Team 11- Group Paper - Geoengineering

The Future of Solar Radiation Management

Response to the United Nations Secretary General’s

Request for Expert Opinion

IGA-412 Group Project (Team 11):

Sabah Al-Sabah Deng Chol

Masoomeh Khandan Hanieh Mohammadi

Filipe Nasser Tim O’Brien

April 13, 2015

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................................... 1 Climate Change ........................................................................................................................... 1 The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) .......................... 2 Climate Geoengineering ............................................................................................................. 3 Solar Radiation Management (SRM) .......................................................................................... 3 Major Costs and Risks of SRM .................................................................................................. 4

GOVERNANCE CHALLENGES ............................................................................................... 5 Multilateral or plurilateral? ......................................................................................................... 5 Who would support SRM? .......................................................................................................... 6 How do you combat the moral hazard? ...................................................................................... 6 Who pays and who makes decisions? ......................................................................................... 7 Three possible implementation rules .......................................................................................... 7

LOW USE SCENARIO (L-SRM) ............................................................................................... 7 Effects on Climate Change Mitigation & Adaptation ................................................................. 8 Effects on Fossil Fuels ................................................................................................................ 8 Effects on Renewables ................................................................................................................ 9 Geopolitical Implications .......................................................................................................... 10 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................... 10

MEDIUM USE SCENARIO (M-SRM) .................................................................................... 10 Stakeholders .............................................................................................................................. 11 Effects on Climate Change Mitigation & Adaptation ............................................................... 11 Effects on Fossil Fuels .............................................................................................................. 12 Effects on Renewables .............................................................................................................. 12 Geopolitical Implications .......................................................................................................... 13 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................... 13

HIGH USE SCENARIO (H-SRM) ............................................................................................ 14 Stakeholders .............................................................................................................................. 14 Effects on Climate Change Mitigation & Adaptation ............................................................... 14 Effects on Fossil Fuels .............................................................................................................. 15 Effects on Renewables .............................................................................................................. 15 Geopolitical Implications .......................................................................................................... 16 Conclusions ............................................................................................................................... 17

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS .................................................................... 17 SRM as one component of a climate change solution .............................................................. 18

REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................ 19

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INTRODUCTION

This paper is a response to the United Nations Secretary General’s request for expert opinion on geoengineering technologies that hold the greatest potential for large-scale use in the near future. We discuss one type of geoengineering: solar radiation management (SRM) using stratospheric aerosols. We describe the technology, the main challenges for its adoption—including outstanding questions of science and governance—and the potential geopolitical shifts that would occur using three different implementation scenarios. Drawing upon this analysis, we offer recommendations for how the U.N. should proceed regarding SRM.

Climate Change

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its Fifth Assessment Report in stages over the course of the last two years. Between its synthesis report and its three working group reports, the Fifth Assessment Report includes approximately 5,000 pages in total, encompassing the latest knowledge on climate change—including its scientific basis, the vulnerability of human and natural systems, and options for mitigating the problem. The United Nations Secretariat has coordinated the IPCC since its creation in 1988, and the report represents the combined work of thousands of scientists. Although it is extraordinary in its depth, so were the IPCC’s previous four assessment reports. Therefore, the headline findings in the Fifth Assessment Report’s Summary For Policymakers (SPM) reaffirm the reality of our changing climate and the reiterate the urgency for a coordinated international response that has now been understood for decades. Climate change is a global issue around which human and environmental vulnerability, capacity for adaptation, historical responsibility and expected future contributions vary widely across countries and regions. Climate change is the result of the growing concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs), particularly carbon dioxide (CO2) in the earth’s atmosphere, which trap heat (the greenhouse effect) causing widespread changes to the earth’s complex climate system. The total stock of GHGs in the atmosphere is the sum of all emissions minus the breakdown of these gases over time. However, most GHGs decompose very slowly, especially CO2. Therefore climate change is resulting from emissions today as well as all emissions over the past several centuries. Although not all changes to the climate are bad for all countries, in total the world has experienced negative impacts in the form of more hot days, longer periods of drought, more extreme precipitation and flooding, more extreme weather events, sea level rise, and ocean acidification, among others. Such impacts are expected to increase as global average temperatures increase with the possibility that crossing some threshold temperatures will result in catastrophic tipping points to the climate system. Developing countries are already experiencing the worst climate change impacts due to the tendency for poor countries to be located in already hot, tropical regions or to be low-lying island states; their economic dependency on agriculture or fishing; and the severely limited capabilities for adaptation in most developing countries from the national to local levels. The historic responsibility for GHGs belongs overwhelmingly to developed countries, particularly the United States and the European Union, whose carbon emissions since the industrial revolution have resulted in the huge increase in the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere that we see today, from around 275 parts per million (ppm) prior to the industrial revolution to around 400 ppm today. But at the same time, annual emissions of carbon and other

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greenhouse gases have peaked and are now falling in almost all developed countries, including the United States. Currently, China is by far responsible for the largest new GHG emissions, and India is on pace to become the second largest emitter in the near future. In total, non-OECD country emissions are now higher than OECD countries, and growing, as many countries are experiencing robust economic growth and millions are being pulled out of poverty. GHG emissions result from numerous sources but most importantly from the burning of fossil fuels for energy (both in electricity generation and transportation), deforestation, and farming/livestock practices. The economic growth that the developed world has seen since the industrial revolution has been deeply entwined with carbon-intensive energy use, but a future in which economic growth and growing carbon emissions remain tightly linked poses an existential threat for everyone.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

Since it was first signed in 1992, the UNFCCC has been the one institution capable of addressing climate change. This is because all United Nations member countries have ratified this treaty and meet once a year in December to negotiate international frameworks to respond to the threat. By any measure, progress through the UNFCCC has been painfully slow—a result not surprising given the differences between countries’ views. It is clear that global emissions must be reduced (i.e. mitigation) but it has proven much harder to reach agreement on the details, such as who should mitigate, by how much, by what means, and at what cost. Important differences do not only emerge between developed and developing countries but also from countries dependent on oil export revenues or countries, like small island states, that are extremely vulnerable to climate change. The Copenhagen 2009 meeting agreed on the goal of limiting the global temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, but it is widely believed that more than half of that has already been “baked into” the climate system. Ultimately reaching a maximum temperature is generally believed to require global carbon emissions to peak within the next few decades and then gradually to fall to zero by the year 2100.

