Asbjørn Torvanger

• Ph.D
• University of Oslo

We investigate the potential for greenhouse gas (GHG) emission cuts for the Norwegian short-sea (domestic) maritime segments of express boats, offshore support vessels, and aquaculture support vessels in comparison to ferries in Norway. Public procurement conditional on climate-friendly operation is catalyzing a transition to battery-electric opera...

This study explored the consequences of allocating commitments to remove CO2 to countries according to their responsibility for human-made climate change based on historical (cumulative) CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use and industry. The ‘carbon debt’ to be restored through CO2 removal was calculated as the remaining carbon budget for warming by...

Transition to a low-carbon economy to achieve the Paris Agreement goal requires substantial investments. The green bond market shows good potential to help mobilize financial sources towards sustainable investments. In this paper, we compare the uptake of green bonds in Norway and Sweden from 2013 till 2019, with the aim to understand what drives t...

Negative emissions of carbon dioxide will likely be needed to meet the <2°C warming above the pre-industrial level goal of the Paris Agreement. A major technology option is combining Biomass Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) in the industry and power sectors. Biogenic waste contributes a major share for the numerous waste-to-energy pla...

Since the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015, spurred by the 2018 IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, net zero emission targets have emerged as a new organizing principle of climate policy. In this context, climate policymakers and stakeholders have been shifting their attention to carbon dioxide removal (CDR) as an inevitable comp...

Ancillary benefits of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) are defined as positive effects of CCS deployment that are additional to the primary climate change mitigation effect through reduced carbon dioxide emissions. One category of ancillary benefits of CCS is the use of carbon dioxide for synthetic fuels, chemicals and plastics, building materials,...

A number of studies show that large-scale deployment of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is necessary to limit the increase in global average temperature to less than 2 °C by 2100. However, some experts and citizens worry about the integrity of carbon dioxide storage sites due to the possibility of future leakage. We introduce a two-period model wh...

Studies show that the ‘well below 2°C’ target from the Paris Agreement will be hard to meet without large negative emissions from mid-century onwards, which means removing CO2 from the atmosphere and storing the carbon dioxide in biomass, soil, suitable geological formations, deep ocean sediments, or chemically bound to certain minerals. Biomass en...

Wind power development projects often include compensation for the affected communities, but little is known about the efficacy of the alternative compensation mechanisms. This study addresses this question by examining the relative potential of private and public compensation. We conduct a Choice Experiment (CE) that investigates household prefere...

Natural carbon sinks currently absorb approximately half of the anthropogenic CO2 emitted by fossil fuel burning, cement production and land-use change. However, this airborne fraction may change in the future depending on the emissions scenario. An important issue in developing carbon budgets to achieve climate stabilisation targets is the behavio...

To have a >50% chance of limiting warming below 2 °C, most recent scenarios from integrated assessment models (IAMs) require large-scale deployment of negative emissions technologies (NETs). These are technologies that result in the net removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. We quantify potential global impacts of the different NETs on va...

A report prepared by CICERO and Climate Policy Initiative for the G7 summit identifies major trends and sources of international climate finance.

Investors are increasingly aware of climate risk to their investments, but can science drive a broader shift to green investments? Green bonds are an example of a financial market that could be better informed by climate science.

Large-scale deployment of low-carbon energy technologies is crucial to mitigating climate change, and public support is an important barrier to policies and projects that facilitate deployment. This paper provides insights to the origins of public opposition that can impede the adoption of low-carbon technologies by investigating how perceptions ar...

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has been criticized in the literature for encouraging a focus on offset production (OP) at the expense of achieving or encouraging sustainable development (SD). It is argued that one explanation for this is that there is no commonly agreed definition of SD and, moreover, the priority of CDM project developers i...

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has potential to become a major option to mitigate emissions of greenhouse gases globally, but this requires a well-functioning regulation system at both national and international levels. Owing to the long-term perspective needed for geological storage of carbon dioxide and uncertainties with regard to characterist...

We explore allowable leakage for carbon capture and geological storage to be consistent with maximum global warming targets of 2.5 and 3 °C by 2100. Given plausible fossil fuel use and carbon capture and storage scenarios, and based on modeling of time-dependent leakage of CO2, we employ a climate model to calculate the long-term temperature respon...

