Difference between revisions of "Assessment on impacts of emission trading on city-level (ET-CL)"

Revision as of 10:46, 29 October 2008

NOTE! The name should be changed again: this is not about trade of coal, but trade of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions.

Impact assessment (IA) on carbon trade and its city-level impacts takes a wide perspective over environmental issues that can be dealt with on a city level. The focus is on issues that are affected by the requirements of an international treaty on greenhouse gas emission reduction. It studies many of the contemporary ideas, plans, and pieces of legislation in an integrated and systematic way. It tries to find hidden caveats, expose policies that are based on popular trends rather than science, and assess the impacts of new innovative solutions. It aims to offer information and guidance to the political process for developing a new international treaty in the UN climate change meeting in Copenhagen (COP-15), December 2009. The Analytica model file can be accessed here.

Scope

Purpose

The purpose is to evaluate alternative greenhouse gas emission trade mechanisms, which aim to reduce GHG emissions and thereby radiative forcing. The assessment is performed on city-level, and the greenhouse gas emission trade mechanisms are taken as constraints to the city-level decision making set externally. The focus is thus on city-level climate change mitigation measures in the major sectors, namely electricity production, heating, and traffic. Three major outputs are considered: a) greenhouse gas emissions; b) health impacts within the city; and c) costs of greenhouse gas trade and direct costs of mitigation itself. The health impacts of climate change are not within the focus, but rather the impacts of climate change mitigation measures that are put in action in the city. Individual and societal interests and decisions, and their interplay is specifically on focus. Situations where individual and societal values are in conflict are identified and examined. Policies aiming at resolution of these conflicts are sought for.

Especially, the assessment aims to produce useful guidance and insight into the UN climate change meeting in Copenhagen (COP-15) in December 2009.

Boundaries

• Spatial: Helsinki Metropolitan Area (Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, Kauniainen)
• Temporal: From beginning of EU ETS phase III (2013) to 20 years in the future. Especially, years 2013, 2023, and 2033.
• Activity sectors:
  • Personal traffic
  • Heating of buildings and water
  • Electricity consumption
• Pollutants:
  • All greenhouse gases as included in EU ETS phase III, but particularly CO₂ from transport, heat and electricity production
  • Fine particles (PM_2.5)
• Health impacts: Total mortality and morbidity, in particular, cardiopulmonary effects. DALYs are used for summarizing.
• Other impacts: Costs
  • directly from the activity itself
  • of the greenhouse trade
• Population: The whole population in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area (capital region) is considered as the active population making societal and individual decisions and where the health impacts of the activities occur. However, climate change impact of the emitted greenhouse gases is considered globally.
• Decision-makers:
  • a random citizen living in the area (as a resident or a passenger)
  • the society (in particular, the Helsinki Metropolitan Area Council as the decision-maker for inter-municipality decisions such as public transport, and the city councils of Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa and Kauniainen).
• Decisions:
  • International: base-case and possible/interesting variations to the EU emission trading system (taken as an outside boundary condition) D↷
  • City-level decisions: D↷
    • Extension of the district heating/cooling system to less-populated areas (Yes/No). This may take place in building small-scale (2-10 MW oil/wood chip power plants)
    • More support for public transport (Yes/No)
    • Founding a large-scale composite traffic system (Yes/No)
    • Subsidies for improving energy efficiency in buildings (Yes/No)
    • Area planning and land use (Dense vs. loose city structure for new buildings)
    • One nuclear power plant is built in Finland, and the heat load is utilised in the district heating of the Helsinki Metropolitan Area.
    • Choice of fuel for district heating
    • Setting congestion charge zones with possible exemptions to low emission cars
  • Citizen-level decisions:
    • Use of personal car vs. public transportation.
    • Choice of the heating system in the own single-family house (Electricity/Oil/Wood chip) (see Bioher)

Optional extensions of the core assessment:

These extensions may take place in addition to the core project, if the right experts, resources, and interest show up during the assessment.

• Copenhagen could be another case city.
• The assessment of Helsinki could be extended to the whole metropolitan area (Greater Helsinki), including the neighbouring municipalities within ca. 60 km from Helsinki. (The current coverage is ca. 25 km.)
• Physical exercise due to daily activities and the related health impacts could be assessed.
• Household waste treatment (typically landfill vs. incineration) could be assessed as a source of energy, fine particles, and greenhouse gases.

Scenarios

1. Base-case: EU-ETS on phase III as suggested by EU commission, including following amendments to current ETS ([1], [2], en:European Union Emission Trading Scheme):
   • possibility to exclude small installations from ETS if < 25 MW rated power and < 10 kt CO₂ emission/year
   • CO₂ emissions from petrochemicals, ammonia & aluminium production included
   • N₂O emissions from nitric, adipic & glyoxalic acid included
   • perfluorocarbon (PFC) emissions from aluminium production included
   • carbon capture and storage (CCS) possibly included
   • air transport included
   • centralized allocation of emission permits (total emission cap defined for whole EU instead of national action plans by member states)
   • auctioning of > 60 % of permits (instead of distributing all for free)
   • EU-wide emission cap set as: phase II cap (1859.27 Mt CO₂), adjusted to the broadened scope of phase, and decreasing annually by 1,74 % (1720 Mt CO₂e by 2020)
   • NOTE: road & ship transport NOT included
   • NOTE: land use, land use change & forestry NOT included
2. Exclusion of small installations discarded from ETS
3. Road transport IS included in the ETS (emission permits to fuel suppliers)
4. EU-wide emission cap set as ??? (significantly tighter than base-case)

Intended users

• Participants of the | World Wide Views on Global Warming stakeholder meetings
• Participants of the COP-15 meeting in Copenhagen
• City-level policy-makers in all sectors in Helsinki Metropolitan Area as well as everywhere else
• International policy-makers related to climate change
• General public
• Scientists working on climate change and related fields of study

Participants

Preliminary draft, no commitments whatsoever made.

