Global Environmental Change Advances最新文献

{"title":"Redefining social licence for coral reef protection and management","authors":"Ingrid Naschwitz ,&nbsp;Matthew I. Curnock ,&nbsp;Jacqueline D. Lau ,&nbsp;Justine Lacey","doi":"10.1016/j.gecadv.2025.100019","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.gecadv.2025.100019","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Coral reefs worldwide are facing existential threats. Initiatives to protect reefs include efforts to reduce local stressors, facilitate sustainable use, and increasingly, apply technological interventions to restore reefs and bolster resilience. Understanding public perceptions of these initiatives is important for securing public support and ‘social licence’. However, our current knowledge of social licence largely reflects industrial resource extraction contexts. Social licence is a potentially useful concept that has not yet been applied to the broad range of existing and novel initiatives to protect coral reefs, which encompass diverse actors and approaches across multiple governance scales. We address this gap, using a survey of 2317 residents of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) region to examine perceptions of three different types of initiatives: regulatory; scientific; and community stewardship. Drawing on social licence predictors from other contexts, and by exploring others relating to GBR values from recent empirical studies, we identify common and unique predictors of support for these three initiative types. Support for all types was influenced by perceptions of threats, such as climate change (r = 0.1710, 0.1366, and −0.1167 respectively for scientific, regulatory and community stewardship initiatives), while some indicators not considered in social licence literature were important for different initiative types (e.g., pride in the GBR was a significant predictor of support for community stewardship initiatives; r = 0.1153). By building an understanding across the three types simultaneously, our study confirms that studying social licence in contexts like the GBR can be useful to reef managers and proponents of initiatives. However, as the factors that underpin support for different initiatives can vary substantially, the search for a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to gaining public support may be misguided.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":100586,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Change Advances","volume":"5 ","pages":"Article 100019"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144154750","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A mixed-methods assessment of the influence of palm plantations on water resources of indigenous communities of Indonesian Papua","authors":"Briantama Asmara ,&nbsp;Timothy O. Randhir","doi":"10.1016/j.gecadv.2025.100018","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.gecadv.2025.100018","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Oil palm expansion in tropical rainforests actively degrades downstream water quality, placing the livelihoods of river-dependent Indigenous communities who rely on these rivers at greater risk. For the Kaiso, an Indigenous group in Indonesian Papua, the river serves as the primary source for consumptive use, and the plantation impairs access to clean and safe drinking water sources. Seasonal uncertainties, coupled with failed water interventions and planned oil palm expansions, suggest a further deterioration of the health and well-being of the Kaiso through long-term exposure to contaminated water. This study employs a mixed-method approach, integrating quantitative household surveys and qualitative interviews, to examine the current impact of oil palm expansions on community-level water access. The objective is to provide a comprehensive understanding of livelihoods, state interventions, and safe water perception following plantation establishment, corroborated by quantitative findings with water preferences. Results reveal a significant shift towards rainwater for drinking water use, or approximately 85.6 % of households, post-establishment of oil palm plantations. While perceived water quality strongly correlated with non-consumptive use, consumptive use showed no association, suggesting reliance on contaminated sources during dry periods. This necessitates further qualitative investigations. Seasonal uncertainties surrounding rainwater harvesting and failed interventions have obscured the definition of safe water for the Kaiso; boiling was perceived to eliminate all chemical and harmful substances from oil palm plantations, not just biological ones, and needs further assessment. Addressing clean water access faced by Indigenous communities requires a watershed-wide assessment and community participation in plantation-related decisions, particularly for lowland and river-dependent populations, especially in Indonesian Papua.