and co-founder of Performance Improvement Management Software. William Ho is a Senior Lecturer at the Aston University Business School. Before joining Aston in 2005, he had worked as a Research Associate in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His research interests include supply chain management, production and operations management, and operations research. He has published extensively in various international journals like Computers & Operations Research, Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, European Journal of Operational Research, Expert Systems with Applications, International Journal of Production Economics, International Journal of Production Research, Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, and so on. His first authored book was published in 2006. He is an Editorial Board member of the International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology and an Associate Editor of the OR Insight Journal. Currently, he is a Scholar of the Advanced Institute of Management Research. Uses of frontier efficiency methodologies and multi-criteria decision making for performance measurement in the energy sector This special issue aims to focus on holistic, applied research on performance measurement in energy sector management and for publication of relevant applied research to bridge the gap between industry and academia. After a rigorous refereeing process, seven papers were included in this special issue. The volume opens with five data envelopment analysis (DEA)-based papers. Wu et al. apply the DEA-based Malmquist index to evaluate the changes in relative efficiency and the total factor productivity of coal-fired electricity generation of 30 Chinese administrative regions from 1999 to 2007. Factors considered in the model include fuel consumption, labor, capital, sulphur dioxide emissions, and electricity generated. The authors reveal that the east provinces were relatively and technically more efficient, whereas the west provinces had the highest growth rate in the period studied. Ioannis E. Tsolas applies the DEA approach to assess the performance of Greek fossil fuel-fired power stations taking undesirable outputs into consideration, such as carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide emissions. In addition, the bootstrapping approach is deployed to address the uncertainty surrounding DEA point estimates, and provide bias-corrected estimations and confidence intervals for the point estimates. The author revealed from the sample that the non-lignite-fired stations are on an average more efficient than the lignite-fired stations. Maethee Mekaroonreung and Andrew L. Johnson compare the relative performance of three DEA-based measures, which estimate production frontiers and evaluate the relative efficiency of 113 US petroleum refineries while considering undesirable outputs. Three inputs (capital, energy consumption, and crude oil consumption), two desirable outputs (gasoline and distillate generation), and an undesirable output (toxic release) are considered in the DEA models. The authors discover that refineries in the Rocky Mountain region performed the best, and about 60 percent of oil refineries in the sample could improve their efficiencies further. H. Omrani, A. Azadeh, S. F. Ghaderi, and S. Abdollahzadeh presented an integrated approach, combining DEA, corrected ordinary least squares (COLS), and principal component analysis (PCA) methods, to calculate the relative efficiency scores of 26 Iranian electricity distribution units from 2003 to 2006. Specifically, both DEA and COLS are used to check three internal consistency conditions, whereas PCA is used to verify and validate the final ranking results of either DEA (consistency) or DEA-COLS (non-consistency). Three inputs (network length, transformer capacity, and number of employees) and two outputs (number of customers and total electricity sales) are considered in the model. Virendra Ajodhia applied three DEA-based models to evaluate the relative performance of 20 electricity distribution firms from the UK and the Netherlands. The first model is a traditional DEA model for analyzing cost-only efficiency. The second model includes (inverse) quality by modelling total customer minutes lost as an input data. The third model is based on the idea of using total social costs, including the firm’s private costs and the interruption costs incurred by consumers, as an input. Both energy-delivered and number of consumers are treated as the outputs in the models. After five DEA papers, Stelios Grafakos, Alexandros Flamos, Vlasis Oikonomou, and D. Zevgolis presented a multiple criteria analysis weighting approach to evaluate the energy and climate policy. The proposed approach is akin to the analytic hierarchy process, which consists of pairwise comparisons, consistency verification, and criteria prioritization. In the approach, stakeholders and experts in the energy policy field are incorporated in the evaluation process by providing an interactive mean with verbal, numerical, and visual representation of their preferences. A total of 14 evaluation criteria were considered and classified into four objectives, such as climate change mitigation, energy effectiveness, socioeconomic, and competitiveness and technology. Finally, Borge Hess applied the stochastic frontier analysis approach to analyze the impact of various business strategies, including acquisition, holding structures, and joint ventures, on a firm’s efficiency within a sample of 47 natural gas transmission pipelines in the USA from 1996 to 2005. The author finds that there were no significant changes in the firm’s efficiency by an acquisition, and there is a weak evidence for efficiency improvements caused by the new shareholder. Besides, the author discovers that parent companies appear not to influence a subsidiary’s efficiency positively. In addition, the analysis shows a negative impact of a joint venture on technical efficiency of the pipeline company. To conclude, we are grateful to all the authors for their contribution, and all the reviewers for their constructive comments, which made this special issue possible. We hope that this issue would contribute significantly to performance improvement of the energy sector.

