Waldhoff, Stephanie, Anthoff, David, Rose, Steven and Tol, Richard S J (2014) The marginal costs of different greenhouse gases: an application of FUND. Economics (31). pp. 1-33. ISSN 1864-6042

Preview

PDF - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (518kB) | Preview

Abstract

The authors use FUND 3.9 to estimate the social cost of four greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and sulphur hexafluoride—with sensitivity tests for carbon dioxide fertilization, terrestrial feedbacks, climate sensitivity, discounting, equity weighting, and socioeconomic and emissions assumptions. They also estimate the global damage potential for each gas—the ratio of the social cost of the non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gas to the social cost of carbon dioxide. For all gases, they find the social costs and damage potentials sensitive to alternative assumptions. The global damage potentials are compared to global warming potentials (GWPs), a key metric used to compare gases. The authors find that global damage potentials are higher than GWPs in nearly all sensitivities. This finding suggests that previous papers using GWPs may be underestimating the relative importance of reducing noncarbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions from a climate damage perspective. Of particular interest is the sensitivity of results to carbon dioxide fertilization, which notably reduces the social cost of carbon dioxide, but only has a small effect on the other gases. As a result, the global damage potentials for methane and nitrous oxide are much higher with carbon dioxide fertilization included, and higher than many previous estimates.

Item Type:	Article
Schools and Departments:	School of Business, Management and Economics > Economics
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HB Economic theory. Demography
Depositing User:	Richard Tol
Date Deposited:	08 Sep 2015 11:39
Last Modified:	07 Mar 2017 08:08
URI:	http://srodev.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/56591

View download statistics for this item

📧 Request an update