This week’s Roadmap question from the Georgia Climate Center looks at research and policy questions about how Georgia can make reductions in the emission of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. While emissions need to be reduced across the globe, Georgia is a significant emitter of these gases and should be working to curb their emissions. Some sources now such as transportation in Atlanta and interstate corridors, agriculture including both animal production and land use, and power production, especially from coal, need to be studied to see if emissions can be cut in an economically viable way.
https://roadmap.georgiaclimateproject.org/
39. What are the most cost-effective and equitable policy and technology options for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases in Georgia, and how can these be prioritized?
Why this question is important: Several systematic evaluations of emission reduction opportunities have been conducted at a global scale (Nauclér and Enkvist 2009; Hawken 2017). The Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change called for the development at the national level of “long-term low GHG emission development strategies” to identify pathways for reducing GHG emissions while sustaining economic growth (United Nations 2015). The United States and several other countries have developed such strategies (White House 2016), but there is no similar strategy for Georgia. Other jurisdictions have made progress at the State level: the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (www.rggi.org) in the northeast USA, for example, agreed in August 2017 to reduce GHG emissions by 30% across 9 States by 2030. Common approaches for assessing and presenting emissions reduction options include marginal abatement cost curves and stabilization wedges (e.g., Blok et al. 2012; Barker et al. 2016), as well as methodologies for incorporating co-benefits into these analyses (e.g., Ürge-Vorsatz et al. 2014). Assessments of options can then be used to prioritize actions and/or develop action plans. It will be important to factor equity considerations into such a prioritization and/or planning process.
