MIT Libraries logoDSpace@MIT

MIT
View Item 
  • DSpace@MIT Home
  • Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research
  • Working Papers
  • View Item
  • DSpace@MIT Home
  • Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research
  • Working Papers
  • View Item
JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

Comparing the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on global warming

Author(s)
Eckaus, Richard S.
Thumbnail
Download28596131.pdf (1.027Mb)
Metadata
Show full item record
Abstract
Policies dealing with global warming require a measure of the effects of the emissions of greenhouse gases that create different magnitudes of instantaneous radiative forcing and have different lifetimes. The Global Warming Potential (GWP), a physical index of the total radiative forcing due to an emission of a unit amount of a particular greenhouse gas has been proposed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as a such a policy tool. In general, no such physical index will serve this purpose. Adding up physical measures of radiative forcing in different periods resulting from emissions at different times and places is, in an economic and policy sense, like adding apples and oranges. Discounting of radiative forcing in successive periods, as in done in some versions of the GWP, is only an arbitrary weighting. Reduction of radiative forcing effects in different future periods of greenhouse gas emissions that occur at different times and places can be expected to impose different economic costs. These opportunity cost valuations must be used to weight the effects of a greenhouse gas emission over its lifetime. That leads to the concept of the Emissions Opportunity Cost (EOC) of a greenhouse gas emission. While this is more difficult to measure, it is the essential guide to policy.
Date issued
1990
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/50155
Publisher
MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research
Other identifiers
90-022
Series/Report no.
Working paper (Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Energy Policy Research) ; MIT-CEPR 90-022.

Collections
  • Working Papers

Browse

All of DSpaceCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjects

My Account

Login

Statistics

OA StatisticsStatistics by CountryStatistics by Department
MIT Libraries
PrivacyPermissionsAccessibilityContact us
MIT
Content created by the MIT Libraries, CC BY-NC unless otherwise noted. Notify us about copyright concerns.