The webinar format will consist of a 20-minute presentation and a 10-minute discussion with an invited expert stakeholder, followed by a 30-minute open discussion (1 hour total).
Separating CO2 Emission from Removal Targets Comes with Limited Cost Impacts
Speaker: Anne Merfort, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)
Panelist: Duncan Woods, Sandbag
Moderator: Jessica Strefler, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)
Key Insights:
The presented study analyzes the economic and energy system impacts of separate targets for emission reductions and carbon removal to achieve net-zero CO2 emissions.
Separate targets lead to differentiated prices between CO2 emissions and removals. For more ambitious emission reduction targets, this leads to higher carbon revenues and reduced costs for CDR. At the same time, these separate targets may enhance policy credibility and prevent the overuse of some CDR options and thus limit environmental side-effects
Most scenarios lead to only small efficiency losses, i.e. consumption loss increases by <5% as long as the economically optimal amount of CDR is not increased by more than 100%
Difficulties are the loss of flexibility, and how to ensure that targets are set ambitious enough
The UPTAKE webinar “Separating CO2 emissions from removal targets comes with limited cost impacts” on February 12th 2025, first featured Anne Merfort from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) presenting the UPTAKE paper with the same title that is currently under review at Nature Communications. The study carefully weighs the pros and cons of separating targets and shows that some objectives can be contradictory. There are trade-offs between simplicity and accuracy, between the policy credibility of fixed targets and the potentially necessity for flexible targets under learning. Regardless of the target, solid MRV is crucial, and scale-up of CDR needs to start now.
Dr. Duncan Woods, an industrial decarbonisation analyst at Sandbag commented on the advantages of separate targets and provided a deeper dive into the results of their recent policy brief on CDR integration into the EU-ETS. He underlined that the socially optimal contribution of CDR might be lower than the economically optimal amount, with a lower CDR amount potentially preventing underinvestment into emission reduction and yielding lower CDR costs and thus more financial leeway for a just transition. Duncan also made clear that economic efficiency is not the only objective, but environmental integrity needs to be observed. However, separating targets alone would not guarantee sustainability, additional policies are needed.
Speaker: Anne Merfort, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
Wednesday, 12 February 2025, 2 pm - 3 pm I ZOOM, online
here
The webinar format will consist of a 20-minute presentation and a 10-minute discussion with an invited expert stakeholder, followed by a 30-minute open discussion (1 hour total).