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":100586,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Change Advances","volume":"5 ","pages":"Article 100018"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143887404","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Projected climate zone shifts could undermine the effectiveness of global protected areas for biodiversity conservation by mid-to-late century","authors":"Diyang Cui ,&nbsp;Amy E. Frazier ,&nbsp;Shunlin Liang ,&nbsp;Patrick R. Roehrdanz ,&nbsp;George C. Hurtt ,&nbsp;Zhiliang Zhu ,&nbsp;Brian S. Maitner ,&nbsp;Gabriel M. Moulatlet ,&nbsp;Dongdong Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.gecadv.2025.100017","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.gecadv.2025.100017","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Climate change is driving broad-scale redistribution of species and is expected to accelerate in the coming decades, potentially undermining the effectiveness of existing protected areas (PAs) for biodiversity conservation. We develop a measure of climate zone velocity—the speed and direction at which climatic conditions shift across time and space—to assess exposure of global PAs to climate risks under future climate scenarios. We find that by mid-century, around 20 % of global protected land area is projected to undergo climate zone shifts under all future scenarios and more than half of global terrestrial PAs will face mean velocities greater than 0.1 km yr⁻¹. Under RCP 8.5, the rate of climate zone velocity will continue to intensify through the end of this century, potentially impacting 40 % of existing PA land area. The current climate zones for approximately 15 % of the land area are expected to shift outside the existing PA network and into human-modified areas, indicating that the existing network will not absorb those changes. About 15 % of current protected land area will also be exposed to emerging climatic conditions with no precedent or loss of existing climatic conditions, potentially undermining the effectiveness of the existing network. Strategic and adaptive conservation planning that explicitly considers climate zone shifts will enable greater resilience for conservation interventions under climate change.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":100586,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Change Advances","volume":"5 ","pages":"Article 100017"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143746866","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Analysis of cost-effective reduction pathways for major emitting countries to achieve the Paris Agreement climate goal","authors":"Elena Hooijschuur ,&nbsp;Michel G.J. den Elzen ,&nbsp;Ioannis Dafnomilis ,&nbsp;Detlef P. van Vuuren","doi":"10.1016/j.gecadv.2025.100014","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.gecadv.2025.100014","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Achieving the global climate goal of the Paris Agreement depends on collective action by individual countries, as reflected in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). To inform the next NDCs to be submitted by 2025, which should include emission reduction targets for 2035/2040, this study aims to identify the reduction pathways required for major emitting economies to achieve the Paris Agreement climate targets at the lowest possible global mitigation costs. We selected least-cost mitigation scenarios from Integrated Assessment Models of the latest IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report scenario database for five major emitting economies (EU-27, China, India, Japan and the United States) and the world. We downscaled modelled regional emission pathways to the regional level for the five economies, harmonised the emission data with national inventory data, and analysed the results and assessed their robustness with respect to the methodology used. Since the results do not indicate how to account for equity and feasibility considerations, policymakers should not regard them as directly indicative of national targets. Our study shows that to keep global warming to 1.5 °C with at least 50 % probability and limited overshoot, the least-cost greenhouse gas reductions by 2040 for the EU-27, Japan and the United States are around 70 %–100 % relative to 2015 levels (including LULUCF). If the selection of scenarios is limited to those consistent with existing national targets, this range increases substantially to around 85–115 %. For China and India, ranges for both selections of scenarios are similar and around 65 %–80 % and 30 %–80 %, respectively.