Policy Scenario Assessment

CC-TAME will search for the most effective designs for a coordinated climate change mitigation and adaptation strategy across the EU land-use and energy sectors.

For European domestic policy support, CC-TAME can provide, e. g.:

• Maps of resource potential
• Trade-off analysis:
• maintain or increase carbon stocks,
• use biomass for biofuels and other products.
• Impact analysis:
• Land use offsets allowed in the EU trading Scheme
• Mitigation analysis
• Hydrologic response to management change

For International Negotiations:

• Sources and GHG implications of biomass for bioenergy
• Cost /supply curves for adaptation and mitigation options

Enabling efficiency and effectiveness of policies. Costs and greenhouse gas (GHG) impacts of policies such as the Common Agricultural Policy, Forest Strategy, and Biofuel Action Plans will be analyzed. CC-TAME’s primary focus is domestic European policy. Support for international negotiations will be provided through, e. g., assessment of net-net accounting, land-based accounting, biofuel policies, etc.

The objective is to provide recommendations and guidelines on land-use practices to be promoted by EU policies or which can alternatively to be introduced as part of Member States’ measures to implement post-Kyoto measures or cross-compliance obligations.

Efficiency and effectiveness of individual land-use practices

A list of all land-use practices (“wedges”) will be produced detailing their cost-efficiency and environmental effectiveness, in particular with respect to climate mitigation and vulnerability reduction against climate change. This list will also contain information on the geographical variability and applicability of these measures.

Long term climate impacts and adaptability

The net accrual of GHGs to the atmosphere as a result of bioenergy, agricultureal and forestry activities depends critically on management induced changes in carbon-stocks (above and below ground), emission and on the ability of bioenergy and forest-products to substitute for direct and indirect fossil fuel use (for the delivery of energy services and products). This task will bring together four outcomes namely, demand projections for energy and products, LCA GHG balances for delivery pathways, C-stock change estimates and allocation / leakage impacts to derive ranges of possible net atmGHG accrual, and vulnerability and vulnerability threshold assessment.

Sustainability impacts and trade offs

Building on the outcomes from a number of continuing plot, national, regional and global level initiatives on sustainability assurance (FSC, PEFC, UK/Dutch Gov work on RTFO biofuels assurance; RSPO 2004; RSPO 2005; ISEAL 2006; Plan Vivo; WWF 2006a; WWF 2006b) defining the core standards, principles, criteria and indicators necessary to provide a working mechanism for ensuring sustainable practice (Tipper et al., 2006, Dehue at al., 2007). Selected principles and indicators will be used to assess the individual land-use practices.

Production of carbon (GHG)/impact wedges

Indicative whole-chain GHG factors for the range of mitigation options will be used to derive European wide indicative GHG emission reduction potentials for each management option separately which will be assessed in the Socolow and Pacala (2006) carbon/GHG-wedges framework and cost ranges will be identified. The ‘sustainability indicators’ will be coupled to assess each mitigation options to arrive at cross-compliance adjusted wedge assessment.

Efficiency measured by competitive LULUCF potentials

The competitive interaction and market feed-backs between the individual management practices are quantified. The ‘total’ economic efficiencies in a total system cost-benefit sense of competing land-uses will be assessed in a simultaneous manner and detailed interpretation will be given. Ancillary benefits and trade offs between adaptation and mitigation on concrete individual practice level will be identified. Robustness of investment and management strategies will be quantified by computing a robustness score which will use results from individual baseline and policy scenarios. Vulnerability assessment and risk management issues will be derived based on the risk minimization and/or risk reduction results from the stochastic framework. Efficiencies of practices and policies will be checked for consistency between the farm/forest enterprise level as well as on the sectoral level. Welfare gains and losses to consumers and producers will be discussed in detail.

Policy implications

The outcomes will be assessed in terms of the emerging policy options at the national, regional and global levels and provided with a science based commentary on the institutional, regulatory and economic framework for delivering sustainable land-based GHG-mitigation and adaptation options under possible Post-Kyoto regimes as well as for long-term policies under the UNFCCC. Efficiency of individual policy instruments (e.g., subsidies, auctioning of environmental services, taxes) using normative and predictive models will help to give critical guidance on the economic mechanism design issues of policy implementation. Particular focus will be given to the quantification of potential cost saving from policy coordination due to the identification of the ancillary benefits between policies.

Policy implications for European Post Kyoto climate policies

Following the analysis and combining with the quantitative Post-Kyoto scenario results and inputs from the advisory panel and the European Consortium for Modelling of Air Pollution and Climate Strategies the efficiency of various potential adaptations induced by policies will be assessed. The focus will be on the evaluation of the impacts of alternative mitigation policy scenarios and discussion of the the associated costs and benefits of the policies. Particular focus will be given to the evaluation of potential benefits of cross-sectoral policy coordination.

Policy implications for International climate negotiations

Fed by the long-run scenarios of WP 6 costs and benefits from mitigation and adaptation policies will be evaluated and interpreted. Issues of timing and international policies coordination will be considered. Focuswill be on the evaluation of the autonomous or ecosystems, the associated costs as well as potential co-benefits from mitigation measures. Depending on demands from the policy advisory panel other international land-use issues will be analysed.