This year is an important one for the UNFCCC as momentum has built around a plan to sign onto a comprehensive long-term mitigation goal during the Paris meeting in December. The general approach has been agreed upon by all countries and will consist of each country putting forth an Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) to global emissions reductions following the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities”. Momentum is also building around stronger international support in the process of adaptation, centered on the expansion of the Green Climate Fund, an endowment through which wealthier countries are contributing financing for adaptation projects in poorer and more vulnerable countries.

But even with these promising developments in international negotiations on emissions reductions and climate change adaptation, the target of two degrees Celsius remains highly unlikely to be met. The INDCs of countries hold no promise of aggregating to the level necessary to slow the global temperature increase fast enough and there are no clear and binding mechanisms in place to ensure that countries actually meet their goals. The cost of alternatives to fossil fuel energies are coming down fast, but mostly in the realm of electricity generation rather than transportation, and there are significant time lags between innovation in new technologies and their widespread uptake. At the same time, market-based mechanisms that set a price on carbon (through taxes or cap-and-trade policies), which are considered a necessary step, have been recently rejected in the United States and Australia and remain fragmented elsewhere.

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Climate Geoengineering

Geoengineering (or “climate engineering”) technologies, which fit into neither the mitigation nor adaptation categories, have been proposed as a potential means of addressing climate change. The IPCC defines geoengineering as follows (Edenhofer et al. 2011, p.2):

Geoengineering refers to a broad set of methods and technologies that aim to deliberately alter the climate system in order to alleviate the impacts of climate change. Most, but not all, methods seek to either (a) reduce the amount of absorbed solar energy in the climate system (Solar Radiation Management) or (b) increase net carbon sinks from the atmosphere at a scale sufficiently large to alter climate (Carbon Dioxide Removal).

The British Royal Society was the first scientific body to give a full review of these technologies in 2009. This year, The National Academy of Sciences has followed with its own study and come to fairly similar conclusions. In general, carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies, which directly address climate change by removing existing carbon from the atmosphere, hold lower environmental risks that are well understood but are currently far too expensive to be scaled to a meaningful level. On the other hand, solar radiation management (SRM) technologies “could rapidly cool the planet’s surface but pose environmental and other risks that are not well understood” (National Academy of Sciences 2015, p.1).

Solar Radiation Management (SRM)

This paper focuses exclusively on SRM because its direct costs make it a much more viable technology to use in the fight against climate change. SRM holds the potential to play a big role in keeping global mean temperatures below the target level of two degrees Celsius and buying valuable time for greater mitigation and adaptation to take hold. However, the prospect of utilizing SRM to manipulate the global climate also holds immense risks given both the currently limited scientific understanding of how proposed technology would impact the complex climate system and the lack of robust governance systems to manage its use.

SRM is in itself a broad category that encompasses numerous methods and technologies ranging from simple to complex. We further focus our attention on SRM using stratospheric aerosols, as this is the type of SRM that scientists usually refer to when they suggest that SRM “could rapidly cool the planet’s surface” and that economists speak of when they say that the technology has “incredibly” low direct costs (Keith 2013, Barrett 2008). SRM of this type includes dispersing sulfate aerosols (or possibly a synthetic alternative) into the stratosphere using modified high-altitude planes. The particles deposited would increase the earth’s albedo, meaning that they would reflect a greater proportion of the sunlight that the earth receives and thus act as a cooling mechanism. This effect would mimic the observed cooling that resulted from the eruption of the volcano Mount Pinitubo, in the Philippines, in 1991. So far, research has only been able to study the potential impacts of SRM through lab experiments and computer models, but reports including this year’s from the National Academy of Sciences have urged for new field experiments. There is general consensus that SRM of this type could be used on the global scale. Any use would necessarily affect all countries, but the technology is inexpensive enough that individual countries could unilaterally perform SRM. This mismatch necessitates that SRM to be managed at the international level.

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In this paper, we leave aside discussion of other proposed SRM technologies including the ‘cool roof’ technique of painting the roofs of buildings and cars bright colors or, similarly, covering deserts with reflective plastic sheets reflect the sun's energy. We also do not discuss possible methods for ‘marine cloud brightening’ or using mirrors in space to deflect a percentage of incoming sunlight. All of these techniques have their own risks and implementation difficulties, but we focus on SRM using stratospheric aerosols, as it is the highest impact idea.

Major Costs and Risks of SRM

The full economic costs of SRM and the risks of its use remain highly uncertain, and, although SRM would likely moderate the effects of climate change on average, it could extenuate the impacts of climate change for some countries or regions. Some outstanding questions, such as its effect on ozone, could be answered by small-scale experiments while others, such as its impacts on monsoonal patterns, could only truly be seen through large-scale trials. Even then, given how hard it is to disassociate climate change impacts from natural variability, a significant signal-to-noise problem would occur.

Another big issue related to SRM is the “moral hazard” problem—that by suggesting a potential quick-fix method of climate change prevention, or at least the perception of one, political pressure for emissions reductions might be reduced. Since SRM does not address climate change directly—it merely reduces global mean temperature and affects other climate change impacts indirectly through that channel—continued mitigation of GHG emissions would remain critical. This is true in the long-term but also in the short-term, as SRM would do nothing to offset ongoing ocean acidification. Therefore, it is abundantly clear that should any SRM technology implemented worldwide, a new governance framework would first need to be put in place.

