Mitigation under the Paris agreement

This research project tries to make sense of "unconditional" and "conditional" (intended) nationally determined contributions ((I)NDCs) under the Paris Agreement (PA) on climate action, initiated in December 2015. We consider possible relationships between quantity targets for greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation ambition as defined by participating countries under the PA, and price targets required to implement them.

Main objectives of the analysis are:

• Study the overall global structure of carbon pricing likely to result from the PA, and discuss the scope for unified global carbon pricing under the PA;

• Analyze main types of GHG mitigation, both overall reductions in energy consumption and switches from fossil to renewable energy sources, in terms of their efficiency, financing structure, and overall viability; and

• Analyze the suitability of different financing mechanisms for low-income countries, necessary to incentivize additional mitigation in such countries under the PA, to fulfill the countries’ conditional (I)NDCs.

Under the project we will construct, and analyze, a series of simple analytical models where both low-income and high-income countries are viewed as rational actors; and with empirical examples, mainly from Latin America, of how the (I)NDCs are likely to be implemented.