Costs of emission reductions
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Estimates of the costs of emission reductions, even within a well-defined scenario context are subject to considerable uncertainties, as the potential contribution and cost of abatement options are spread across wide ranges. A sensitivity analysis was performed for a scenario that stabilizes at 550 ppm CO2-equivalent (Van Vuuren et al., 2006) in order to identify for which abatement options the alternative assumptions had a significant impact on overall abatement costs. Selected options were tested one by one, but also all together and simultaneously. Most individual options did not affect the total abatement costs by more than 10% (up or downwards) until 2050, with the exception of energy crops. When accepting the high end of the literature estimates on the supply potential, and introducing the option to capture and store CO2from bioenergy, costs dropped by up to 40%. The compounded effect of all options taken together, however, results in 40% lower to almost 100% higher costs in 2050. Beyond 2050 the impact of uncertainties in options increases further. This applied particularly to options that are expected to become viable on a large scale in the longer term, such as hydrogen (± 20% in 2100). The compounded effect of all options considered collectively falls into the range of -40% to +250% by 2100. |
