L1 Flashcards
What is climate change mitigation?
a human intervention to REDUCE THE SOURCES or ENHANCE THE SINKS of GHG in order to prevent global temperature increase and its consequent impacts
What is climate change adaptation?
the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects
What is climate resilient development a product of?
mitigation and adaptation
What is the UNFCCC objective?
stablisation of ghg concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system
allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to cc, to ensure food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceeds in a sustainable manner
What is the TCR
Transient climate response - temperature as a result of a doubling of Co2 emissions
What would be the impact of stopping emissions right now on conc ppm and temp
If emissions suddently were capped the concetration would reduce to a lower level - and don’t stay constant
temperatures stays pretty much constant as soon as we stop emitting co2
What is the relationship between net zero and the carbon emissions?
net zero only become a international and national level concept once it was established that there was a limited amount of carbon that could be emitted
What is the carbon budget?
the total amount of anthropogenic carbon dioxide that can still be emitted into the atmosphere while holding the global average temperature increase to the parish agreement
What is the relationship between temperature and cumulative carbon targets?
there is a direct link
Is there concensus on the carbon budget?
No all different IPCC working groups said different amounts for the remaining carbon budgets
calculation method results in a large difference
time frame is also important for re-bound warming
non-Co2 gases are challenging to account for
What were some of the complicating factors for estimating the remaining carbon budget?
- magnitude of warming per tonne Co2
- assumed warming to date
- assumed future non-Co2 emissions
- magnitude of future non-Co2 warming
What are the 5 components taken into account by the IPCC special report 6th assessment carbon budget framework?
- Historical warming to date - uncertainty range is quite large
- transient climate response to cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide (TCRE) - not exactly true that once we stop emitting warming stays the same
- zero emissions commitment
- projects future non-co2 temperature contribution - how much warming will this cause
- unrepresented earth system feedbacks eg. permafrost, nitrogen cycles - relationship is based off of models and observations
What is the carbon budget?
Not a single number but depends on a set of choices
- temperature
- likelihood
Historically who have been the big emitters?
US and Europe sinxe the 50/60s
all emissions started in Europe - make up the total emissions till 18000s - now in cumulative terms have emitted more than china, India and Africa together
What is the relationship between emissions and development?
highly intertwined in the past half a century
With GDP increasing there is an increase in Co2 intensity
Issue is that there are a lot of emissions embedded in trade - not represented by country emissions
How do we make mitigation responsibility fair?
UNCC - common but differentiated responsibilties and respective capabilities
capacity - wealthy pay principle = how the burden of climate change can be shared through capacity building
equality/need - everyone has a right to development
responsibility- polluter pays principle= the more you emitted in the past the more you have to pay now through adaption finance
Can you expand on the principle of the carbon budget approach?
= equal emisions entitlement
portion of global carbon budget allocated on basis of the population
What is the index-based approach for burden sharing
=historitcal responsibilties
share of mitigation determined by share of historical emissions
What is the contraction and convergence approach for equitable burden sharing?
= Equal emissions entitlement
country emissions follow a pathway where they contract to converge on the same emissions per capita by a specified date
What is common but differentiated convergence?
= equal emissions and historical responsibility
Country emissions follow a pathway where they contract to converge on emissions by capita by a specified date
but countries are further differentiated on their level of economic development
countries below per capita threshold can carry on
What is cost proportional to GDP oer capita?
= Capacity to pay
targets set based on equal mitigation costs as a percentage of GDP
What are GHG development rights?
= right to development
Everybody participates, but individuals under a specific development threshold are exempt from mitigation
How is burden sharing understood in the paris agreement?
each partys successive pledge to an NDC will represent a progression beyond the party then current NDC and reflects its highest possible ambition, reflecting is common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities in light of different national circumstances
developed countries should take the lead and provide finance, technology and capacity building
What is the global warming potential of a gas - simple explanation about how it is calculated
ghg are converted into Co2e by multiplying each gas by its 100 year global warming potential value
that is the amount of warming one ton of that gas would create relative to one tone of Co2 over 100 year timescale
What are direct emissions?
arise from the combustion of fuels during the activity eg. from the exhaust of a car
What are indirect emissions
emissions associated with production of electricity and hydrogen and heat
What are the different scopes and there meaning?
Scope 1- direct emissions from owned and controlled sources
Scope 2- emissions are indirect emissions from the generation of purchased energy
Scope 3- all indirect emissions - not included in scope 2- that occur in the value chain of the reporting company, including both upstream and downstream emissions
Kaya Identity - what are the key drivers?
- population
- GDP/population
- Energy/gdp
- CO2/energy
What is the kaya identity forumla?
Co2 emissions = pop x gdp/pop x energy/gdp x co2/energy
how do you decouple Co2 emissions from growth?
Energy efficiency - energy intensity improvement
eg. energy efficiency, energy demand reduction, behavioural change
or
Co2 intensity
- fuel switching, renewables, CCs
Do we have an implementation gap
Yes there is still a large gap between what we are currently doing, 2030 targets, ledges and targets and being compatible with 1.5oc
