5 ms·

Climate policies that achieved major emission reductions

87 points by barbazoo 2y ago

aresant 2y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
lifeisstillgood 2y ago
My takeaways were 1. Developed and developing countries reacted differently to different incentives. This to me is just another point where “the invisible hand” only works in certain limited cases. Markets are identifiable measurable systems. Not magic 2. It’s a mix, it needs careful monitoring and good across the board policy and industrial involvement - yeah. We need good government and good private sector involvement. So there goes the paddle just as we enter the brown looking creek … 3. Loving the graphics - Inwish Incoukd do that with matplotlib
- readthenotes1 2y ago
  'This to me is just another point where “the invisible hand” only works in certain limited cases.' There's a certain amount of irony and despair when referring to the invisible hand of a free market in the context of government and ngo interference therein...
  - syndicatedjelly 2y ago
    Do you mean “The Invisible Man”?
akira2501 2y ago
Pure emissions measures that don't consider waste outputs seem to be woefully inadequate. Having study periods that end in 2020 seems designed to arrive at incorrect outcomes. And finally, leaving out ocean based emissions and total amount of waste and electronic waste generated by new schemes seems thoughtless.
sien 2y ago
Let's have a look at France's emissions : https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/france https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/france Somehow, from 1973 they went from 10t C02 per capita to 4.8 t per capita in 2022. Their GDP at the same went from 264 Bn to ~2779 Bn https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/FRA/france/gdp-gross-domestic-product https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/FRA/fra... Whatever mysterious method of C02 reduction they used should be investigated.
- dmagee 2y ago
  Nuclear power.
  - dmagee 2y ago
    https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/france#how-much-electricity-does-the-country-generate-each-year https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/france#how-much-el...
    - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
      One of the interesting things demonstrated there is that you really don't want to be generating most of your electricity from imported oil during a global oil shock.
  - ahartmetz 2y ago
    Can't be everything. Electrical power is like 20-35% or so of total power used in most countries. I just checked some statistics of the Umweltbundesamt, the German ~environment protection office. The electrical fraction is suprisingly low! Though it's supposed to increase because most renewable energy production is electric. My guess is nuclear energy, more efficient cars, better insulated houses, and less heavy industry.
    - avar 2y ago
      You have the cause and effect backwards. German homes are electric heated at a rate of around 5%[1], French at around 30%[2] (page 7). As electricity prices are lowered (e.g. by state investment in nuclear) various things that use fossil fuels will shift over to electric. 1. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/heating-40-million-homes-hurdles-phasing-out-fossil-fuels-german-basements https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/heating-40-millio... 2. https://heatpumpingtechnologies.org/annex46/wp-content/uploads/sites/53/2020/10/hpt-an46-02-03-task-1-counry-report-france.pdf https://heatpumpingtechnologies.org/annex46/wp-content/uploa... 3. https://strom-report.com/electricity-prices-europe/ https://strom-report.com/electricity-prices-europe/
jppope 2y ago
Did anyone get the short list in a clear format? That article was the most handwavy, avoid the point, whitepaper I've read in a long time.
- stikit 2y ago
  Courtesy ChatGPT when asked to summarize the final paragraph before the discussion: ## Developed Countries • Transport Sector: • Pricing: Most successful individually (20%) Subsidies: Highly effective when combined with pricing (33%). • Electricity Sector: • Regulation: Most effective as a stand-alone policy (33%). • Pricing: A key component in successful policy mixes (50%). • Subsidies: Not effective as a stand-alone policy. • Industry Sector: • Pricing: Most effective when used alone (43%). • Subsidies: Can be a valuable complement to other policies. • Buildings Sector: • Subsidies: Slightly dominant, effective both individually and in combinations. • Variety of Instruments: Broad set of policies can be similarly effective. ## Developing Countries • Transport Sector: • Regulation: Most powerful as a stand-alone policy (33%) and in combination with subsidies, pricing, and information (33% each). • Electricity Sector: • Subsidies: Most powerful as a stand-alone policy (67%). • Complementarities: No effective policy combinations detected. • Industry Sector: • Pricing: Shows the most synergy with other policies (50%). • Subsidies: Effective complement in policy mixes. • Buildings Sector: • Regulation: Most effective as a stand-alone policy. • Variety of Instruments: Broad set of policies can be effective, with a slight emphasis on regulation.
- igornadj 2y ago
  I found it highly accessible and to the point.
xivzgrev 2y ago
Here’s the lead: taxation. Imagine that. People avoid pain more than gain pleasure, and people are sensitive to their wallets. “By contrast, taxation is a notable exception in effectively causing large emission breaks alone. It stands out as the only policy instrument that achieves near equal or larger effect size as a stand-alone policy across all sectors.“
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
hereme888 2y ago