For SRM using stratospheric aerosols in particular, the low direct costs have also fueled important concerns about the ease with which any government, single organization, or even wealthy individual could use the technology unilaterally. Just like nuclear power, SRM could be used for unethical political motives. It could hypothetically be used to create droughts or famines in order to attack enemies during war or could be used in ways to favor one country’s own agricultural needs at the expense of others. Another common refrain about SRM is therefore, “Who gets to set the thermostat?” One prominent climatologist, Dr. Alan Robock, keeps a running list of his “Risks of Climate Engineering” that now totals 26 items. Figure 1 provides this list but re-sorted based on whether the risk is primarily one to be answered through science or governance mechanisms. We elaborate on many of these risks throughout the paper, specifically in the context of energy and geopolitics, and we analyze three different scenarios of implementation to help understand the governance risks in greater detail.

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Figure 1: A Re-Sorted List of Dr. Alan Robock’s “Risks of Climate Engineering”

GOVERNANCE CHALLENGES

The goal of a U.N. framework regarding SRM would be to establish an international regime to implement, fund, and regulate its use as a means to help combat climate change. SRM using stratospheric sulfate aerosols has the ability to cool the earth on average, thus partially offsetting the impacts of carbon emissions generated by the burning of fossil fuels, but its effectiveness would rely on the presence a robust international governance system.

Multilateral or plurilateral?

According to Stephen Krasner’s canonical definition, “international regimes are defined as principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given issue area” (Krasner 1982, p.185). For all practical purposes, a regime regulating the implementation of climate engineering would take the shape of an international treaty (or an institution) to be agreed upon multilaterally, preferably under the umbrella of the UNFCCC. It is important to highlight that, given the global implications of climate change and the policies put together to mitigate its effects (including SRM), a U.N. multilateral framework would enjoy far greater legitimacy than a conventional plurilateral arrangement. The main distinction between a multilateral and a plurilateral accord is that the former aspires to universality, whereas the latter is no more than a coordination mechanism among a limited number of states.1

1 One interesting definition proposes that a plurilateral agreement is “more than bilateral, less than multilateral, and not exactly regional”. Dictionary of Trade Policy. Washington Trade Report.

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In our assessment, it is not in the best interest of the international community to organize a geoengineering regime around a loose collection of self-interested states. One of the risks associated with deferring to such would be unilateral use of SRM by a single state (China, for example) that wishes to offset its carbon emissions. Therefore, broad international legitimacy is mandatory in order to ensure that the benefits of lower global temperatures (or equally, the partial reduction of climate change resulting from offsetting carbon emissions) are spread as evenly as possible and the downsides of SRM are moderated and compensated for.

Who would support SRM?

As noted by climate engineering expert David Keith, the establishment of an international regime would necessarily involve winners and losers (Keith 2007). In fact, science still does not provide us with definite answers about how SRM would impact the planet and how its effects would be distributed globally (Keith 2007). Therefore, in order to successfully approve an U.N.-sanctioned accord on geoengineering, it would be necessary to build coalitions among probable beneficiaries and mitigate the resistance from countries that see themselves as prospective losers.

The negotiation dynamics leading to a multilateral deal would probably reproduce the expectations about the geopolitical consequences of the use of geoengineering. In broad strokes, potential beneficiaries include heavy polluters, such as China and the U.S., and big oil producers, such as the U.S., OPEC, and some Latin American countries such as Mexico. These countries would see the offsetting of carbon emissions in a positive light because of their sustained ability to produce, consume, and pollute. Highly vulnerable countries, especially islands, which see nothing short of an existential threat in rising sea levels, would also be interested in supporting the utilization of climate engineering. Countries such as Canada, Norway, and Russia are special cases; although they are net energy exporters and important producers of carbon fuels, Moscow, Oslo, and Ottawa would generally welcome higher temperatures because, at their high latitudes, higher temperatures are opening up options for economic exploitation including in the rapidly melting Arctic Circle. One way to counter any resistance based on particular countries’ national interests is to appeal to the global public opinion and its environmental consciousness. Support from specific NGOs and the scientific community could be tremendously helpful, especially in democratic countries. However, these groups must be first convinced that SRM will not be an excuse for non-compliance with any commitments on mitigation.

How do you combat the moral hazard?

This question deserves close scrutiny since SRM could either complement mitigation in the fight against climate change or the two efforts could contradict each other. There is the classic moral hazard issue: because of the new technology, countries (and businesses) will have less of a reason to invest in a cleaner energy mix and may free ride on the efforts from other countries (and businesses). It is critical to strike a balance between the benefits that would result from a general drop in global temperatures and compliance with national commitments on carbon emissions reductions. The challenge is to reconcile the use of a potentially beneficial technology that would make the burning of carbon fuels less harmful to the environment with maintaining the incentives for an overall reduction in greenhouse gas emissions that will already be in place as of the Paris 2015 Conference of the Parties. The best way to achieve this is likely through a clear rule at the outset of any future agreement on SRM that addresses the concern. But setting an implementation rule is a topic that requires more research.

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Who pays and who makes decisions?

It is also critical to understand how the regime governing SRM would assign responsibilities, including on financial, regulatory, and oversight roles, over the implementation of this revolutionary technology on a global scale. Our recommendation is that the OECD countries should be responsible for shouldering the majority of the financial costs associated with implementing SRM, a vision that would be in line with the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities” that guides climate change negotiations (Stone 2004). According to the principle recognized by the 1992 Rio Environment and Development Conference, countries that have been responsible historically for the lion’s share of greenhouse gas emissions (industrialized, “Annex 1” countries) should be responsible for more ambitions cuts in their carbon emissions than developing countries.

