by Judith Curry
With careful design, the same development projects that improve communities, save lives, and increase GDP can also fight climate change.
The World Bank has published a new study Climate smart development: adding up the benefits of actions that help build prosperity, end poverty and combat climate change. From the Press Release:
A new study examines the multiple benefits for a series of policy scenarios addressing transportation and energy efficiency in buildings and industry in five countries and the European Union.
It provides concrete data to help policymakers understand the broader potential of climate-smart development investments.
From the Abstract of the full report:
This report describes efforts by the ClimateWorks Foundation and the World Bank to quantify the multiple economic, social, and environmental benefits associated with policies and projects to reduce emissions in select sectors and regions. The report has three objectives: 1) to develop a holistic, adaptable framework to capture and measure the multiple benefits of reducing emissions of several pollutants; 2) to demonstrate how local and national policymakers, members of the international development community, and others can use this framework to design and analyze policies and projects; and 3) to contribute a compelling rationale for effectively combining climate action with sustainable development and green growth worldwide. By using a systems approach to analyze policies and projects, this work illustrates ways to capitalize on synergies between efforts to reduce emissions and spur development, minimize costs, and maximize societal benefits. This report uses several case studies to demonstrate how to apply the analytical framework. Three simulated case studies analyzed the effects of key sector policies to determine the benefits realized in the United States, China, the European Union, India, Mexico, and Brazil. The sector policies include regulations, taxes, and incentives to stimulate a shift to clean transport, improved industrial energy efficiency, and more energy efficient buildings and appliances. Also presented are results of four simulated case studies that analyzed several sub-national development projects, scaled up to the national level, to determine the additional benefits over the life of each project, generally 20 years. By applying the framework to analyze both types of interventions, this report demonstrates the efficacy of this approach for national and local policymakers, international finance organizations, and others. These case studies show that climate change mitigation and air quality protection can be integral to effective development efforts and can provide a net economic benefit. Quantifying the benefits of climate action can facilitate support from constituencies interested in public health and food and energy security; it can also advance the international discussion of effective ways to address climate change while pursuing green growth. In this report, the chapter 1 provides background information on the pollutants covered in this report and identifies opportunities to achieve both local socioeconomic and global climate objectives by reducing emissions. It also introduces new modeling tools that enable broader economic analysis of emissions-reduction programs.
Some examples from the Press Release:
Modernizing landfills and cleaning up open dumps have obvious benefits for surrounding communities, but the value reaches deeper into the national budget that may be evident at first glance.
For a country like Brazil, where waste-to-energy technology is being piloted today, integrated solid waste management practices including building sanitary landfills that capture greenhouse gas emissions to generate electricity can improve human health, add jobs, increase the energy supply, reduce the impact on climate change, and boost national GDP.
A new study looks at a series of climate-smart development project scenarios, including landfills in Brazil, and for the first time on a large scale adds up how government actions can boost economic performance and benefit lives, jobs, crops, energy, and GDP – as well as emissions reductions to combat climate change.
It provides concrete data to help policymakers understand the broader potential of climate-smart development investments.
In the transportation policy scenario, for example, if the five countries and the EU shifted more travel to public transit, moved more fright traffic off of roads to rails and sea, and improved fuel efficiency, they could save about 20,000 lives a year, avert hundreds of millions of dollars in crop losses, save nearly $300 billion in energy, and reduce climate changing emissions by more than four gigatons.
Some of the benefit comes from reducing emissions of what are known as short-lived climate pollutants, or SLCPs.
Black carbon from diesel vehicles and cooking fires, methane from mining operations and landfills, ozone formed when sunlight interacts with emissions from power plants and vehicles, and some hydrofluorocarbons are all SLCPs. They can damage crops and cause illnesses that kill millions. Reducing these emissions could avoid an estimated 2.4 million premature deaths and about 32 million tons of crop losses a year.
Unlike CO2, SLCPs do not linger in the atmosphere for centuries but are removed in weeks or years. Stopping these air pollution emissions from entering the atmosphere would by itself help reduce warming and provide time to develop and deploy effective CO2 interventions.
Until now, socioeconomic benefits and environmental externalities, those consequences of industrial or commercial activities not reflected in their costs, have often been left out of economic analysis because they have been difficult to measure.
The four simulated project case studies analyzed local development interventions scaled up to a national level in one country.
For example, in the Brazil landfill scenario, the report uses results from existing World Bank-supported projects in Brazil that are implementing a variety of integrated solid waste management options, including biodigesters, composting, and landfill technology that captures methane to produce electricity. If the same technologies were scaled up nationwide, over 20 years, the study estimates the changes could create more than 44,000 jobs, increase GDP by more than $13 billion, and reduce emissions by 158 million tons of CO2-equivalent.
The other three project case studies examine expanding bus rapid transit in India, the use of clean cookstoves in rural China, and the use of solar panels and biodigesters to produce electricity from agriculture waste in Mexico.
Together, the aggregate benefits over 20 years of those four projects scaled up to the national level are estimated to include more than 1 million lives saved and about 1 million-1.5 million tons of crop losses avoided. These projects could reduce CO2-equivalent, emissions roughly equivalent to shutting down 100-150 coal-fired power plants. For just three of these projects – in India, Brazil, and Mexico – the benefits equate to about $100 billion-$134 billion in additional value.
While highlighting the co-benefits, the case studies suggest the need for further development of the modeling framework. Nevertheless, the framework demonstrates that capturing environmental externalities can strengthen the rationale for projects or policies aimed at controlling air pollutants.
As the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment urged, climate action can become much easier to undertake if co-benefits are captured and quantified.
JC reflections
For reference, here are some other recent related World Bank publications that have been discussed at Climate Etc.:
- Agreeing on Robust Decisions: A New Process For Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty
- Investment decision making under deep uncertainty – application to climate change
IMO this approach makes a lot of sense, consistent with the idea of Climate Informed Decision Analysis (discussed in previous WB report).
Many of the ideas in the new WB report emerge from the Climate Fast Attack Plan, that focused on cutting emissions of methane and soot. The proposal was associated with economic and public health benefits. Seems like win-win, no? This hasn’t stopped AGW from criticizing the plan because it takes people’s eye off the main ball, which is reducing CO2 emissions.
When tied with development goals, these ideas really do seem like no-brainers, and unlikely to engender political opposition. The other thing that I like about this approach is that efforts to reduce emissions focus on regional environmental, development and economic problems in context of the local culture and assets.
Surely this makes more sense than the current UNFCCC policies, that seem to be working against development goals such as emissions targets and the Warsaw Loss and Damage Mechanism?
Filed under: Policy