So I recently learned about the logarithmic saturation phenomena for CO2, as well as the impact on significantly increased food supply with increased CO2 levels. Are there any studies that prove these policy interventions will have any practical benefit going forward?
notheyarent 2y ago
The seaweed pellets they add to cows food that eliminated most of their emissions must be the most ingenious climate policy and breakthrough. Before these were invented we were looking at a situation where meat consumption (or at least beef) may have to be phased out. The rapid development of battery technology must be a close second. I remember as a kid in the 1990s it was difficult to get good rechargeable batteries to power a RC toy car. They were often huge battery packs that would over heat, last a few minutes per charge and takes ages to power up. Now we have people carrying cars driving hundreds of kilometres on quick charging batteries.
- giarc 2y ago
  Is the seaweed actually in use beyond some test farms or research herds?
  - kuhewa 2y ago
    Apparently it has been commercially available to cattle growers since 2022 but not sure on uptake https://www.future-feed.com/buy-asparagopsis https://www.future-feed.com/buy-asparagopsis
    - giarc 2y ago
      I wonder if "low carbon cattle" exists in the grocery stores. I'd actually pay a premium for this.
      - kuhewa 2y ago
        https://www.wired.com/story/low-carbon-beef/ https://www.wired.com/story/low-carbon-beef/
        giarc 2y ago
        Thanks for that. However, I would agree with those against that labelling. "beef producers to market their meat as low-carbon. Producers who can prove that their cattle are raised in a way that emits 10 percent less greenhouse gases than an industry baseline" 10% is nothing.
nxobject 2y ago
If you're interested in how the authors did the analysis, the fun details – the data sources and analytic/econometric methods – are in the supplementary materials (link at end of article). Ironically enough, I assume that if they hadn't managed to publish a higher-level article in Science, the actual paper (hypothetically published elsewhere) would have been the 116 (+/- epsilon) pages of detailed measures and methods, result displays, and sensitivity analyses/robustness checks. If I read the article correctly, they systematically detect when emissions policies are adopted by looking at sudden increases/"breaks" in "stringency indices" of a country's emissions policies (within a particular industrial sector.) The machine learning comes in their automated procedure for identifying these breaks (which is well out of my expertise – my longitudinal analysis training is in good old fashioned multilevel modelling and structural equation modelling.) They then do the standard trick of using a binary before/after "treament" indicator variable. Once that is done, though, it looks like you can choose your method of choice for detecting significant changes in emissions pre-post intervention.
gmuslera 2y ago
The turtle will catch Zeno any day now. Those savings in decades are not in the same order than all the fossil carbon that was extracted each single year on them. In fact, neither is with how much we increased the extraction, for most of the single years of that period. And I am talking about fossil carbon, something deeply buried for millions of years, and added to the cycle, not circulating differently the carbon that already was in it. Most of that new carbon was extracted in less than a century and burned, staying for a couple of centuries more. And speaking of recycling carbon, it is not even in the order of carbon emitted by positive feedback loops, what is emitted by permafrost thawing, what was emitted just last year in Canada fires is all orders over the effort of decades. There is a big elephant in the room. While it is there, all effort will be mostly meaningless.
AtlasBarfed 2y ago
1) standards 2) subsidies 3) financing All three which I would argue we are woefully behind on in the US for EVs and solar. There should be a ten year subsidy on new cars in the range of 10000$ that decreases 10% per year if they are EVs or PHEVs with 40 mile all electric ranges. There should be a tax on new ice cars that increases by 4% of the retail car cost every year. Of course we should have a similar increasing tax on gasoline, but that is more regressive.
mike_hearn 2y ago
The article talks about successful interventions. It's problematic that the article doesn't put this in context: no specific events or policies are visible in the growth rate of CO2 in the atmosphere since records began. It's a smooth up-and-to-the-right line with slowly increasing acceleration. https://gml.noaa.gov/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo.png https://gml.noaa.gov/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo.png Things you might intuitively expect to be visible but aren't: • COVID lockdowns (i.e. aviation shutdown). • Germany's phaseout of nuclear power and return to lignite. • The collapse of the USSR. • Any kind of global climate agreement. • The explosion of cheap air travel. • The enormous drop in solar/wind costs in the 2010s. • Chinese adoption of capitalism and consequent industrialization in the 1990s. If even global lockdowns had no impact on CO2 levels it's fair to say there are no actual or conceivable government policies that will be successful at reducing emissions any time soon. The authors of this paper aren't going to mention that though, otherwise examining 1500 different government policies might seem a bit pointless and the discussion would have to move to adaptation, which they don't like conceptually.
dzonga 2y ago
what do you most pollutions come from ? power generation ? use nuclear & solar. ships ? use manufacturing that's close to usage centers. not everything needs to be made in china. wars - too profitable / jobs program. maybe reduce size of gvt