• The Risk research group from KTL.
  • Jouni (composite traffic)
  • Marko (role?)
  • Mikko (role?)
  • Virpi (role?)
  • Pauliina (Bioher)
  • Erkki (traffic: congestion charging, noise)
• PM epi group in KTL? (connection to Claih?)
• PM tox group in KTL?
• Exposure group in KTL?
• PM emission group in UKU?
• Aerosol dynamics group in FMI?
• Cost-benefit assessors with cost functions in USTUTT?
• Intarese WP1.4
• Intarese SP3 2nd pass?
• The Open Assessors' Network.
• Anyone interested. This is an open assessment.

Miten rekrytoidaan ihmisiä hankkeeseen?

• Julistetaan YTOSin sisällä
• sitä mukaa kuin tulee vastaan tarpeellista tietoa, kysytään tiedon omistajalta lupa pistää se heandeen.
• ketä halutaan mukaan joka tapauksessa?
  • USTUTT kustannusfunktiot non-technical
  • Jim Morris yhdistelmäliikenne
  • Niko FRES
  • IIASA tarvitaanko vai onko kaikki jo käytettävissä? Nopeuttaisiko soveltamista?
  • IL leviämislaskennat

Definition

Decision variables

• Decisions (these are under development; please comment and give ideas of real options considered):
  • International: Options of the international greenhouse gas trade mechanisms (taken as an outside boundary condition)
  • City-level decisions:
    • Extension of the district heating/cooling system to less-populated areas (Yes/No). This may take place in building small-scale (2-10 MW oil/wood chip power plants)
    • More support for public transport (Yes/No)
    • Founding a large-scale composite traffic system (Yes/No)
    • Subsidies for improving energy efficiency in buildings (Yes/No)
    • Area planning and land use (Dense vs. loose city structure for new buildings)
    • One nuclear power plant is built in Finland, and the heat load is utilised in the district heating of the Helsinki Metropolitan Area.
  • Citizen-level decisions:
    • Use of personal car vs. public transportation.
    • Choice of the heating system in the own single-family house (Electricity/Oil/Wood chip) (see Bioher)

Decision variables related to the international treaty:

What are the instruments used?

• CO₂ trade
• Energy tax
• Other taxes
• Emission limits
• Bans of activity

Major questions

• Which countries participate in the GHG trade?
• Which sectors are covered?
• Which pollutants are covered?
  • CO₂
  • N2O
  • CH4
  • CFC
  • Land albedo
  • PM_2.5
• To whom are the quotas given/sold?
• What is the initial price of the quota?
• What is the level of ambition (i.e. the amount of quota that is distributed)?
• What sanctions are forced on those outside the treaty?

Indicator variables

Other variables

• Production of heat energy.
• Production of electricity.
• Production of transport services.
• Consumption of heat energy.
• Consumption of electricity.
• Consumption of transport services.
• Costs for mitigation measures (for non-technical measures there will be a discussion possibility on the National Integrated Assessment Webpage : go to hot topics)

Indices

• Time: Years 2009, 2019, 2029
• Age groups: years 0-1, 1-30, 31-65, 65+
• Area: 129 areas within the Helsinki Municipality Area.

Analyses

• Value of information (VOI) analysis on all decision options.
  • VOI on PM_2.5 emissions with an updated PM_2.5 dose-response function.
• Optimizing of actions based on cost-benefit analysis and a utilitarian decision-maker.
• Analysis of conflicting interests of the citizen, the municipality, and the industry.
• It might be a clarifying way to describe all energy flows using the basic unit (in addition to watt) which is equal to the primary energy consumption of an average person. This is something like 100 W (or for a working person, a few hundred watts). Another way to express radiative forcing is to compare it to the primary energy utilised for a particular greenhouse gas emission. Generally, the ratio is in the order of 1 J utilised, 300 J of increased radiative forcing.

Result

Results

Not yet available.

Conclusions

Not yet available.

See also

• Nugget:Carbon pie approach
• Bioenergy in Finland: effects on health and climate change
• Variable:Assessment:Catastrophic non-linear impacts of climate change
• Risk assessment on Hämeenkyrö municipal solid waste incinerator
• Virtuaalikunta
• Kaupunkirakenne ja kansanterveys
• Polis conference in Barcelona 25-26 November, 2008
• Carbon Finance
• A local action project about climate change in Tampere, Finland
• Climate Change: Global Risk, Challenges, and Decisions A conference in Copenhagen, 10-12 March 2009
• Sessions in the Copenhagen meeting, March 2009 Useful summary!

References