Applying consumer responsibility principle in evaluating environmental load of carbon emissions

There is a need for a proper indicator in order to assess the environmental impact of international trade, therefore using the carbon footprint as an indicator can be relevant and useful. The aim of this study is to show from a methodological perspective how the carbon footprint, combined with input- output models can be used for analysing the impacts of international trade on the sustainable use of national resources in a country. The use of the input-output approach has the essential advantage of being able to track the transformation of goods through the economy. The study examines the environmental impact of consumption related to international trade, using the consumer responsibility principle. In this study the use of the carbon footprint and input-output methodology is shown on the example of the Hungarian consumption and the impact of international trade. Moving from a production- based approach in climate policy to a consumption-perspective principle and allocation, would also help to increase the efficiency of emission reduction targets and the evaluation of the ecological impacts of international trade.

Carbon emissions locked - in trade

In recent years there has been a growing concern about the emission trade balance of countries. It is due to the fact that countries with an open economy are active players in the international trade, though trade is not only a major factor in forging a country’s economic structure anymore, but it does contribute to the movement of embodied emissions beyond the country borders. This issue is especially relevant from the carbon accounting policy’s point of view, as it is known that the production-based principle is in effect now in the Kyoto agreement. The study aims at revealing the interdependence of countries on international trade and its environmental impacts, and how the carbon accounting method plays a crucial role in evaluating a country’s environmental performance and its role in the climate mitigation processes. The input-output models are used in the methodology, as they provide an appropriate framework for this kind of environmental accounting; the analysis shows an international comparison of four European countries (Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Hungary) with extended trading activities and carbon emissions. Moving from the production-based approach in the climate policy, to the consumptionperspective principle and allocation [15], it would also help increasing the efficiency of emission reduction targets and the evaluation of the sustainability dimension and its impacts of international trade. The results of the study have shown that there is an importance of distinction between the two emission allocation approaches, both from global and local level point of view.

Applying consumer responsibility principle in evaluating environmental load of carbon emissions

There is a need for a proper indicator in order to assess the environmental impact of international trade, therefore using the carbon footprint as an indicator can be relevant and useful. The aim of this study is to show from a methodological perspective how the carbon footprint, combined with input- output models can be used for analysing the impacts of international trade on the sustainable use of national resources in a country. The use of the input-output approach has the essential advantage of being able to track the transformation of goods through the economy. The study examines the environmental impact of consumption related to international trade, using the consumer responsibility principle. In this study the use of the carbon footprint and input-output methodology is shown on the example of the Hungarian consumption and the impact of international trade. Moving from a production- based approach in climate policy to a consumption-perspective principle and allocation, would also help to increase the efficiency of emission reduction targets and the evaluation of the ecological impacts of international trade.

Impacts of energy taxation in the enlarged European Union, evaluation with GEM-E3 Europe

The objective of this study is twofold: first to analyze how the implementation of the EU energy tax policies will affect the EU and its Member States and secondly to analyze how energy tax policies can contribute to climate policy objectives in the enlarged EU.

A Consumption-Based Approach to Carbon Emission Accounting – Sectoral Differences and Environmental Benefits

In recent years there has been growing concern about the emission trade balances of countries. This is due to the fact that countries with an open economy are active players in international trade. Trade is not only a major factor in forging a country’s economic structure, but contributes to the movement of embodied emissions beyond country borders. This issue is especially relevant from the carbon accounting policy and domestic production perspective, as it is known that the production-based principle is employed in the Kyoto agreement. The research described herein was designed to reveal the interdependence of countries on international trade and the corresponding embodied emissions both on national and on sectoral level and to illustrate the significance of the consumption-based emission accounting. It is presented here to what extent a consumption-based accounting would change the present system based on production-based accounting and allocation. The relationship of CO2 emission embodied in exports and embodied in imports is analysed here. International trade can blur the responsibility for the ecological effects of production and consumption and it can lengthen the link between consumption and its consequences. Input-output models are used in the methodology as they provide an appropriate framework for climate change accounting. The analysis comprises an international comparative study of four European countries (Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Hungary) with extended trading activities and carbon emissions. Moving from a production-based approach in climate policy to a consumption-based principle and allocation approach would help to increase the efficiency of emission reductions and would force countries to rethink their trading activities in order to decrease the environmental load of production activities. The results of this study show that it is important to distinguish between the two emission accounting approaches, both on the global and the local level.

Can the Paks-2 Nuclear Power Plant operate without State aid? A business economic analysis

Many studies have investigated the prospects for returns, the budgetary and financing background and energy management effects of the new nuclear power plant units to be built at Paks. This document seeks to complement previous economics-based studies by adding a new criterion. The key question in our analysis is whether the power plant company will be capable of independent operations in an economic sense - or will its survival depend on further additional aid by the owner, i.e. via the central budget, after its commissioning? We shall examine from a corporate perspective in what ways the already disclosed financing terms and conditions may affect the everyday operations of the power plant company.