87 points by barbazoo 2y ago

aresant 2y ago

[flagged]

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

lifeisstillgood 2y ago

My takeaways were 1. Developed and developing countries reacted differently to different incentives. This to me is just another point where “the invisible hand” only works in certain limited cases. Markets are identifiable measurable systems. Not magic 2. It’s a mix, it needs careful monitoring and good across the board policy and industrial involvement - yeah. We need good government and good private sector involvement. So there goes the paddle just as we enter the brown looking creek … 3. Loving the graphics - Inwish Incoukd do that with matplotlib

readthenotes1 2y ago
'This to me is just another point where “the invisible hand” only works in certain limited cases.' There's a certain amount of irony and despair when referring to the invisible hand of a free market in the context of government and ngo interference therein...
- syndicatedjelly 2y ago
  Do you mean “The Invisible Man”?

akira2501 2y ago

Pure emissions measures that don't consider waste outputs seem to be woefully inadequate. Having study periods that end in 2020 seems designed to arrive at incorrect outcomes. And finally, leaving out ocean based emissions and total amount of waste and electronic waste generated by new schemes seems thoughtless.

sien 2y ago

Let's have a look at France's emissions : https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/france https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/france Somehow, from 1973 they went from 10t C02 per capita to 4.8 t per capita in 2022. Their GDP at the same went from 264 Bn to ~2779 Bn https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/FRA/france/gdp-gross-domestic-product https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/FRA/fra... Whatever mysterious method of C02 reduction they used should be investigated.

dmagee 2y ago
Nuclear power.
- dmagee 2y ago
  https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/france#how-much-electricity-does-the-country-generate-each-year https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/france#how-much-el...
  - ZeroGravitas 2y ago
    One of the interesting things demonstrated there is that you really don't want to be generating most of your electricity from imported oil during a global oil shock.
- ahartmetz 2y ago
  Can't be everything. Electrical power is like 20-35% or so of total power used in most countries. I just checked some statistics of the Umweltbundesamt, the German ~environment protection office. The electrical fraction is suprisingly low! Though it's supposed to increase because most renewable energy production is electric. My guess is nuclear energy, more efficient cars, better insulated houses, and less heavy industry.
  - avar 2y ago
    You have the cause and effect backwards. German homes are electric heated at a rate of around 5%[1], French at around 30%[2] (page 7). As electricity prices are lowered (e.g. by state investment in nuclear) various things that use fossil fuels will shift over to electric. 1. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/heating-40-million-homes-hurdles-phasing-out-fossil-fuels-german-basements https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/heating-40-millio... 2. https://heatpumpingtechnologies.org/annex46/wp-content/uploads/sites/53/2020/10/hpt-an46-02-03-task-1-counry-report-france.pdf https://heatpumpingtechnologies.org/annex46/wp-content/uploa... 3. https://strom-report.com/electricity-prices-europe/ https://strom-report.com/electricity-prices-europe/

jppope 2y ago

Did anyone get the short list in a clear format? That article was the most handwavy, avoid the point, whitepaper I've read in a long time.

stikit 2y ago
Courtesy ChatGPT when asked to summarize the final paragraph before the discussion: ## Developed Countries • Transport Sector: • Pricing: Most successful individually (20%) Subsidies: Highly effective when combined with pricing (33%). • Electricity Sector: • Regulation: Most effective as a stand-alone policy (33%). • Pricing: A key component in successful policy mixes (50%). • Subsidies: Not effective as a stand-alone policy. • Industry Sector: • Pricing: Most effective when used alone (43%). • Subsidies: Can be a valuable complement to other policies. • Buildings Sector: • Subsidies: Slightly dominant, effective both individually and in combinations. • Variety of Instruments: Broad set of policies can be similarly effective. ## Developing Countries • Transport Sector: • Regulation: Most powerful as a stand-alone policy (33%) and in combination with subsidies, pricing, and information (33% each). • Electricity Sector: • Subsidies: Most powerful as a stand-alone policy (67%). • Complementarities: No effective policy combinations detected. • Industry Sector: • Pricing: Shows the most synergy with other policies (50%). • Subsidies: Effective complement in policy mixes. • Buildings Sector: • Regulation: Most effective as a stand-alone policy. • Variety of Instruments: Broad set of policies can be effective, with a slight emphasis on regulation.
igornadj 2y ago
I found it highly accessible and to the point.

xivzgrev 2y ago

Here’s the lead: taxation. Imagine that. People avoid pain more than gain pleasure, and people are sensitive to their wallets. “By contrast, taxation is a notable exception in effectively causing large emission breaks alone. It stands out as the only policy instrument that achieves near equal or larger effect size as a stand-alone policy across all sectors.“

