IPCC’s latest report on Climate Change – summary part 6

Mitigation in the long term (after 2030).

The report starts by making the fairly obvious point that to stabilise the levels of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, emissions would need to peak and then decline and the lower the stabilisation level, the more quickly this peak and decline would need to occur. So, mitigation efforts over the next two to three decades will be very important. Delayed emissions reduction lead to investments that lock in more emissions-intensive infrastructure and this constrains the opportunities to achieve lower stabilisation levels and increases the risk of more severe climate change impacts.

I think this is a critical point and is why we have to involve developed and developing countries in the process now. We'll come to sustainable development in the next and final part!

Policies, measures and instruments to mitigate climate change

A wide variety of policy instruments are available to governments to create incentives for mitigation action:

- Integrating climate policies in broader development policies.
- Regulations and standards provide some certainty about emission levels.
- Taxes and charges or tradable permits will establish a carbon price.
- Financial incentives (subsidies and tax credits) can be used to stimulate the development and diffusion of new technologies.
- Information instruments (e.g. awareness campaigns) may positively affect environmental quality by promoting informed choices and possibly contributing to behavioural change.
- R&D can stimulate technological advances, reduce costs, and enable progress toward stabilization.

Policies that provide a real or implicit carbon price encourage businesses and consumers to invest in low-GHG alternatives and the report says this provides significant mitigation potential in all sectors. Modelling studies show that with a carbon price, by 2030, in the US$20-80 per tonne CO2-eq range could lead to stabilisation at around 550 ppm CO2-eq by the end of the Century. This equates to a global temperature rise, from pre-industrial levels, of around 3C.


My thoughts on this are that we are currently underestimating the cost of mitigating CO2 emissions. Some of the carbon offset plans charge at less than US$10 per tonne of CO2. This seems implausible to me and suggests that to gain customers some companies are seeking to offer the lowest price to assuage your guilt. I plan to look at carbon offset plans in more detail in the future.

I think what I like about the report in the mitigation area, is that it provides practical steps over the long term that could lead to stabilization levels that whilst bad could be recovered from. In addition, it also stresses the need to act now, and globally, to keep the stabilisation level as low as possible. Most people now accept that global warming exists, so governments need to act. In the last part of this series, I'll look at the role of government and sustainable development.