Can global energy transition be possible with intergenerational equity in climate efforts?

Abstract

Slacking in current global climate change actions precipitates inequality in intergenerational burden sharing in climate mitigation efforts and shifts a tremendous emissions mitigation challenge to future generations. The existing literature on climate mitigation scenarios reflects slacking in global climate actions by showing increasing shadow costs of emissions abatement over time without linking any intergenerational climate burden sharing issue. This non-trivial issue deserves an explicit coverage in climate change scenarios. This paper adds novelty in literature by offering conceptual and numerical solutions that ensure equity in intergenerational climate change efforts fundamentally through a surge in current climate change mitigation actions. The surge in global climate action is essentially an outcome of mobilizing the carbon revenues into climate financing allocated to clean technologies. Our methodology maintains a zero balanced climate-financing while searching for a uniform global carbon pricing over time as well as a set of dynamically adjusted global subsidy rates by sectors and technologies. The trajectory of this global policy package must also limit the global mean temperature to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels by 2100. The results of our conceptual and numerical analyses achieved the stated global 1.5 °C target with a minimal temperature overshooting along with efficiency as well as equity in intra- and intergenerational climate mitigation costs. In other words, the study emphasizes on the effectiveness of a global (supranational) setup in managing climate policy and mobilizing climate funds when the surge in global climate mitigation and just energy transition is contingent with all-inclusiveness, including intergenerational ethics.