However, it must be noted that if OECD countries are delegated the responsibility of financing SRM, it is likely that they would claim a greater say in matters relating to its implementation and its relationship with climate change. In that case, developing countries—who are the most affected by the impacts of climate change—could be disenfranchised, an outcome that is not only undesirable but also detrimental to the sustainability of the regime. A formula that balances financial responsibilities with fair representation for all U.N. member states must be at the heart of any governance arrangement disciplining SRM. One way to ensure that all countries have an equal voice (or at least one commensurate with their size) is through an effective and plural oversight mechanism. But, once again, designing a framework architecture that can credibly oversee the implementation by punishing countries that act unilaterally remains a challenge that has not been fully solved.

Three possible implementation rules

While the considerations of financing (OECD pays) and upfront decision-making (every country has a voice) are rather clear, setting an implementation rule that would achieve strong support across U.N. member states, address the moral hazard problem and limit the risk of unilateral action over time requires more attention. Different levels of sulfate aerosol injection in the atmosphere would produce varying results in terms of offsetting carbon emissions and lowering global temperatures and therefore would variably affect supportability, moral hazard and unilateral threats. In other words, if the answer to the question “Who set the thermostat?” is the United Nations, then the next question is on what level should be chosen. Therefore, we have identified three possible implementation rules that vary in their aggressiveness of SRM use (low, medium, and high use) and we have analyzed the ramifications of the scenarios in terms of their likely impacts on climate change and geopolitics. We discuss each of the three scenarios one at a time.

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LOW USE SCENARIO (L-SRM)

Low usage of SRM could be set to offset 10% of new global emissions each year. In this scenario, the amount of sulfates that would be dispersed in the atmosphere would reflect enough incoming solar radiation to mimic a global decrease in CO2 emissions of 10%. This would ostensibly be the easiest scenario to implement and it could act as a proof of concept or a trial run for SRM. This scenario would serve as a way to study the first, second, and third order effects. L-SRM could be used for a set period of 5 to 10 years with the future level of use contingent on what is learned during this pilot period. At this low level of use, the negative effects would be more manageable than if higher amounts of reflective sulfates were used and the L-SRM could be cancelled with lower impacts than if it was used at higher levels.

Effects on Climate Change Mitigation & Adaptation

Climate change mitigation would still be ongoing and with low levels of SRM, incentives on the mitigation front would be unlikely to change very much. The overall threat of climate change would still remain largely unchanged, and global coordination on emissions reductions would continue to be seen as essential. L-SRM could actually lessen the burden of mitigation. Here we define “burden” as the strain on economies, including costs of changing of infrastructure and reaching agreements in political arenas. One benefit of L-SRM would be that of buying time before the two-degree target would be reached. Without any SRM, there is a real danger that if the two-degree target is taken seriously in Paris, states will be end up setting themselves up for failure with their initial emissions reduction targets. L-SRM could slightly ease financial burdens, mollify political dissent, and allow for some “wiggle room” by making target reductions more feasible. At the same time, L-SRM would also help developing economies to achieve their goals by slightly easing the challenges of adaptation, although not by very much.

Effects on Fossil Fuels

At a 10% offset of global emissions, L-SRM would do little to upset the status quo of fossil fuel production and consumption beyond these limited impacts of mitigation targets. This is because L-SRM is less a short-term fix and more a test run of the risks and benefits of SRM. The use of SRM in the medium-term would remain uncertain. The technology would be presented as an easy on-easy off system with no guarantee of extended use and businesses would respond by being conservative in their interpretations of L-SRM as a factor in long-term decision-making. U.S. Energy Implications

The move toward energy “independence” in the U.S. deserves mention in any discussion of fossil fuels. The trend is often misinterpreted to suggest that the U.S. will not need to import any oil in coming years. This is improbable, as can be seen in Figures 2 and 3, which project U.S. imports of oil through 2040 and the expected sources of U.S. oil imports up to 2025 (EIA 2013, pp.26-27). As the U.S. continues to both produce more oil and demand oil from around the world, the L-SRM scenario would allow for economists to observe any effects that SRM may have on its (and other countries’) supply and demand curves. This data could then be used to confidently predict the trajectory of emissions if a high or medium use scenario of SRM were to be used in the future.

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Global Energy Markets Since energy markets, particularly natural gas, will continue to become more integrated with time, it is clear that any shocks in one supply stream can be felt around the world. When a coalition as small as the Gulf Cooperation Council contains 30% of the world’s proven oil reserves, conflict in that region would have major effects on oil prices, global supply, and the global economy. The recent U.S. shift toward energy “independence” does little to change the fact that the world oil market matters to all countries. Aggressive climate change action presents a threat to some oil-producing countries. Since oil revenues are the primary source of income for OPEC member states, sharp global emissions reductions could negatively affect these countries’ economies and raise geopolitical tensions. Therefore, the effect of any SRM on the global market could provide a beneficial, stabilizing effect by removing some uncertainty over these countries’ security of energy demand. In the case of L-SRM, this impact would be rather muted, but would still be reassuring to oil exporters, at least in the short-term.

Effects on Renewables

The argument that SRM could drive the renewables market to extinction has some coherence, but the ultimate impacts of SRM on innovation in renewables remains unclear. On the one hand, investment in renewables could trail off if SRM reduces the urgency of climate change and policymakers do not defend budget allocations to renewables subsidies and research programs. On the other hand, renewables may already be on track to compete with fossil fuels on costs in the near future regardless of government policies. Either way, L-SRM would have the most restrained impacts on renewables as the scenario includes only low levels of SRM with an uncertain future. It is noteworthy that SRM necessarily diminishes the efficiency of solar energy production as it blocks some degree of sunlight from reaching the surface of the earth, although the scale of this impact remains unclear. However, the L-SRM scenario would have much lower impacts on solar panel efficacy as compared with high or medium use.

Figure 2: Net Import share of U.S. liquids supply in two cases, 1970-2040 (Mb/d)

Figure 3: U.S. crude imports by source to 2025 (Mb/d)

Both of the above figures show a continued and sustained importation of oil by the United States. Despite the growing tight oil supply and the discovery of large shale plays, the EIA has estimated that the U.S. will still be the second largest petroleum consumer in the world through 2040.