Stabilizing global greenhouse gas concentrations at levels to avoid significant climate risks will require massive "decarbonization" of all the major economies over the next few decades, in addition to the reduced emissions from other GHGs and carbon sequestration. Achieving the necessary scale of emissions reductions will require a multifaceted po...

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) may become a key technology to limit human-induced global warming, but many uncertainties prevail, including the necessary technological development, costs, legal ramifications, and siting. As such, an important question is the scale of carbon dioxide abatement we require from CCS to meet future climate targets, and...

Through combining insights from engineering, natural sciences, economics, and political science, one consistent, transparent, and comprehensive analytical framework for assessing and evaluating various CCS chains is developed. The presented methodology aims at improving knowledge on the design of efficient CCS chains by developing methods for asses...

The stringency of policies needed to meet a climate target is influenced by uncertain oil prices because price changes cause emission changes, making the robustness of climate policy instruments important. As a result of its dependence on oil, emissions from the transport sector are particularly sensitive to oil price changes. We use a computable g...

This article reviews the political economy of government choice around technology support for the development and deployment of low carbon emission energy technologies, such as Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). It is concerned with how governments should allocate limited economic resources across abatement alternatives. In particular, it explores t...

The objective of this study is to give an overview of the potential for applying CCS in the Nordic countries (Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway and Iceland). The realistic potential of CCS in the region has been evaluated by taking into account existing and future energy systems and policies, emission sources, potential storage sites, technological,...

Emissions of air pollutants cause damage to health and crops, but several air pollutants also have an effect on climate through radiative forcing. We investigate efficiency gains achieved by integrating climate impacts of air pollutants into air quality strategies for the EU region. The pollutants included in this study are SO2, NH3, VOC, CO, NOx,...

Governments worldwide should provide incentives for initial large-scale GS projects to help build the knowledge base for a mature, internationally harmonized GS regulatory framework. Health, safety, and environmental risks of these early projects can be managed through modifications of existing regulations in the EU, Australia, Canada, and the U.S....

This essay was prepared as part of a workshop on carbon capture and sequestration held by the International Risk Governance Council (IRGC) in Washington, DC, from March 15–16, 2007. The goal of the workshop was to bring together researchers, practitioners, and regulators from Europe, the United States, and Australia to outline the attributes that a...

The question of appropriate timing and stringency of future greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions remains an issue in the discussion of mitigation responses to the climate change problem. It has been argued that our near-term action should be guided by a long-term vision for the climate, possibly a long-term temperature target. In this paper, we...

It has been suggested that calculations of historical responsibility for global warming should be used to distribute mitigation requirements in future climate agreements. For a medium-term mitigation scenario, we calculate regional mitigation costs resulting from global allocation schemes based on the Brazilian Proposal that solely incorporate hist...

Carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and storage is increasingly being considered as an important climate change mitigation option. This paper explores provisions for including geological CO2 storage in climate policy. The storage capacity of Norway's Continental Shelf is alone sufficient to store a large share of European CO2 emissions for many decades. I...

Inverse modelling-derived CO2 source and sink estimates are often directly interpreted in terms of net biospheric and oceanic fluxes. Implicit is the assumption that the uncertainty of fossil fuel emissions is sufficiently small in comparison with that of other fluxes to be neglected. In Europe, CO2 emissions from fossil fuel exceed 1 TgC year, whi...

In addition to the six greenhouse gases included in the Kyoto Protocol, the tropospheric ozone precursors CO, NMVOC and NOx and the aerosols/aerosol precursors black carbon, organic carbon and SO2 also play significant roles in climate change. The aim of this paper is to review some of the main scientific and political challenges associated with in...

Although the Kyoto Protocol has set a precedent for future climate negotiations, particularly with respect to differentiation of targets between countries, the current approach is likely to be insufficient as a foundation for future targets. A more systematic approach is deemed necessary to meet the challenges of negotiating new targets after 2012...

Climate change is likely to affect agricultural productivity. In this study, a biophysical statistical model is used to analyse the relationship between yields of potatoes, barley, oats and wheat per decare, and temperature (growing degree days) and precipitation, for the period 1958-2001 at the county level in Norway. If a climate signal can be de...

