Agriculture, bioenergy, and water implications of constrained cereal trade and climate change impacts.

International trade increases connections and dependencies between countries, weaving a network of global supply chains. Agricultural commodity trade has implications for crop producers, consumers, crop prices, water and land uses, and other human systems. Interconnections among these systems are not always easy to observe when external impacts penetrate across multiple sectors. To better understand the interactions of non-linear and globally coupled agricultural-bioenergy-water systems under the broader economy, we introduce systematic perturbations in two dimensions, one human (restrictions on agricultural trade) and the other physical (climate impacts on crop yields). We explore these independently and in combination to distinguish the consequences of individual perturbation and interactive effects in long-term projections. We show that most regions experience larger changes in cereal consumption due to cereal import dependency constraints than due to the impacts of climate change on agricultural yields. In the scenario where all regions ensure an import dependency ratio of zero, the global trade of cereals decreases ~50% in 2050 compared to the baseline, with smaller decreases in cereal production and consumption (4%). The changes in trade also impact water and bioenergy: global irrigation water consumption increases 3% and corn ethanol production decreases 7% in 2050. Climate change results in rising domestic prices and declining consumption of cereal crops in general, while the import dependency constraint exacerbates the situation in regions which import more cereals in the baseline. The individual and interactive effects of trade perturbations and climate change vary greatly across regions, which are also affected by the regional ability to increase agricultural production through intensification or extensification.

Net-Zero CO2 by 2050 Scenarios for the United States in the Energy Modeling Forum 37 Study.

The Energy Modeling Forum (EMF) 37 study on deep decarbonization and high electrification analyzed a set of scenarios that achieve economy-wide net-zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in North America by mid-century, exploring the implications of different technology evolutions, policies, and behavioral assumptions affecting energy supply and demand. For this paper, 16 modeling teams reported resulting emissions projections, energy system evolution, and economic activity. This paper provides an overview of the study, documents the scenario design, provides a roadmap for complementary forthcoming papers from this study, and offers an initial summary and comparison of results for net-zero CO2 by 2050 scenarios in the United States. We compare various outcomes across models and scenarios, such as emissions, energy use, fuel mix evolution, and technology adoption. Despite disparate model structure and sources for input assumptions, there is broad agreement in energy system trends across models towards deep decarbonization of the electricity sector coupled with increased end-use electrification of buildings, transportation, and to a lesser extent industry. All models deploy negative emissions technologies (e.g., direct air capture and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage) in addition to land sinks to achieve net-zero CO2 emissions. Important differences emerged in the results, showing divergent pathways among end-use sectors with deep electrification and grid decarbonization as necessary but not sufficient conditions to achieve net zero. These differences will be explored in the papers complementing this study to inform efforts to reach net-zero emissions and future research needs.

Can updated climate pledges limit warming well below 2°C?

Increased ambition and implementation are essential.

Deep mitigation of CO2 and non-CO2 greenhouse gases toward 1.5 °C and 2 °C futures.

Stabilizing climate change well below 2 °C and towards 1.5 °C requires comprehensive mitigation of all greenhouse gases (GHG), including both CO2 and non-CO2 GHG emissions. Here we incorporate the latest global non-CO2 emissions and mitigation data into a state-of-the-art integrated assessment model GCAM and examine 90 mitigation scenarios pairing different levels of CO2 and non-CO2 GHG abatement pathways. We estimate that when non-CO2 mitigation contributions are not fully implemented, the timing of net-zero CO2 must occur about two decades earlier. Conversely, comprehensive GHG abatement that fully integrates non-CO2 mitigation measures in addition to a net-zero CO2 commitment can help achieve 1.5 °C stabilization. While decarbonization-driven fuel switching mainly reduces non-CO2 emissions from fuel extraction and end use, targeted non-CO2 mitigation measures can significantly reduce fluorinated gas emissions from industrial processes and cooling sectors. Our integrated modeling provides direct insights in how system-wide all GHG mitigation can affect the timing of net-zero CO2 for 1.5 °C and 2 °C climate change scenarios.

Evaluating the economic impact of water scarcity in a changing world.

Water scarcity is dynamic and complex, emerging from the combined influences of climate change, basin-level water resources, and managed systems' adaptive capacities. Beyond geophysical stressors and responses, it is critical to also consider how multi-sector, multi-scale economic teleconnections mitigate or exacerbate water shortages. Here, we contribute a global-to-basin-scale exploratory analysis of potential water scarcity impacts by linking a global human-Earth system model, a global hydrologic model, and a metric for the loss of economic surplus due to resource shortages. We find that, dependent on scenario assumptions, major hydrologic basins can experience strongly positive or strongly negative economic impacts due to global trade dynamics and market adaptations to regional scarcity. In many cases, market adaptation profoundly magnifies economic uncertainty relative to hydrologic uncertainty. Our analysis finds that impactful scenarios are often combinations of standard scenarios, showcasing that planners cannot presume drivers of uncertainty in complex adaptive systems.

