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

Revision as of 13:33, 6 February 2009

NOTE! The name should be changed again: this assessment does not relate to trading of coal, but trading of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions.

Suggested new name: Assessment on impacts of emission trading on city-level (ET-CL)

Impacts of emission trading on city-level is an Impact assessment that 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 set by an international treaty on greenhouse gas emission reduction and its regional operationalization in the EU. It studies several 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.

This assessment is tightly coupled with three other assessments:

• Climate change, air quality and housing – future challenges to public health (CLAIH)
• Health and climate impacts of heat production in small municipalities (BIOHER)
• Emission assessment of small-scale energy production in the Helsinki metropolitan area

Scope

Purpose

The purpose is to evaluate the impacts of alternative greenhouse gas (GHG) emission trade systems, which aim to reduce GHG emissions and thereby affect. The assessment is performed on a city-level, and the emission trade system is taken as an external constraint to the societal decision making on city-level. It thus considers city-level climate change mitigation measures in the major sectors causing GHG emissions, namely power production, heating, and traffic. Three major outputs are considered: a) greenhouse gas emissions, b) health impacts within the city, and c) costs of GHG emission trade and the direct costs of mitigation actions. 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 within decision making context constrained by the emission trading system. 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.

The basic research question for the assessment can be defined as:What are the impacts of emission trading on city-level?.

The question can be broken down into a set of sub-questions such as

• How does the composition of an emission trading system influence city-level decisions upon activities causing significant GHG emissions?
• How do those city-level decisions affect the decision making of individual citizens regarding those activities?
• how do these city-level and individual decisions together result as changes in the the activities, and consequently their impacts?

Boundaries

• Spatial: Helsinki Metropolitan Area (Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, Kauniainen)
• Temporal: From beginning of EU ETS phase III (2013) to year 2030. Especially, years 2013, 2020, and 2030 considered.
• Activity sectors: R↻
  • Personal traffic
  • Heating of buildings and water
• Pollutants:
  • CO₂ from transport and heat production
  • Fine particles (PM_2.5) from transport and heat production
• Health impacts: Cardiopulmonary mortality due to exposure to fine particles (PM_2.5). DALYs are used for summarizing health effects.
• Other impacts: Costs
  • Direct internal costs of the activities
  • Costs of emission permits (emission trading)
  • Personal direct costs for citizens consuming services provided by the activities in consideration
• Population: The whole population in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area (capital region) is considered as the active population making societal and individual decisions regarding the activities and whose health impacts attributable to the activities are estimated. However, climate change impact of the emitted CO₂ is considered globally.
• Decision-makers:
  • The international community deciding upon international climate agreement and political leaders of EU deciding upon the EU-ETS
  • The society in Helsinki region, 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
  • Random citizens living in the area (as residents or passengers)
• Decisions:
  • International decisions about the EU-ETS (as a constraint to city-level decision making)
  • City-level decisions regarding heating and transportation influenced by the EU-ETS
  • Citizen-level decisions regarding the choice of mode of transportation, the choice of mode of heating in detached houses, and improving energy efficiency (as adaptation to the city-level decisions)

Optional extensions of the core assessment:

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

• Power consumption could be assessed as one of the activities, especially if decisions affecting power consumption and its production are to be included in 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 (possible linkage with TAPAS)
• 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)
5. Future development paths according to IPCC scenarios (changes in the background, not directly coupled to assessed decisions)?

