Mikel González-Eguino

BC3-Basque Centre for Climate Change | BCCC

Large amounts of carbon are stored as permafrost within the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. As permafrost thaws due to climate warming, carbon dioxide and methane are released. Recent studies indicate that the pool of carbon susceptible to future thaw is higher than was previously thought and that more carbon could be released by 2100, even under lo...

Uncertainties concerning fossil fuel resources availability have traditionally been deemphasized in climate change research as global baseline emission scenarios (i.e., scenarios that do not consider additional climate policies) have been built on the assumption of abundant fossil fuel resources for the 21st century. However, current estimates are...

In the view of pressing unemployment and environmental problems, different policies have been proposed to create jobs in the transition to a green economy, including the so-called “green jobs”. There has been an intense debate on the quantification of these employment effects, especially in the European Union. Most studies have focused on estimatin...

Mitigation policies have focused mainly on the energy and transport sectors, but recent studies suggest that food related measures can also deliver cost-effective emission reductions. This paper evaluates the implications of levying consumption taxes on food products in Spain based on their carbon footprint. Specific elasticities are estimated for...

In the coming decades the energy sector will have to face three major transformations concerned with climate change, security of supply and energy poverty. The first two have been extensively analysed, but less attention has been paid to the third, even though it has a great influence on the lives of millions of people. This paper presents an overv...

Climate action to achieve the Paris Agreement ambitions should also respect the broader UN Sustainable Development Goals. Using an integrated assessment modelling framework with 9 harmonised models, we quantify the impacts of decarbonisation pathways on SDGs in Europe, at continental and national levels. Current climate policies would improve energ...

Despite the consensus that green taxation is an effective way to accelerate the decarbonization of economies, few countries are implementing ambitious tax reforms. This is the case of diesel for transport in Spain. The arguments against boosting the diesel tax stressed its potential adverse effects on the economy and society, accusing it of being a...

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement are the two transformative agendas, which set the benchmarks for nations to address urgent social, economic and environmental challenges. Aside from setting long-term goals, the pathways followed by nations will involve a series of synergies and trade-offs both between and within thes...

Este artículo analiza el impacto económico, social y ambiental de varios mecanismos de financiación de los costes regulados de las energías renovables en el sector eléctrico (RECORE) en España. Los escenarios analizados, alternativos al sistema actual, en el que los costes se trasladan de forma íntegra a la factura eléctrica de los consumidores fin...

Technological breakthroughs and policy measures targeting energy efficiency and clean energy alone will not suffice to deliver Paris Agreement-compliant greenhouse gas emissions trajectories in the next decades. Strong cases have recently been made for acknowledging the decarbonisation potential lying in transforming linear economic models into clo...

Faced with the threat of climate change many countries are promoting renewable energies to decarbonize their energy system. A common policy to foster electricity from renewable energy sources are feed-in tariffs which are financed by surcharges on electricity prices. Higher electricity prices in turn raise concerns on regressive distributional impa...

The Paris Agreement seeks to combine international efforts to keep global temperature increase to well‐below 2°C. Whilst current ambitions in many signatories are insufficient to achieve this goal, optimism prevailed in the second half of 2020. Not only did several major emitters announce net‐zero mitigation targets around mid‐century, but the new...

Although the transition to renewable energies will intensify the global competition for land, the potential impacts driven by solar energy remain unexplored. In this work, the potential solar land requirements and related land use change emissions are computed for the EU, India, Japan and South Korea. A novel method is developed within an integrate...

Europe's capacity to explore the envisaged pathways that achieve its near-and long-term energy and climate objectives needs to be significantly enhanced. In this perspective, we discuss how this capacity is supported by energy and climate-economy models, and how international modelling teams are organ-ised within structured communication channels a...

Low carbon transition pathways entail diverse uncertainties and risks in the underlying environmental, social, political, economic and technological factors. Inadequate information about such risks could affect the achievement of climate change mitigation targets negatively. This paper provides a novel experiment in which quantitative tools and sta...

Despite losing its low-carbon energy transition path in the last decade, Spain, since 2017, has picked up its commitment to complying with the objectives set out in the Paris Agreement for ratcheting 2030 and 2050 ambitions. This research departs from an extensive in-depth expert stakeholder engagement, proposing a research process of scoping: reac...

This study assesses the reductions in air pollution emissions and subsequent beneficial health effects from different global mitigation pathways consistent with the 2 °C stabilization objective of the Paris Agreement. We use an integrated modelling framework, demonstrating the need for models with an appropriate level of technology detail for an ac...

The fight against climate change requires an urgent decarbonisation of the global economy. In the different economic sectors of the countries that are working to comply with the Paris agreement, emissions have been reduced jointly in the last years. However, transport has increased their emissions, making it clear that current policies are not allo...

• Recently, all Member States have presented their national energy and climate plans (NECP) for the period 2021-2030. • The NECP of Spain has been recognized as a good practice by the European Commission and by the European Climate Foundation. • It establishes a reduction of 21% in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 with respect to 1990, a contributi...

