IIASA Greenhouse Gas Initiative (GGI) Long-term Emissions and Climate Stabilization Scenarios

Riahi, K. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7193-3498, Grubler, A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7814-4990, & Nakicenovic, N. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7176-4604 (2006). IIASA Greenhouse Gas Initiative (GGI) Long-term Emissions and Climate Stabilization Scenarios. IIASA Interim Report. IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria: IR-06-018

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Abstract

This paper presents an overview of the greenhouse-gas emissions scenarios developed as part of an institute-wide collaborative effort within IIASA's Greenhouse Gas Initiative (GGI). The interdisciplinary research effort within GGI links all major research programs of IIASA dealing with climate change related research areas including population, energy, technology, forestry, as well as land-use changes and agriculture. GGI's research includes both basic as well as applied, policy-relevant research, aiming to assess conditions, uncertainties, impacts as well as policy frameworks for addressing climate stabilization both from a near-term as well as long-term perspective.

We first describe the motivation behind this scenario exercise and introduce the main scenario features and characteristics in both qualitative as well as quantitative terms. Altogether we analyze three "baseline" scenarios of different socio-economic and technological developments which are assumed not to include any explicit climate policies. We then impose a range of climate stabilization targets on these baseline scenarios and analyze in detail feasibility, costs and uncertainties of meeting a range of different climate stabilization targets in accordance with the Article 2 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC, 1992). The scenarios were developed by the IIASA Integrated Assessment Modeling Framework that encompasses detailed representations of the principal greenhouse gas emitting (GHG) sectors / energy, industry, agriculture, and forestry. Main analytical findings from our analysis focus on the implications of salient uncertainties (associated with scenario baselines and stabilization targets), on feasibility and costs of climate stabilization efforts and on the choice of appropriate portfolios of emissions abatement measures. We further analyze individual technological options with regards to their aggregated cumulative contribution toward emissions mitigation during the 21st century as well as their deployment over time. Our results illustrate that the energy sector will remain by far the largest source of GHG emissions and hence remain the prime target of emission reduction. Ultimately, this may lead to a complete restructuring of the global energy system. Climate mitigation could also significantly change the relative economics of traditional versus new, more climate friendly products and services. This is especially the case with the energy system that accounts for the largest share of emissions reductions, but is also the case in land use patterns where emissions reduction and sink enhancement measures are more modest.

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