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

Primary:

• The Risk research group from THL.
  • Jouni (composite traffic)
  • Marko
  • Mikko
  • Virpi (Claih)
  • Pauliina (Bioher)
  • Pasi (small scale energy production emissions)
  • Erkki (traffic: congestion charging)
• Intarese WP1.4
• Open assessment workshop 2009 participants

Potential:

• PM epi group in KTL? (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 SP3 2nd pass, Intarese mega-case?
• Jim Morris (composite traffic)
• Niko Karvosenoja, SYKE (FRES-model)?
• IIASA?
• FMI? (through Claih)
• TAPAS researchers
• National consumer research centre?
• The Open Assessors' Network
• Anyone interested. This is an open assessment

Definition

Decision variables

International decisions (see also scenarios):

• Include road traffic in EU-ETS phase III (yes/no)
• Small installations excluded from EU-ETS phase III (yes/no)
• EU-ETS emission cap set tighter than commission proposal (yes (how much?)/no)

Primary city-level decisions (optimizing total societal cost, including health costs):

• More support for public transport (Yes/No) - support targeted directly to ticket price
• Extension of the district heating system (Yes/No) - additional network, additional heat production
• Founding a composite traffic system (Yes/No) - targeted to areas lacking good public transport, changed distribution of car/composite/public traffic
• Replacing current plants as the district heat source with planned Fortum nuclear power plant in Loviisa (yes (proportion replaced?)/no).

Optional additional city-level decisions:

• Subsidies for improving energy efficiency in buildings (Yes/No) - also to be considered in Claih?
• Area planning and land use (Dense vs. loose city structure for new buildings)
• Choice of fuel for district heating - also to be considered in Claih?
• Setting a congestion charge zone to downtown Helsinki (yes/no)

Citizen-level decisions (optimizing direct personal cost):

• Mode of transportation (personal car/composite traffic/public transportation)
• Choice of heating system in new detached houses (Electricity/Oil/Wood chip) (see Bioher)
• Energy efficiency upgrade (yes/no) - interaction with city-level energy efficiency subsidies

Indicator variables

• Health impacts of traffic and heat production in Helsinki metropolitan area
• GHG emissions from traffic and heat production in Helsinki metropolitan area
• Total societal costs from traffic and heat production in Helsinki metropolitan area

Other variables

Main model

• PM2.5 emissions from traffic and heat production in Helsinki metropolitan area
• Exposure to PM2.5 from traffic and heat production in Helsinki metropolitan area
• PM2.5 exposure-response function
• DALY weights
• Population of Helsinki metropolitan area
• Cardiopulmonary mortality in Helsinki metropolitan area
• Unit cost of health
• Cost of emission permit
• Direct personal costs for citizens in Helsinki metropolitan area
• Future development paths (IPCC scenarios)
• Costs of mitigation measures (for non-technical measures there will be a discussion possibility on the National Integrated Assessment Webpage : go to hot topics)

Heat production module

• Heat production in Helsinki metropolitan area
• PM2.5 emissions from heat production in Helsinki metropolitan area
• GHG emissions from heat production in Helsinki metropolitan area
• Emission factors for burning processes
• Cost of expanding district heating network in Helsinki metropolitan area
• Cost of emission permit

Housing stock module

• Building stock in Helsinki metropolitan area
• Cost of upgrading energy efficiency

Traffic module

• Traffic volume in Helsinki metropolitan area
• PM2.5 emissions from traffic in Helsinki metropolitan area
• GHG emissions from traffic in Helsinki metropolitan area
• Personal direct traffic costs of a random citizen in Helsinki metropolitan area
• Cost of support for public transportation in Helsinki metropolitan area
• Cost of emission permit
• Set-up cost of a composite traffic system in Helsinki metropolitan area

Indices

• Time: Years 2013, 2020, 2030
• 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 ERF
• Optimization of actions based on cost-benefit analysis and a utilitarian decision-maker
  • BBN
• 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

• Bioher (project) and the Bioher assessment
• Claih (project) and the Claih assessment
• Climate change policy assessment
• 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!
• The international conference on Competitive Cities and Climate Change, 9-10 October 2008, Milan, Italy
• TEKES-seminar: Traffic, community and climate change (Liikenne, yhdyskunta ja ilmastonmuutos) 10 December 2008
• Greenhouse gas emission simulator by MIT CCI
• Wikia Green on Wikia

References