气候变化领域集成服务门户(CCPortal): A theoretical basis for the equivalence between physical and economic climate metrics and implications for the choice of Global Warming Potential time horizon

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DOI	10.1007/s10584-019-02486-7
	A theoretical basis for the equivalence between physical and economic climate metrics and implications for the choice of Global Warming Potential time horizon
	Mallapragada D.S.; Mignone B.K.
发表日期	2020
ISSN	0165-0009
起始页码	107
结束页码	124
卷号	158 期号:2
英文摘要	The global warming potential (GWP) is widely used in policy analysis, national greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting, and technology life cycle assessment (LCA) to compare the impact of non-CO2 GHG emissions to the impact of CO2 emissions. While the GWP is simple and versatile, different views about the appropriate choice of time horizon—and the factors that affect that choice—can impede decision-making. If the GWP is viewed as an approximation to a climate metric that more directly measures economic impact—the global damage potential (GDP)—then the time horizon may be viewed as a proxy for the discount rate. However, the validity of this equivalence rests on the theoretical basis used to equate the two metrics. In this paper, we develop a new theoretical basis for relating the GWP time horizon and the economic discount rate that avoids the most restrictive assumptions of prior studies, such as an assumed linear relationship between economic damages and temperature. We validate this approach with an extensive set of numerical experiments using an up-to-date climate emulator that represents state-dependent climate-carbon cycle feedbacks. The numerical results largely confirm the theoretical finding that, under certain reasonable assumptions, time horizons in the GWP of 100 years and 20 years are most consistent with discount rates of approximately 3% and 7% (or greater), respectively. © 2019, ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company.
语种	英语
scopus关键词	Carbon dioxide; Decision making; Gas emissions; Global warming; Life cycle; Economic climates; Economic impacts; Global warming potential; Greenhouse gas (GHG); Linear relationships; Numerical experiments; Numerical results; Technology life cycle; Greenhouse gases
来源期刊	Climatic Change
文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://gcip.llas.ac.cn/handle/2XKMVOVA/147341
作者单位	MIT Energy Initiative, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, United States; ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company, Annandale, NJ 08801, United States
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Mallapragada D.S.,Mignone B.K.. A theoretical basis for the equivalence between physical and economic climate metrics and implications for the choice of Global Warming Potential time horizon[J],2020,158(2).
APA	Mallapragada D.S.,&Mignone B.K..(2020).A theoretical basis for the equivalence between physical and economic climate metrics and implications for the choice of Global Warming Potential time horizon.Climatic Change,158(2).
MLA	Mallapragada D.S.,et al."A theoretical basis for the equivalence between physical and economic climate metrics and implications for the choice of Global Warming Potential time horizon".Climatic Change 158.2(2020).