Taking stock of national climate policies to evaluate implementation of the Paris Agreement.

Many countries have implemented national climate policies to accomplish pledged Nationally Determined Contributions and to contribute to the temperature objectives of the Paris Agreement on climate change. In 2023, the global stocktake will assess the combined effort of countries. Here, based on a public policy database and a multi-model scenario analysis, we show that implementation of current policies leaves a median emission gap of 22.4 to 28.2 GtCO2eq by 2030 with the optimal pathways to implement the well below 2 °C and 1.5 °C Paris goals. If Nationally Determined Contributions would be fully implemented, this gap would be reduced by a third. Interestingly, the countries evaluated were found to not achieve their pledged contributions with implemented policies (implementation gap), or to have an ambition gap with optimal pathways towards well below 2 °C. This shows that all countries would need to accelerate the implementation of policies for renewable technologies, while efficiency improvements are especially important in emerging countries and fossil-fuel-dependent countries.

Net-zero emissions energy systems.

Some energy services and industrial processes-such as long-distance freight transport, air travel, highly reliable electricity, and steel and cement manufacturing-are particularly difficult to provide without adding carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere. Rapidly growing demand for these services, combined with long lead times for technology development and long lifetimes of energy infrastructure, make decarbonization of these services both essential and urgent. We examine barriers and opportunities associated with these difficult-to-decarbonize services and processes, including possible technological solutions and research and development priorities. A range of existing technologies could meet future demands for these services and processes without net addition of CO2 to the atmosphere, but their use may depend on a combination of cost reductions via research and innovation, as well as coordinated deployment and integration of operations across currently discrete energy industries.

Data on fossil fuel availability for Shared Socioeconomic Pathways.

The data files contain the assumptions and results for the construction of cumulative availability curves for coal, oil and gas for the five Shared Socioeconomic Pathways. The files include the maximum availability (also known as cumulative extraction cost curves) and the assumptions that are applied to construct the SSPs. The data is differentiated into twenty regions. The resulting cumulative availability curves are plotted and the aggregate data as well as cumulative availability curves are compared across SSPs. The methodology, the data sources and the assumptions are documented in a related article (N. Bauer, J. Hilaire, R.J. Brecha, J. Edmonds, K. Jiang, E. Kriegler, H.-H. Rogner, F. Sferra, 2016) [1] under DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2016.05.088.

Limited impact on decadal-scale climate change from increased use of natural gas.

The most important energy development of the past decade has been the wide deployment of hydraulic fracturing technologies that enable the production of previously uneconomic shale gas resources in North America. If these advanced gas production technologies were to be deployed globally, the energy market could see a large influx of economically competitive unconventional gas resources. The climate implications of such abundant natural gas have been hotly debated. Some researchers have observed that abundant natural gas substituting for coal could reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Others have reported that the non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions associated with shale gas production make its lifecycle emissions higher than those of coal. Assessment of the full impact of abundant gas on climate change requires an integrated approach to the global energy-economy-climate systems, but the literature has been limited in either its geographic scope or its coverage of greenhouse gases. Here we show that market-driven increases in global supplies of unconventional natural gas do not discernibly reduce the trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions or climate forcing. Our results, based on simulations from five state-of-the-art integrated assessment models of energy-economy-climate systems independently forced by an abundant gas scenario, project large additional natural gas consumption of up to +170 per cent by 2050. The impact on CO2 emissions, however, is found to be much smaller (from -2 per cent to +11 per cent), and a majority of the models reported a small increase in climate forcing (from -0.3 per cent to +7 per cent) associated with the increased use of abundant gas. Our results show that although market penetration of globally abundant gas may substantially change the future energy system, it is not necessarily an effective substitute for climate change mitigation policy.

The next generation of scenarios for climate change research and assessment.

Advances in the science and observation of climate change are providing a clearer understanding of the inherent variability of Earth's climate system and its likely response to human and natural influences. The implications of climate change for the environment and society will depend not only on the response of the Earth system to changes in radiative forcings, but also on how humankind responds through changes in technology, economies, lifestyle and policy. Extensive uncertainties exist in future forcings of and responses to climate change, necessitating the use of scenarios of the future to explore the potential consequences of different response options. To date, such scenarios have not adequately examined crucial possibilities, such as climate change mitigation and adaptation, and have relied on research processes that slowed the exchange of information among physical, biological and social scientists. Here we describe a new process for creating plausible scenarios to investigate some of the most challenging and important questions about climate change confronting the global community.