Assessment on impacts of emission trading on city-level (ET-CL)

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 different possibilities of carbon dioxide (CO₂) trade mechanisms, and also other international policy instruments to reduce CO₂ emissions and radiative forcing. The assessment is performed at city level, and the requirements of the international policy are taken as given. The focus is thus on city-level mitigation 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 the activity itself. The climate change impacts are not on the focus, but rather the impacts of climate change abatement 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: One urban area. Helsinki Metropolitan Area (capital region; Helsinki for short) is used as the practical example.
• Temporal: Current situation - 20 years in the future. Especially, years 2009, 2019, and 2029.
• Activity sectors:
  • Personal traffic
  • Heating of buildings and water
  • Electricity consumption
• Pollutants:
  • Greenhouse gases: (all, but especially CO₂, N₂O, and CH₄.
  • Fine particles (PM_2.5)
• Health impacts: Total mortality and morbidity. In particular, cardiopulmonary effects. DALYs are used as the summary measure.
• 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). However, health impacts are considered anywhere in the world both downstream (impacts of pollutants from Helsinki) and upstream (health impacts of the production of products consumed in Helsinki).
• Decision-makers:
  • a random citizen living in the area
  • the society (in particular, the Helsinki Metropolitan Area Council as the decision-maker for inter-municipality decisions such as public transport).
• 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)

Optional extensions of the core assessment:

These extensions may take in 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

• Biofuels are used in traffic according to the EU legislation (10 % of consumed energy is biofuels by 2020?)
  • The biofuel is produced from a) palm oil or b) domestic sources such as waste or forest industry side products.
• Composite traffic is applied in personal transport.
• Energy uptake is increased from the exhaust air from buildings. (see Claih).
• More scenarios may be needed, depending on the Future Scenario Report of Climate Change in Finland (in progress).

Intended users

• Participants of the COP-15 meeting in Copenhagen.
• City-level policy-makers in all sectors in Helsinki and everywhere.
• International policy-makers related to climate change.
• General public.

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?
• 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?
• 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

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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?

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