Long-term reductions in costs of controlling regional air pollution in Europe due to climate policy

This paper examines to what extent climate change policies will alter the effectiveness of agreed-upon or future policies to reduce regional air pollution in Europe and vice versa. And when is it cost-effective to combat regional air pollution with clean technology instead of add-on technology? For...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental science & policy 2002-08, Vol.5 (4), p.349-365
Main Authors: van Harmelen, Toon, Bakker, Joost, de Vries, Bert, van Vuuren, Detlef, den Elzen, Michel, Mayerhofer, Petra
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abatement costs
Climate change
Cost-effectiveness
Emissions
Europe
Integrated assessment
Marginal costs
Regional air pollution
Scenarios
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Summary:This paper examines to what extent climate change policies will alter the effectiveness of agreed-upon or future policies to reduce regional air pollution in Europe and vice versa. And when is it cost-effective to combat regional air pollution with clean technology instead of add-on technology? For this exercise, several extensions were made to the energy model TIMER, to introduce add-on abatement technologies, specified in terms of costs and reduction potentials, in order to be able to calculate cost-effective emission reduction strategies for different scenarios and regions. The results show that add-on technologies to reduce regional air pollution remain necessary throughout the century. The costs to reach the NO x emission reduction targets in Europe are about three times as high as for SO 2. Mitigation costs averaged over the century by add-on technologies can be reduced by climate measures by 50–70% for SO 2 and around 50% for NO x. The costs of SO 2 and NO x mitigation by add-on technology in a world without climate policy are comparable or in some periods even higher than the costs of an integrated mitigation of SO 2, NO x and CO 2 emissions if a reduction of specific costs by learning is, in contrast with energy technologies, not assumed for abatement technologies. So, the costs of SO 2 and NO x add-on measures avoided by climate policies can outweigh the costs of these climate measures. The total annual costs are in the order of 1 or 2% of the present GDP, depending on the scenario.
ISSN:1462-9011
1873-6416
DOI:10.1016/S1462-9011(02)00043-6