Assessment of Acceptable Swiss post-2012 Climate Policies

André Sceia, Marc Vielle
2012
Journal paper

Abstract

In the framework of the revision of the Swiss CO2-Law and in the preparation of the international negotiations that place at the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Swiss Government has proposed a set of instruments and two levels of abatement to define the Swiss climate policy for the post-2012 period. By 2030, Switzerland would recuce its GHG emission by 30% or 45%, depending on whether or not the rest of the world world would commit to strong emissions reductions. The proposed policies are the result of consultation procedures take into account the views of major stakeholders and lobbies and allow for differienciated carbon prices in different sectors of the Swiss economy. Linking a Cumputable General Equilibrium (CGE) and two sectoral energy models, we evaluate the policies for the two scenarios. We find important disparities in the prices of carbon faced by the different economic sectors and higher welfare costs than those that would be triggered by a uniform carbon tax.

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Assessment of acceptable Swiss post-2012 climate policies

Juan Carlos Altamirano Cabrera, André Sceia, Marc Vielle

In the framework of the revision of the Swiss CO2-Law and in view for the international negotiations that will take place at the next Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) has proposed a set of instruments and two levels of abatement to define the Swiss climate policy for the post-2012 period. The proposed policies are the results of a consultation procedure that took place at the beginning of 2009 and has allowed major stakeholders and lobbies to defend their interests. Using a hybrid model, we evaluate two proposed scenarios at the 2030 horizon and find important disparities in the prices of carbon faced by the different economic sectors and higher welfare costs than those that would be triggered by a uniform carbon tax.

2009

Assessment of acceptable Swiss post-2012 climate policies.

Juan Carlos Altamirano Cabrera, André Sceia, Marc Vielle

NCCR-Climate2009

Humans have altered the Earth’s land surface since the Paleolithic mainly by clearing woody vegetation first to improve hunting and gathering opportunities, and later to provide agricultural cropland. In the Holocene, agriculture was established on nearly all continents and led to widespread modification of terrestrial ecosystems. To quantify the role that humans played in the global carbon cycle over the Holocene, we developed a new, annually resolved inventory of anthropogenic land cover change from 8000 years ago to the beginning of large-scale industrialization (ad 1850). This inventory is based on a simple relationship between population and land use observed in several European countries over preindustrial time. Using this data set, and an alternative scenario based on the HYDE 3.1 land use data base, we forced the LPJ DGVM in a series of continuous simulations to evaluate the impacts of ALCC on terrestrial carbon storage during the preindustrial Holocene. Our model setup allowed us to quantify the importance of land degradation caused by repeated episodes of land use followed by abandonment. By 3 ka BP, cumulative carbon emissions caused by anthropogenic land cover change in our new scenario ranged between 84 and 102 Pg, translating to c. 7 ppm of atmospheric CO2. By ad 1850, emissions were 325–357 Pg in the new scenario, in contrast to 137–189 Pg when driven by HYDE. Regional events that resulted in local emissions or uptake of carbon were often balanced by contrasting patterns in other parts of the world. While we cannot close the carbon budget in the current study, simulated cumulative anthropogenic emissions over the preindustrial Holocene are consistent with the ice core record of atmospheric d13CO2 and support the hypothesis that anthropogenic activities led to the stabilization of atmospheric CO2 concentrations at a level that made the world substantially warmer than it otherwise would be.

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