This article presents nine criteria for assessing, comparing, and ranking burden-sharing rules and conceptual frameworks used in climate policy negotiations and agreements. Three of the criteria are concerned with fairness principles and six criteria are operational requirements. The application of these criteria is illustrated in the context of si...

One of the major challenges facing participants in the global climate change negotiations is to find a scheme of burden sharing that can be accepted as "fair" by all or at least most governments. In this article we first explore which basic principles of fairness seem to be sufficiently widely recognized to serve as a normative basis for such a sch...

This paper presents a new sector-based framework — called the multi-sector convergence approach — for negotiating binding national GHG mitigation targets after the first budget period defined by the Kyoto Protocol (2008-2012). The major characteristics of this approach are that: (i) it is based on the distinction of different sectors within the nat...

Burden sharing and adaptation beyond Kyoto: a more systematic approach essential for global climate policy success - Volume 3 Issue 3 - ASBJØRN TORVANGER

Abstract This report presents an overview ,of the ,major findings of the ,joint CICERO-ECN project on the ,issue of differentiation of ,greenhouse ,gas emission mitigation targets among,countries after the so-called first budget period of the ,Kyoto Protocol (2008- 2012). More particularly, the report provides (i) an analysis of the main principles...

An important feature of the Protocol concluded in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997 is the differentiation of the climate targets of the industrialized countries. A more systematic approach to burden sharing than that leading to the Kyoto Protocol could help negotiating targets after 2012, and when including developing countries in the group of countr...

A three-generation planning model incorporating uncertain climate change is developed. Each generation features a production activity based on capital and an exhaustible resource. An irreversible climate change may occur in period two or three, reducing the productivity for this and the remaining generation. The model is solved by stochastic dynami...

The motives behind this study, financed by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is to increase our experience and knowledge of possible future Joint Implementation projects. The study demonstrates some opportunities for fuelswitching from diesel to biomass in the power generation sector in Brazilian Amazonia as abatement measures to reduce em...

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) commissioned the Center for International Climate and Energy Research, Oslo (CICERO) to study ways of improving current approaches to country studies on climate change, drawing on the experience to date. This paper provides an overview of the status of country studies on climate change. It examines several meth...

Questions are asked regarding baseline construction, criteria for selection of projects, sharing of risks and credits, and the institutional mechanism, which plague policy makers today. In the construction of a baseline, the time factor and potential leakages make the authors decide in favour of a macro-level baseline rather than a project-by-proje...

The reduction in energy-related manufacturing carbon dioxide emissions for nine OECD countries for 1973–87 is analysed. Carbon dioxide emissions are estimated from energy use data. The emphasis is on carbon dioxide intensities, defined as emissions divided by value added. The overall manufacturing carbon dioxide intensity was reduced by 42% in the...

Climate policy targets and thereby policies will be influenced by a highly volatile oil price through change in demand for oil and substitutes like coal, thereby influencing emissions of carbon dioxide. This draws attention to robust climate policy instruments. Due to its dependence on oil, the transport sector is sensitive to the oil price. This r...

Sammendrag:. Abstract: CO2 capture and storage (CCS) in geological structures and its possible risks have been topics of extensive study in recent years. In contrast, the legal and regulatory structures necessary to support widespread capture and long-term, secure storage have received far less attention. This essay seeks to bridge this gap by buil...

This report gives an overview of five possible regulation schemes for carbon dioxide emissions from international shipping. The strengths and weaknesses of the schemes are compared with regard to nine criteria. The two main categories are standard-based and market-based regulation. Standard-based regulation may have a higher acceptability than mark...

This report is based on a

Incorporating ozone precursors and particle emissions in future climate policy agreements could improve the level of cost-effectiveness, but would also add complexity and complications to negotiation, reporting and implementation. To assess the cost saving potential, a case study of Norway is carried out. Only NMVOC and NOx are included, since data...

Distribution of emissions targets in the Kyoto Protocol was not based on any specific fairness principle or any particular model, but rather on what the parties were willing to bring to the table based on their perception of abatement costs and the risks posed by climate change. However, future negotiations will require a more systematic approach b...

The Kyoto Protocol will result in reduced oil and natural gas profits for Norway. It is clearly a challenge to try to be a climate policy leader and at the same time export large amounts of oil and natural gas. An economic model study carried out by CICERO indicates that Norway should promote unrestricted use of the Kyoto mechanisms if it wants to...