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

hereme888 2y ago

So I recently learned about the logarithmic saturation phenomena for CO2, as well as the impact on significantly increased food supply with increased CO2 levels. Are there any studies that prove these policy interventions will have any practical benefit going forward?

notheyarent 2y ago

The seaweed pellets they add to cows food that eliminated most of their emissions must be the most ingenious climate policy and breakthrough. Before these were invented we were looking at a situation where meat consumption (or at least beef) may have to be phased out. The rapid development of battery technology must be a close second. I remember as a kid in the 1990s it was difficult to get good rechargeable batteries to power a RC toy car. They were often huge battery packs that would over heat, last a few minutes per charge and takes ages to power up. Now we have people carrying cars driving hundreds of kilometres on quick charging batteries.

giarc 2y ago
Is the seaweed actually in use beyond some test farms or research herds?
- kuhewa 2y ago
  Apparently it has been commercially available to cattle growers since 2022 but not sure on uptake https://www.future-feed.com/buy-asparagopsis https://www.future-feed.com/buy-asparagopsis
  - giarc 2y ago
    I wonder if "low carbon cattle" exists in the grocery stores. I'd actually pay a premium for this.
    - kuhewa 2y ago
      https://www.wired.com/story/low-carbon-beef/ https://www.wired.com/story/low-carbon-beef/
      - giarc 2y ago
        Thanks for that. However, I would agree with those against that labelling. "beef producers to market their meat as low-carbon. Producers who can prove that their cattle are raised in a way that emits 10 percent less greenhouse gases than an industry baseline" 10% is nothing.

nxobject 2y ago

If you're interested in how the authors did the analysis, the fun details – the data sources and analytic/econometric methods – are in the supplementary materials (link at end of article). Ironically enough, I assume that if they hadn't managed to publish a higher-level article in Science, the actual paper (hypothetically published elsewhere) would have been the 116 (+/- epsilon) pages of detailed measures and methods, result displays, and sensitivity analyses/robustness checks. If I read the article correctly, they systematically detect when emissions policies are adopted by looking at sudden increases/"breaks" in "stringency indices" of a country's emissions policies (within a particular industrial sector.) The machine learning comes in their automated procedure for identifying these breaks (which is well out of my expertise – my longitudinal analysis training is in good old fashioned multilevel modelling and structural equation modelling.) They then do the standard trick of using a binary before/after "treament" indicator variable. Once that is done, though, it looks like you can choose your method of choice for detecting significant changes in emissions pre-post intervention.

gmuslera 2y ago

The turtle will catch Zeno any day now. Those savings in decades are not in the same order than all the fossil carbon that was extracted each single year on them. In fact, neither is with how much we increased the extraction, for most of the single years of that period. And I am talking about fossil carbon, something deeply buried for millions of years, and added to the cycle, not circulating differently the carbon that already was in it. Most of that new carbon was extracted in less than a century and burned, staying for a couple of centuries more. And speaking of recycling carbon, it is not even in the order of carbon emitted by positive feedback loops, what is emitted by permafrost thawing, what was emitted just last year in Canada fires is all orders over the effort of decades. There is a big elephant in the room. While it is there, all effort will be mostly meaningless.

AtlasBarfed 2y ago

1) standards 2) subsidies 3) financing All three which I would argue we are woefully behind on in the US for EVs and solar. There should be a ten year subsidy on new cars in the range of 10000$ that decreases 10% per year if they are EVs or PHEVs with 40 mile all electric ranges. There should be a tax on new ice cars that increases by 4% of the retail car cost every year. Of course we should have a similar increasing tax on gasoline, but that is more regressive.

mike_hearn 2y ago

The article talks about successful interventions. It's problematic that the article doesn't put this in context: no specific events or policies are visible in the growth rate of CO2 in the atmosphere since records began. It's a smooth up-and-to-the-right line with slowly increasing acceleration. https://gml.noaa.gov/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo.png https://gml.noaa.gov/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo.png Things you might intuitively expect to be visible but aren't: • COVID lockdowns (i.e. aviation shutdown). • Germany's phaseout of nuclear power and return to lignite. • The collapse of the USSR. • Any kind of global climate agreement. • The explosion of cheap air travel. • The enormous drop in solar/wind costs in the 2010s. • Chinese adoption of capitalism and consequent industrialization in the 1990s. If even global lockdowns had no impact on CO2 levels it's fair to say there are no actual or conceivable government policies that will be successful at reducing emissions any time soon. The authors of this paper aren't going to mention that though, otherwise examining 1500 different government policies might seem a bit pointless and the discussion would have to move to adaptation, which they don't like conceptually.

dzonga 2y ago

what do you most pollutions come from ? power generation ? use nuclear & solar. ships ? use manufacturing that's close to usage centers. not everything needs to be made in china. wars - too profitable / jobs program. maybe reduce size of gvt