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":100586,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Change Advances","volume":"4 ","pages":"Article 100014"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143429437","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Afforestation on Nordic grasslands: Trade-offs and synergies for climate mitigation, biodiversity, and ecosystem services","authors":"Iulie Aslaksen ,&nbsp;Anders Bryn ,&nbsp;Karina Clemmensen ,&nbsp;Heleen De Wit ,&nbsp;Urban Emanuelsson ,&nbsp;Per Arild Garnåsjordet ,&nbsp;Solveig Glomsrød ,&nbsp;Maximo Graesse ,&nbsp;Kristine Grimsrud ,&nbsp;Jon Gudmundsson ,&nbsp;Margaret Eide Hillestad ,&nbsp;Bjart Holtsmark ,&nbsp;Endre Kildal Iversen ,&nbsp;Paul Kardol ,&nbsp;Karl-Ivar Kumm ,&nbsp;Tommy Lennartsson ,&nbsp;Henrik Lindhjem ,&nbsp;Ann Norderhaug ,&nbsp;Ulrika Palme ,&nbsp;Johan Stendahl ,&nbsp;Anna Gudrun Thorhallsdottir","doi":"10.1016/j.gecadv.2025.100015","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.gecadv.2025.100015","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Afforestation of abandoned grasslands has been proposed as a global climate mitigation strategy, but the climate benefits of tree planting on grasslands remain contentious. Studies worldwide indicate that grassland soils have large potential for carbon storage, while semi-natural grasslands often support high biodiversity and provide multiple ecosystem services, including grazing resources, pollinator habitats, and aesthetic landscape values. In boreal and alpine regions of the Nordic countries, grasslands sustain extensive low intensity farming, contributing to milk and meat production and enhancing food self-sufficiency. Evaluating the impact of afforestation on climate mitigation requires a comprehensive assessment that, in addition to the carbon balance, considers both geophysical forcing (such as albedo and evapotranspiration) and the broader landscape-level effects on biodiversity in displaced ecosystems. The article postulates for policy to be inclusive of both biodiversity preservation and climate change mitigation. Such an approach should be grounded in evidence-based assessments of the ecological and climate-related impacts of afforestation on the biodiversity of semi-natural grasslands.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":100586,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Change Advances","volume":"4 ","pages":"Article 100015"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143394457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Renewable energy transition and climate finance nexus in sub-Saharan Africa","authors":"Anthony Amoah ,&nbsp;Benjamin Amoah ,&nbsp;Edmund Kwablah ,&nbsp;Rexford Kweku Asiama","doi":"10.1016/j.gecadv.2025.100013","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.gecadv.2025.100013","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), which are key recipients of climate finance aimed at supporting transitions to cleaner energy, have experienced a general decline in renewable energy transitions despite ongoing financial support. This study employs secondary panel data from 36 SSA countries covering the period 2000 to 2022 and uses a Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) Panel Vector Autoregressive (PVAR) regression model to explore the relationship between climate finance and renewable energy transitions in the region. The findings suggest that evidence of prior transitions to renewable energy positively influence the availability of current climate finance. This suggests that increases in climate finance are responsive to renewable energy transitions in SSA countries. From a policy perspective, this study underscores the importance of SSA countries strategically advancing toward a zero-carbon economy to attract greater climate-related investments and foster a sustainable future.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":100586,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Change Advances","volume":"4 ","pages":"Article 100013"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2025-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143166686","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Another look at ‘peak and decline’ carbon emissions countries: Which ones have decoupled per capita emissions from GDP and how?","authors":"Brantley Liddle ,&nbsp;Steven Parker","doi":"10.1016/j.gecadv.2024.100012","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.gecadv.2024.100012","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Two recent papers identified a number of countries that have sustained reductions in carbon emissions. We first take a closer look at <em>per capita</em> emissions trends to settle on 24 ‘peak and decline’ carbon emissions countries. Then, we use a set of methods drawn from both economics and the larger energy/climate literature (i) to determine which of those countries have decoupled emissions from GDP, such that emissions and GDP are negatively associated/correlated, and (ii) to uncover how those decoupling countries achieved such a state. Only 15 countries actually have decoupled carbon emissions from GDP. They have done so by both reducing their energy consumption and decarbonizing their energy systems. And these decoupling countries have decarbonized largely by increasing both the share of energy services that are delivered via electricity and the share of nonfossil fuels used to generate that electricity. We conclude that sustaining declining carbon emissions will depend mainly on additional decarbonization, which itself will require further electrification of energy services.