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Geopolitical Implications

Factors leading to cohesion Global emissions have been rising at about 3% a year since 2000, and have actually risen faster even after frameworks on emissions reductions were signed (Keith 2013, p.34). As the economies of China and India continue to grow, they will look for cheap means to fill their energy gaps. This sort of reaction should not shock anyone. As the world tightens the noose around dirty CO2 emissions, these growing economies are acting quickly to ramp up and peak emissions in order to build up their industries, just as the rest of the world wants to see them move towards lower emissions trajectories. SRM would likely help such large and energy-intensive emerging economies by allowing them economies to take a somewhat longer-term approach and not be hurried or pressured to build bad energy infrastructure. This could allow China to invest even more in its energy grid and efficiency instead of building stranded coal plants across its vast lands. India could attract significant investment in alternate and renewable energies while being competitive in the global market. However, the L-SRM scenario offers the lowest potential for such positive outcomes given that its long-term use would remain uncertain.

Factors leading to tensions or conflict L-SRM would probably marginally increase global tensions and potential for conflict as compared to the status quo because of its feature of uncertainty. If implementation were to take place over a trial period, the winners and losers from SRM would gradually become clear. This could lead to threats of unilateral action to increase SRM from powerful countries that are seeing benefits or demands for compensation from states that perceive that they are experiencing perverse impacts. These are considerations that can be addressed within the details of the L-SRM implementation rule through contingency plans to respond to unilateral threats or compensate for losses. However, it is not possible to eliminate these problems completely. This raises the question of whether it would be wiser to avoid the uncertainty of a trial period and start directly with a long-term implementation rule.

Conclusions

Many of the second, third, or fourth order effects of implementing L-SRM would not be known unless the scheme was actually tried. To be sure, there are inherent uncertainties that could present some big challenges, but L-SRM would serve as a reasonable means to sort these out through a trial run of the technology without committing to more intensive use. If SRM were to have serious negative side effects, these would be temporary because the time that sulfate particles would stay in the atmosphere is in the order of months, as opposed to CO2, which stays there for hundreds of years (Keith 2013, p.125). The moral hazard problem of reduced mitigation would be unlikely to appear under L-SRM, in part because of continued uncertainty over long-term use of SRM. However, the long-term uncertainty of implementation under this scenario raises other geopolitical concerns.

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MEDIUM USE SCENARIO (M-SRM)

This implementation rule could set the annual amount of SRM at enough to offset half of the greenhouse effect of new emissions (“half of the growth in anthropogenic climate forcing”) (Keith and MacMartin 2015). Thus, M-SRM would entail five times the annual use of SRM as L-SRM and would not be limited in duration by a trial period. However, this scenario also aims to be temporary in that its end point is zero SRM. It is moderate in that it offsets only half of the growth emissions and is responsive in that it recognizes that the amount of SRM will be adjusted in light of new information through its linkage to actual emissions. Since greenhouse effect is not only the result of new emissions but also the result of the total stock of carbon and other GHGs in the atmosphere, even if the world emitted the same amount of carbon each year, the amount of SRM used in this scenario would increase each year. This is because an ever-growing stock of GHGs implies greater and greater heating. If, however, annual global emissions were gradually reduced to zero, the amount of annual SRM would also reduce to zero. Hence, we would expect the use of SRM to initially ramp up and then gradually ramp down as global emissions are reduced in the long-term. Such is the vision of M-SRM, which would seek to maintain the incentives for long-term mitigation by offsetting only a fraction of emissions.

Stakeholders

Whereas L-SRM would likely have the broadest support of any of the three scenarios, because of its low impacts and focus on learning, M-SRM raises bigger questions of supportability from countries and interest groups across political spectrums. M-SRM would be attractive to some politicians since it reduces some the urgency of taking action on mitigation. It is also of interest to some environmentalists as a means of averting catastrophic climate change should efforts to reduce emissions reductions fall short. However, for other politicians and environmentalists, M-SRM would be seen as going too far given its poorly understood costs and risks.

Some regions or countries that benefit from climate change may view M-SRM as a harm rather than a benefit, but most countries would view the technology, if it were to work as planned, as producing net benefits. The big question is how stakeholders would interpret the uncertainty that M-SRM may not work as planned. With the impacts of climate change and SRM ultimately felt locally, the supportability of M-SRM would therefore depend on how perceptions of local benefits and costs are aggregated and how much trust countries put in the U.N. System to compensate for damages and resolve disputes.


Mitigation remains a central global challenge under M-SRM. This is not only true because only half of emissions are offset, but also because SRM cannot perfectly compensate for climate change impacts from GHG emissions. Recall that SRM can only prevent some types of climate change impacts. By offsetting increases in global mean temperature SRM can reduce the direct effects of higher temperatures (sea level rise, spread of tropical diseases to new areas, deaths due to heat stroke, etc.) and stabilize some of the impacts of the greenhouse effect on climate (more floods, droughts and extreme weather); however, M-SRM would not address any of the other negative impacts of high concentrations of carbon in the atmosphere, including ongoing ocean acidification, which threatens fisheries and ocean biodiversity.

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The M-SRM scenario would most likely reduce incentives for short-term mitigation compared to business as usual without SRM by making the changes less urgent. However, like with L-SRM, one could also make the argument that by making the two-degree target more feasible, it could be used to facilitate a stronger global agreement on mitigation that is perceived as fair and acceptable by all parties. Also by tying M-SRM to actual emissions, it could make enforcement of emissions reductions easier. Ramping up and then ramping down emissions would be the rational response by countries in coordination, but the free riding problem cannot be ignored. A good U.N. framework would require strong mechanisms to ensure mitigation happens.

