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Journal Article

Alternative carbon price trajectories can avoid excessive carbon removal

Authors
/persons/resource/Jessica.Strefler

Strefler,  Jessica
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research;

/persons/resource/Elmar.Kriegler

Kriegler,  Elmar
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research;

/persons/resource/Nicolas.Bauer

Bauer,  Nicolas
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research;

/persons/resource/Gunnar.Luderer

Luderer,  Gunnar
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research;

/persons/resource/Robert.Pietzcker

Pietzcker,  Robert C.
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research;

/persons/resource/giannou

Giannousakis,  Anastasis
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research;

/persons/resource/Ottmar.Edenhofer

Edenhofer,  Ottmar
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research;

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Fulltext (public)

25351oa.pdf
(Publisher version), 604KB

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Citation

Strefler, J., Kriegler, E., Bauer, N., Luderer, G., Pietzcker, R. C., Giannousakis, A., Edenhofer, O. (2021): Alternative carbon price trajectories can avoid excessive carbon removal. - Nature Communications, 12, 2264.
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22211-2


Cite as: https://publications.pik-potsdam.de/pubman/item/item_25351
Abstract
The large majority of climate change mitigation scenarios that hold warming below 2 °C show high deployment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR), resulting in a peak-and-decline behavior in global temperature. This is driven by the assumption of an exponentially increasing carbon price trajectory which is perceived to be economically optimal for meeting a carbon budget. However, this optimality relies on the assumption that a finite carbon budget associated with a temperature target is filled up steadily over time. The availability of net carbon removals invalidates this assumption and therefore a different carbon price trajectory should be chosen. We show how the optimal carbon price path for remaining well below 2 °C limits CDR demand and analyze requirements for constructing alternatives, which may be easier to implement in reality. We show that warming can be held at well below 2 °C at much lower long-term economic effort and lower CDR deployment and therefore lower risks if carbon prices are high enough in the beginning to ensure target compliance, but increase at a lower rate after carbon neutrality has been reached.