The debate on “Loss and Damage” (L&D) has gained traction over the last few years. Supported by growing scientific evidence of anthropogenic climate change amplifying frequency, intensity and duration of climate-related hazards as well as observed increases in climate-related impacts and risks in many regions, the “Warsaw International Mechanism fo...

This chapter looks at what we can learn about possible Loss and Damage (L&D) and finance needed to address it using economic Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), which calculate economically optimal responses to climate change mitigation and adaptation in terms of maximising welfare (GDP) a few decades into the future. Interpreting modelled residua...

Mainstream literature on climate change concentrates overwhelmingly on technological solutions for this global long-term problem, while a change towards climate-friendly behaviour could play a role in emission reduction and has received little attention. This paper focuses on the potential climate mitigation by behavioural change in the European Un...

In pursuit of the drastic transformations necessary for effectively responding to climate change, the Paris Agreement stresses the need to design and implement sustainable, robust, and socially acceptable policy pathways in a globally coordinated and cooperative manner. For decades, the scientific community has been carrying out quantitative modell...

Background: Although the co-benefits from addressing problems related to both climate change and air pollution have been recognised, there is not much evidence comparing the mitigation costs and economic benefits of air pollution reduction for alternative approaches to meeting greenhouse gas targets. We analysed the extent to which health co-benefi...

Fossil fuel subsidies (FFS) constitute one of the most obvious barriers to tackling climate change, as they encourage inefficient energy consumption and divert investment away from clean energy sources. According to the International Monetary Fund, FFS amounted globally to $233 billion in 2014, over four times the value of subsidies awarded to prom...

Intensity standards have gained substantial momentum as a regulatory instrument in US climate policy. Based on numerical simulations with a large-scale computable general equilibrium model we show that intensity standards may rather increase than decrease counterproductive carbon leakage. Moreover, standards can lead to considerable welfare losses...

Global greenhouse gas emissions need to peak soon and be reduced practically to zero in the second half of this century in order to not exceed the climate targets adopted in the Paris Agreement. However, there are currently numerous coal-fired power stations around the world at different stages of construction and planning that could be completed i...

The rapid loss of sea ice in the Arctic is one of the most striking manifestations of climate change. As sea ice melts, more open water is exposed to solar radiation, absorbing heat and generating a sea-ice–albedo feedback that reinforces Arctic warming. Recent studies stress the significance of this feedback mechanism and suggest that ice-free sum...

One of the main concerns in international climate negotiations is policy fragmentation, which could increase the carbon emissions of non-participating countries. Until very recently the carbon leakage literature has focused mainly on ‘industrial’ carbon leakage. However, there is another potential channel that has received little attention so far:...

Global climate change measures are difficult to implement. In this context, local air pollution measures may play an important role in the political agenda since their effects are felt more immediately by citizens. Distributional implications are one of the main barriers for implementing environmental policies. This paper explores the distributiona...

One of the main concerns in international climate negotiations is policy fragmentation, which could increase the carbon emissions of non-participating countries. Until very recently the carbon leakage literature has focused mainly on “industrial” carbon leakage through various channels, such as the induced changes in the prices of fossil fuels. But...

Environmental and natural resource economics is concerned with questions about how environmental and natural resources are and should be developed and managed. Among the main challenges in this research area is the excessive use of the earth’s atmosphere as a sink of greenhouse gas emissions. Anil Markandya is one of the internationally outstanding...

The objective of this chapter is to introduce an increasingly popular business model known as the Energy Service Company (ESCO) model and bring to light the principal barriers to its widespread implementation both from the public and private perspectives. The ESCO model is essentially a “budget neutral” method of financing the purchase, installatio...

This report has various objectives: (i) to provide an overview of the climate Integrated Assessment approach; (ii) to describe the Global Climate Assessment Model (GCAM); (iii) to outline the new IPCC scenario framework represented by the Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs) and the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs); and (iv) to documen...

There is a broad consensus that investments to enhance energy efficiency quickly pay for themselves in lower energy bills and spared emission allowances. However, investments that at first glance seem worthwhile usually are not undertaken. One of the plausible, non-excluding explanations is the numerous uncertainties that these investments face. Th...

Climate change is an important environmental problem and one whose economic implications are many and varied. This paper starts with the presumption that mitigation of greenhouse gases is a necessary policy that has to be designed in a cost effective way. It is well known that market instruments are the best option for cost effectiveness. But the d...

Even if a global agreement is achieved on climate change issues, it is likely that national policies will continue to differ. Consequently, the competitiveness of some industries could be affected and the so-called 'carbon leakage' effect might occur. This effect is more likely for those industries with a risk of relocation. Most of the studies tha...

The theoretical literature relevant to the relationship between environmental taxation and employment creation is centred on the suggestion by Pearce (1991) that environmental taxation could lead to a “double dividendâ€. In this paper we review the literature on the employment double dividend for Spain and add to it with some new analysis of our...