The stakes are higher for M-SRM than for L-SRM. Regarding adaptation, M-SRM could substantially reduce the vulnerability of many to food insecurity and water scarcity caused by climate change, and allow time for adaptation capacity-building. But M-SRM could not be cancelled as easily as L-SRM. Several modeling studies have demonstrated that if SRM is used to compensate for rising GHG concentrations and is then stopped abruptly, rapid warming would occur. Thus, if M-SRM is ever implemented, stopping suddenly poses a serious threat and presents a worst-case scenario for vulnerable countries. Moreover, the differences in regional impacts of SRM are uncertain and the differences for winners and losers would be more dramatic. While helping the world on average, M-SRM could have major perverse results in some regions, possibly intensifying rather than offsetting climate change impacts.


M-SRM could have greater impacts on fossil fuel extraction and consumption than L-SRM. The impacts rely critically on how countries respond to the moral hazard problem of mitigation. Businesses, whether private or state-owned, will ultimately respond to the policy environment put in place by countries. If M-SRM were to result in reduced national commitments to mitigation, the production and consumption of fossil fuel energies would increase accordingly. In fact, businesses would probably perceive lax constraints as a temporary window and accelerate extraction and use of fossil fuels as a result, with the knowledge that free riding could not be maintained indefinitely. However, if countries coordinate to stick to emissions reduction targets that are to be set in Paris and interpret M-SRM as the truly temporary bridge technology that Keith and MacMartin envision, businesses would respond to the resultant tighter policy environments accordingly. It is possible, but unlikely, that M-SRM could help to build stronger, cohesive momentum toward addressing the root cause of climate change and therefore could result in the phasing out of fossil fuels at a faster pace than the status quo without SRM.


The effects on markets for renewable energy follow the same logic as for markets for fossil fuels. Innovation and diffusion of clean energy could be hampered or accelerated depending on how countries link emissions reduction policies with M-SRM. The more likely case is that renewables would develop at a slower pace than the status quo without SRM or the L-SRM scenario. Solar would also lose out as compared to wind energy and other alternatives due to the non-trivial reductions in solar energy reaching the earth’s surface.

Beyond renewables, carbon capture and storage and other carbon dioxide removal technologies would become more important under the M-SRM scenario and would likely receive more policy support. This is true for two reasons. First, the stock of GHGs in the atmosphere would grow

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faster than business as usual, even with the ramping up and ramping down of emissions, thus increasing interest in removing carbon from the atmosphere. Second, committing to long-term use of SRM would signify much lower opposition to other forms of geoengineering, specifically CDR technologies, as well.


M-SRM also poses scientific and governance risks. Some are known, at least to a limited extent, but others remain unknown and "impossible-to-predict" given that SRM has not been studied on the global scale—and these “unknown unknowns” worry many people (Lempert et al. 2011). Because M-SRM offers a permanent rule that requires a substantial intervention in the earth’s climate system, the geopolitical implications are also immense.

Factors leading to cohesion Since M-SRM would represent a long-term commitment, there would at least be a form of certainty that L-SRM, or the currently muted dialogue on SRM for that matter, do not have. Predictability over what the globally mandated use of SRM would be 25 or 50 years in the future (at least relative to emissions at the time) would allow countries to better understand the strategic decisions that other countries will make. As far as geopolitics can be considered in terms of game theory, there would be much more complete information about the options that any country faces in terms of its decisions to use unilateral action regarding SRM or to shirk from its responsibilities from previously agreed upon treaties. Given that international conflict is so often the case of poorly understood motivations, this type of certainty can be expected to have an important positive influence. The more clear that any M-SRM agreement is on the consequences of potential infringements, the greater will be the cohesive forces that result. However, because the U.N.’s ability to threaten a cancellation of SRM would be restrained due to adaptation concerns, there may be limited tools to use to deal with a unilateral threat if one emerges.

Factors leading to tensions or conflict The type of uncertainty that would raise geopolitical tensions under M-SRM is that of the differing regional impacts of SRM. No one quite knows which countries may be winners and which may be losers, nor the extent of these differences. Furthermore, given the signal-to-noise problem, it would also be difficult to identify the actual cause of any bad climate outcomes in a particular country. Therefore, it is almost a certainty that some country will at some point perceive a bad outcome as the result of M-SRM and seek redress without any party having the ability to know with certainty if M-SRM was the cause of the problem. This raises two important considerations for the architecture of any multilateral agreement, namely what process to use to quickly and fairly deal with such issues, and what monitoring mechanisms to put in place to make sure that scientists are continuously improving their understanding of the impacts of M-SRM in finer detail and with higher certainty.

Conclusions

The scale for success but also for failure is increased under M-SRM. The theoretical vision put forth offers SRM in its most promising form, however the possible departures from this in reality are very important. If M-SRM were to cause a breakdown in mitigation efforts, the world would be locked in to a problematic trajectory of ever-growing emissions. But this problem can and should be addressed through the specific U.N. framework. The risks of geopolitical conflict

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would also be dependent on the details of any U.N. framework that emerges. The relevant type of geopolitical risk is quite different than for L-SRM—in this case it is uncertainty of impacts rather than uncertainty over the future implementation rule—and the risks are troublingly high. Therefore, the more certainty that research can provide on the impacts of SRM before implementing a scenario like M-SRM, the more effective the policy framework could be designed and the better the expected outcomes would be.

HIGH USE SCENARIO (H-SRM)

A high use scenario could allow for enough SRM to completely offset the global temperature increase from new CO2 emissions. SRM could, in principle, even be used to offset global temperature increases retroactively and reduce the earth’s global mean temperature back to its pre-industrial level. The implementation of either rule would come with a big assumption that we have the capability to remake the planet so that the world might live with growing carbon emissions. H-SRM would entail using an ever increasing amount of SRM so long as emissions remain above zero and the stock of carbon in the atmosphere continues to increase. Separate measures would need to be taken to respond to climate change impacts beyond the scope of SRM, including the problem of ocean acidification, unless mitigation efforts were also maintained. But the incentives for mitigation effort would change dramatically under H-SRM. Generally speaking, this technique, according to the climatologist Judith Curry, is seen as a credible climate engineering scheme, although one with potential major risks, and challenges for its implementation. As an example, the technique could give >3.7 W/m2 of globally averaged negative forcing, which is sufficient to entirely offset the warming caused by a doubling of CO2 (Curry 2010).