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":100586,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Change Advances","volume":"3 ","pages":"Article 100012"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2950138524000081/pdfft?md5=8b5d2639139ede2e0fec94c96eee1a2a&pid=1-s2.0-S2950138524000081-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142158143","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Projected global sulfur deposition with climate intervention","authors":"H.J. Rubin ,&nbsp;C.-E. Yang ,&nbsp;F.M. Hoffman ,&nbsp;J.S. Fu","doi":"10.1016/j.gecadv.2024.100011","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.gecadv.2024.100011","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Even with immediate implementation of global policies to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions, the impacts of climate change will continue to worsen over the next decades. One potential response is stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), where sulfur dioxide is released into the stratosphere to block incoming solar radiation. SAI does not reduce the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but it can slow warming and act as a stopgap measure to give the world more time to pursue effective carbon reduction strategies. While SAI is controversial, it remains a technically feasible proposition. It ought to be thoroughly modeled both to characterize global risks better and to further the scientific community’s understanding of stratospheric aerosol dynamics. SAI relies on sulfate aerosols which have a lifetime of several years in the stratosphere but will eventually be deposited back onto Earth’s surface. While sulfate is an important nutrient for many ecosystems, high concentrations can cause acidification, eutrophication, and biodiversity loss. We use model outputs from the Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP) to track the impacts of sulfur deposition from SAI to various ecoregions through comparison with historical climate and future Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) scenarios. Our results demonstrate that dry sulfur deposition will continue to decline worldwide, regardless of scenario, from a high of 41 Tg S/yr in 1981 to under 20 Tg S/yr by 2100. Wet sulfur deposition, however, is much more uncertain and further work needs to be done in this area to harmonize model estimates. Under SAI, many ecoregions will experience notably different sulfur deposition regimes by the end of the century compared to historical trends. In some places, this will not be substantially different than the impacts of climate change under SSP2–4.5 or SSP5–8.5. However, in some ecoregions the model projections disagree dramatically on the magnitude of future trends in both emissions and deposition, with, for example, UKESM1–0-LL projecting that SO₄^2- deposition in deciduous needleleaf forests under G6 Sulfur will reach 394 % of SSP2–4.5 deposition by the 2080 s while CESM2-WACCM projects that SO₄^2- deposition will remain at 170 % of SSP2–4.5 deposition during that same time period. Our work emphasizes the lack of agreement between models and the importance of improving our understanding of SAI impacts for future climate decision-making.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":100586,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Change Advances","volume":"3 ","pages":"Article 100011"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S295013852400007X/pdfft?md5=af5e687dc5edb29093d24070bdd3ef04&pid=1-s2.0-S295013852400007X-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141962344","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Leveraging climate and remote sensing metrics for predicting forest carbon stock using Bayesian geostatistical modelling under a projected climate warming in Zimbabwe","authors":"Tsikai S. Chinembiri ,&nbsp;Onisimo Mutanga ,&nbsp;Timothy Dube","doi":"10.1016/j.gecadv.2024.100010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecadv.2024.100010","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Climate change, driven by escalating carbon dioxide (<span><math><mrow><mi>C</mi><msub><mrow><mi>O</mi></mrow><mrow><mn>2</mn></mrow></msub></mrow></math></span>) emissions, poses a significant threat to forest ecosystems and the livelihoods of communities reliant on them, especially for the global south countries and regions like the eastern highlands of Zimbabwe. The 2000 land redistribution programme reduced buffer zones between ecologically sensitive forests and land reform beneficiaries