In the past few decades many papers have analysed in some depth different environmental tax reforms and the double dividend hypothesis, i.e. the possibility of improving not only the environment but also the economy through the reduction of distortions in the tax system. Recently, more stress has been placed on testing empirically what effects a re...

Water scarcity and drought are social and economic problems in large parts of the world that will intensify due to climate change. The existing literature on the costs of drought is scarce, fragmented and heterogeneous and there is a need for comprehensive cost estimations to help design an effective policy response. This is particularly the case i...

This article uses the hedonic method to estimate the price premium paid for the highest energy-efficiency label (A+) in the refrigerators market of the Basque Autonomous Community (Spain). The estimated figure is 8.9% of the final price or about 60 euro, which represents one third of the energy savings that a consumer obtains during the lifetime of...

In the past few decades, economists have defended the use of market-based instruments (MBI) in environmental and climate policy. There have been many papers which have compared the costs of attaining environmental objectives with MBIs and with command and control instruments. However very few have compared different MBIs in examining these costs. T...

This study examines the economic impact of greenhouse gas mitigation in Spain using a dynamic Applied General Equilibrium model. The model captures the main energy and economic interactions and evaluates policies with a broad impact on economic activity. The article focuses on the impacts of the Kyoto Protocol. In order to investigate the costs of...

Coal-fired power plants face potential difficulties in a carbon constrained world. The traditional advantage of coal as a cheaper fuel may erode in the future if CO2 allowance prices increase. When would it be optimal to abandon a coal station and obtain its salvage value? We assess this question following the Real Options approach. We consider the...

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing us, and it requires urgent policy action. Although climate change policies are mainly being discussed at international level by means of the United Nations Conventions and the Kyoto Protocol, the bulk of the impact will be felt at regional and local level. Regional and local governments are th...

In the last decade, a few papers have analysed the consequences of achieving the greenhouse gas concentration levels necessary to maintain global temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. Most models and scenarios assume that future trends in global GDP will be similar to the growth experienced in the past century, w...

This study examines the economic impact of greenhouse gas mitigation in Spain using a dynamic Applied General Equilibrium model. The model captures the main energy and economic interactions and evaluates policies with a broad impact on economic activity. The article focuses on the impacts of the Kyoto Protocol. In order to investigate the costs of...

'In today's modern world where energy resources are increasingly scarce, climate change is a hot-button issue, and population growth continues to push the need to promote sustainable living, Handbook of Sustainable Energy is highly recommended as an absolutely invaluable contribution to graduate school libraries and the pool of literature available...

The costs of greenhouse effect gases (GHG) mitigation in the long run will be heavily influenced by technological and economic parameters. However, there are other variables of a political nature that are of great importance and which need to be investigated. This article focuses on analyzing the effect on the choice of mitigation targeting and tim...

This paper deals with the optimal time to invest in an energy e¢ ciency enhancement. There is a broad consensus that such investments quickly pay for themselves in lower energy bills and spared emission allowances. However, investments that at …rst glance seem worthwhile usually are not undertaken. Our aim is to shed some light on this issue. In pa...

The costs of greenhouse effect gases (GHG) mitigation in the long run will be heavily influenced by technological and economic parameters. However, there are other variables of a political nature that are of great importance and which need to be investigated. This article focuses on analyzing the effect on the choice of mitigation targeting and tim...

The study of economic impacts of climate change mitigation policies requires the use of different methodologies. This article discusses the most used models in literature as well as its applications. We presents dynamic Applied General Equilibrium model (AGE) that implement a market for emissions permits. Emission markets are reality in European Un...

This article uses the hedonic approach to estimate how much is paid for the energy efficiency label on the dishwasher market in Spain. The estimated figure is 15.6% of the final price. This accounts for about 80€ of the average price. We use this estimate combined with a demand systems to obtain own and cross price elasticities of demand, vital f...

Climate change and the expected increase in the price of fossil fuels make inevitable and urgent to move toward a low «carbon» economy. A low carbon future implies an unprecedented energy and economic revolution that will affect the competitiveness of many firms. This study identifies the areas at risk of «carbon leakage» for the specific case of t...

Este trabajo analiza la hipótesis del doble dividendo aplicado a la política de control del cambio climático en España utilizando un modelo de equilibrio general aplicado dinámico. El análisis empírico realizado pone de manifiesto que no es posible encontrar un doble dividendo fuerte en los escenarios planteados. Los resultados son más variados en...

This article puts the climate crisis into context and after considering its confluence with the energy constraints and the financial-economic crisis of 2008. It analyses different approaches for a more ambitious agreement on climate change for the Copenhagen Conference (COP15) that will be held on December 2009. Finally, it explores institutional a...

Las políticas de cambio climático tendrán un impacto significativo en la actividad económica. Una elección acertada de los instrumentos puede ayudar a minimizar los costes de mitigación o, por lo el contrario, puede hacer que estos aumenten considerablemente. En este sentido, los instrumentos de mercado se han mostrado tradicionalmente más coste-ef...