Stakeholders

H-SRM would not address regional variability of climate change impacts, and large and uncertain impacts would likely result from H-SRM itself. At high levels of SRM use, problems like ozone depletion, possible disruptions to monsoonal cycles, and intensified local air pollution become more likely. Therefore, the equity concerns are heightened and the acceptability of any H-SRM scenario becomes harder to achieve than M-SRM or L-SRM. Moreover, the problems of suddenly stopping H-SRM are even greater than those for stopping M-SRM. However, reaching an agreement to use H-SRM is not impossible. If enough countries view climate change as an emergency, they may view H-SRM as preferable to other alternatives. In fact, even though the risks are much higher than for other potential implementation scenarios, when SRM is discussed, it is often under the implicit or explicit assumption that it would be utilized at these high levels.


The concentration of carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere recently passed 400 ppm at the Mauna Lao Observatory in Hawaii, where researchers have been recording levels of CO2 in the atmosphere since 1957. This is believed to be the highest concentration in millions of years. Under H-SRM, the horizon of carbon concentrations is difficult to visualize. The more the world continues to emit CO2, the more SRM sulfate would be released into the atmosphere, but we would not experience any increase in the global mean temperature. Although this scenario would leave many other climate change impacts unaddressed, arriving at and sticking to any

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international agreements to reduce carbon emissions would likely become entirely untenable, at least in the short-term. Fossil fuel producing and consuming countries would likely see no benefit in sticking to any agreed upon reductions, which entail costs, since most of the urgency over the problem would be removed. Agreements arrived at in Paris and any other climate accords would be highly likely to fall apart. That is not to say that emissions would never begin to fall. They could eventually peak due to the process of innovation if viable alternative sources of alternative energy come to dominate fossil fuels on cost, if energy efficiency gains accelerate, or if global population growth levels off. Even if none of these conditions occur, the costs of ever-growing SRM use could eventually outweigh their perceived benefits and spur on new agreements on mitigation. The impacts of the upward trajectory of SRM are unknown but they could be catastrophic. The implications would only begin to become clear well into the H-SRM scenario.

The effects of H-SRM on adaptation would still be localized. At such high levels of use, adaptation would initially become much easier for many people, with the exception of anyone whose well being is closely tied to that of ocean fisheries. Also, in countries or regions where the impacts of SRM turn out to be perverse, people will likely be much worse off. In other words, the stakes are raised much higher than those for M-SRM, which was already a higher stakes proposition than L-SRM.


Under an H-SRM scenario, oil and gas would still be king. The implications of geopolitics around conventional energy would therefore remain the same, at least for the next few decades. Incentives to discover and extract new resources would remain mostly unchanged or would increase as far as current investment decisions are slowed by uncertainty over climate change negotiations. OPEC countries would continue their current efforts to regain market share of oil exports, and any country with the reserves would remain interested in expanding their use of the unconventional technologies of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling that have transformed the energy landscape in the United States. While transitions to non-fossil fuel energies might continue within the electricity sector, where energy sources are diversified, oil would continue to dominate in the transportation sector for some time, with natural gas vehicles likely to increase in prevalence and with the future of electric cars uncertain.


Incentives for countries to set policies to accelerate innovation in renewable energies would be reduced substantially. Some renewable energy technologies might continue to develop and compete with fossil fuels due to advances in recent years, but others would be unable to compete. Some government and non-governmental research and development programs would continue with the long-term understanding that H-SRM may produce perverse results, but overall research spending on renewables would drop. The future of solar energy would be seriously challenged given that less and less direct sunlight would reach the earth’s surface each year.

The use of H-SRM would in all likelihood lead to increased efforts to develop and utilize the other kind of geoengineering, CDR technologies, which are currently far from being cost-effective at scale. Subsidies in CDR technologies might radically displace subsidies for renewable energies, since the scalable removal and sequestration of carbon would become a far more important goal than it is right now. However, CDR also tends to have downsides—most

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importantly, there is the question of what should be done with all the captured CO2. Many private companies in the space have a variety of ideas, including making plastic and fuel out of scrubbed CO2. With H-SRM, these ideas would begin to become more mainstream.


The geopolitical outlook is the most uncertain for H-SRM scenarios. Although there is apparent certainty about the future implementation rule with H-SRM, its highly uncertain impacts could be enough undermine the stability of the rule itself. In some ways the future of energy is the most similar to that of the past, with traditional energy security concerns maintaining their central importance. However, the direct impacts from H-SRM and the remaining unmitigated impacts of climate change under these scenarios could conceivably become the foremost drivers of geopolitical decisions. Factors leading to cohesion

By curtailing or reversing the increase in global average temperature, H-SRM would be a response to climate change in a big way. Reducing the direct impacts of climate change would be a stabilizing force for most vulnerable, developing countries and many divisions in international relations that spur from differences over responsibilities for emissions reductions would effectively lose all importance. The global agreement that it would take to implement H-SRM would represent a significant achievement and could stimulate greater international coordination on other pressing issues such as terrorism, nuclear proliferation, global inequalities, or other forms of environmental damage. If the U.N. framework is well defined and the occurrence of perverse SRM impacts is low, winners may be able to compensate losers and all countries may benefit greatly from the technology.