near major carbon reservoirs. In light of these challenges, this study aimed to assess the potential effects of climate change on a strategically important plantation forest ecosystem in Zimbabwe's eastern highlands. Using data from the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we modelled and predicted changes in forest carbon (C) stock density under different climate scenarios: current (1970–2000), SSP5–4.5, and SSP5–8.5. Employing a hierarchical Bayesian geostatistical approach, we compared the baseline scenario (1970–2000) with projected scenarios (RCP4.5 and RCP8.5) for 2075 to estimate changes in forest carbon stock distribution. Our results indicated a decline in carbon stock concentration under future climate scenarios, reflecting the adverse impact of greenhouse gas emissions on forest growth. We found that the projected range of forest carbon stock under the RCP8.5 scenario for 2075 is notably lower (<span><math><mrow><mn>2</mn><mo>≤</mo><mi>MgC</mi><msup><mrow><mi>ha</mi></mrow><mrow><mo>−</mo><mn>1</mn></mrow></msup><mo>≤</mo><mn>44.9</mn><mo>)</mo></mrow></math></span> than that of the baseline period (1970–2000) (<span><math><mrow><mn>1</mn><mo>≤</mo><mi>MgC</mi><msup><mrow><mi>ha</mi></mrow><mrow><mo>−</mo><mn>1</mn></mrow></msup><mo>≤</mo><mn>97</mn><mo>)</mo></mrow></math></span>, suggesting a substantial reduction in carbon storage. As the difference in posterior mean C stock (<span><math><mrow><msub><mrow><mover><mrow><mi>μ</mi></mrow><mo>̅</mo></mover></mrow><mrow><mn>1</mn></mrow></msub><mo>−</mo><msub><mrow><mover><mrow><mi>μ</mi></mrow><mo>̅</mo></mover></mrow><mrow><mn>2</mn></mrow></msub><mo>)</mo></mrow></math></span>, 52.1 MgCha^-1 is well above zero, we deduce that the posterior mean C stock distribution of the projected future RCP8.5 2075 climate projection is indeed credibly different from the current (1970–2000) climate scenario. Additionally, there is a high probability <span><math><mrow><mo>(</mo><mo>&gt;</mo><mn>90</mn><mo>%</mo><mo>)</mo></mrow></math></span> that forest plantations will be adversely affected by the business-as-usual climate warming projection. Overall, our findings highlight the urgent need for climate change mitigation strategies, such as reforestation programs and careful selection of tree species for plantations, to safeguard forest ecosystems and the communities dependent on them. These insights are crucial for infor","PeriodicalId":100586,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Change Advances","volume":"2 ","pages":"Article 100010"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2950138524000068/pdfft?md5=981445355802533297a0efc2fc4856b4&pid=1-s2.0-S2950138524000068-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141163628","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Synthetic fuels mitigate the risks associated with rapid end-use technology transition in climate mitigation scenarios","authors":"Shotaro Mori ,&nbsp;Osamu Nishiura ,&nbsp;Ken Oshiro ,&nbsp;Shinichiro Fujimori","doi":"10.1016/j.gecadv.2024.100009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecadv.2024.100009","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In recent years, synthetic fuels have been identified as a potential measure for decarbonization of hard-to-abate sectors. Due to the high production costs associated with solar and wind power-based hydrogen production and carbon capture, previous research has indicated that the role of synthetic fuels may be restricted to specific sectors such as aviation. However, the high compatibility of these fuels with fossil fuel-based end-use technologies could support decarbonization while mitigating the risks associated with end-use technology transition, which has yet to be addressed in the literature. This study aims to quantify the role of synthetic fuels in the rapid end-use technology transition using an energy system model. To achieve this aim, we evaluated three indicators: the shares of electricity and hydrogen in final energy consumption, stranded investment, and the number of international energy transport vessels. The results suggest that synthetic fuel use can moderate the rapid transition to electricity and hydrogen utilization technologies, enabling decarbonization while avoiding the premature retirement of existing fossil fuel-based technologies. We conclude that the benefits of retaining fossil fuel-based end-use technologies must be weighed against the losses incurred due to the irrationality of using synthetic fuels over cheaper options.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":100586,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Change Advances","volume":"2 ","pages":"Article 100009"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2950138524000056/pdfft?md5=26626a0c18868e8d58bdfcbc002eae3b&pid=1-s2.0-S2950138524000056-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141095223","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}