Factors leading to tensions or conflict Yet, there are countless ways that use of H-SRM could go wrong with serious geopolitical consequences. One problem would be if perverse regional impacts exceed the type that can be compensated for and countries have major grievances with the system. The problem discussed for M-SRM of the likely inability to accurately attribute bad outcomes to the use of SRM also remains relevant under this scenario. Such problems could occur at any point during implementation and are arguably even worse if they occur after many years of positive outcomes, since the use of H-SRM would by that time be virtually impossible to cancel and very difficult to scale back. Depending on the geopolitical weight of the affected country, two different outcomes are possible. The unintended impacts could be catastrophic for some small, poor countries or indigenous communities, but bearable for the world as a whole or highly beneficial to more influential countries. Under these conditions, even with a U.N. process in place, it is unlikely that the affected country would receive justice. In the worst case, the negative impacts could further spur conflict within or around that country. Alternatively, if the affected country is powerful, it could resort to unilateral SRM on its own. Actually, whether due to poor outcomes or good outcomes (and the desire for more), there might be high incentive for unilateral SRM to be taken by a single country.

Imagine a hypothetical case where there is a drought in northern China, which is almost certainly exacerbated by the H-SRM regime. Masses of people are dying and the famine results in the mass migration of people out of the region. The Xi Jinping Administration faces enormous social

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unrest and has the means to try to end the drought by either further increasing SRM or using another chemical that has the opposite effect. If the Chinese government chooses to use this technology, it obviously affects the rest of the world’s climate as well. If China uses this technology, there may be no acceptable way out of the situation. It is unlikely that a diplomatic solution would work, there would be little benefit from military engagement, and any back and forth to reset the global temperature would certainly defeat the purpose of the multilateral framework. With the stakes so high, the possibility of such unilateral actions is a serious concern. China, in particular, may have the right political recipe to engage in the unilateral use of SRM, but it is by no means the only country that could do so.

Conclusions

The risks associated with H-SRM are clearly the highest, both as a result of its likelihood to undermine critical incentives for GHG emissions reductions and because of the elevated threat of unilateral action. Once again, as the level of SRM use increases so do the stakes for failure. Whereas for L-SRM and M-SRM the risks appear to be largely manageable with the right international policy framework, the risks of H-SRM appear to exceed the limits of what a U.N. framework could control.

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Solar radiation management (SRM) using stratospheric aerosols is a technology fraught with uncertainties regarding both the physical impacts it would have on the climate system and the governance challenges it entails. However, because climate change presents an unprecedented threat to human and natural systems, especially in developing countries, these uncertainties alone are not sufficient to dismiss the possible use of SRM on a global scale. Indeed, if the U.N. does not take the lead in coordinating research on and governance of SRM, the unilateral development of SRM capabilities by individual countries or non-state organizations would likely fill the gap. This would further increase the risks associated with the future use of this technology. As scientific organizations like the Royal Society and the National Academy of Sciences have called for increased research into the physical impacts of SRM, this paper also calls for U.N.-led efforts to develop mechanisms for governing the potential use of SRM. Only through a focus on inclusive international preparation for a future with SRM could the many governance challenges inherent to SRM be addressed. Central to these are the problems of identifying an implementation rule that would achieve strong support across U.N. member states, address the moral hazard problem of decreased mitigation efforts, and limit the risk of unilateral action. At the same time, it is critical to recognize that being prepared for a future with SRM by no means should lock the international community into the future use of SRM.

We have discussed three possible implementation rules that vary in their aggressiveness of SRM use (low, medium, and high use) in effort to begin to sort out how the world’s energy landscape would look and what geopolitical shifts might occur under varying levels of SRM. There are infinitely many implementation rules that could be set in the future through an internationally accepted U.N. framework, but these three were chosen in order to see how important implications change as the use of SRM moves from low to high levels.

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From the analysis, it is clear that major risks tend to outweigh potential benefits of SRM at higher levels of SRM use (such as H-SRM scenarios that would offset global warming from all new emissions). Meanwhile, at lower levels of use such as the L-SRM and M-SRM scenarios, the risks appear to be more manageable. The moral hazard and the threat of unilateral use could be managed more effectively with lower levels of implementation, but these problems cannot be avoided entirely.

Important trade-offs were identified between an explicitly temporary implementation plan, like L-SRM, versus commitment to a long-term rule, like M-SRM. In the case of the former, geopolitical risks mostly emerge from uncertainty over what a long-term rule would be, while in the latter case the geopolitical risks are mainly the result of uncertainty over the physical impacts of SRM. A trial period may be able to clarify some of the physical impacts, but there is a significant signal-to-noise problem that precludes straightforward observations of the impacts that SRM would have, especially at local scales. The exploration of other implementation rules would be the role of a U.N.-led body, but this early analysis suggests that the ideal implementation scenario would likely be something between L-SRM and M-SRM. Furthermore, it is clear that SRM would not be a panacea for the problem of climate change. Its use would address many negative impacts of climate change, but leave others unaddressed, and SRM itself would introduce new, potentially negative, impacts on the global climate. Any use of SRM would have to coexist with ongoing efforts on climate change mitigation and adaptation. Therefore, if governance challenges were to be overcome, SRM would at best hold the potential to be one component of a larger climate change solution.

SRM as one component of a climate change solution

As a strategic commodity, fossil fuels will continue to be the determinants of alliances, regional conflicts, and have a significant effect on the rate of development. Many nations have adopted energy security—either security of supply or security of demand—as a priority on their national security agendas. Wars have been fought, countless lives have been lost, fortunes have been made, and empires have risen on the very lifeblood that is slowly poisoning our planet. Today, many least developed countries (LDCs) remain stuck in conditions of energy poverty while emerging economies, most notably those of China and India, are both rapidly pulling people out of poverty and driving global GHG emissions higher and higher. Because the stakes of climate change are so high and geopolitical interests surrounding fossil fuel-based energy remain so strong, we must buy precious time to allow for consensus on mitigation and adaptation to new patterns of cleaner energy use and more sustainable economic growth. SRM could be a bridge technology that could help realize our climate objectives. But, if SRM is to effectively play this role in the future, increased scientific research and a U.N.-led process for developing robust governance mechanisms need to be made international priorities right now.

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Team 11- Group Paper - Geoengineering