CFGS Projects

Project Summary

Title: The Long Haul: Navigating the Energy Transition to Limit Climate Change

Date: August 11-13, 2008

Lead Organizations: Centre for Global Studies and University of Michigan

This workshop examines how to adapt and manage policies, technology investments, and other decisions over time to achieve the large transformation of energy systems needed to stabilize atmospheric greenhouse gases and limit climate change. The workshop is jointly sponsored by U Vic, CFGS, and the National Science Foundation (US) through research grants to the School of Natural Resources & Environment at the University of Michigan and the Climate Decision-Making Center at Carnegie-Mellon University.

The workshop looks beyond the immediate measures now enacted and under discussion in some jurisdictions, such as the newly enacted BC carbon tax. Instead, it examines the time horizon of the next few decades, asking questions such as:

What do we presently know about how these measures – e.g., the level of carbon taxes or emissions constraints – will have to be adjusted to achieve the transformation, and to limit the associated costs and disruptions?
What approaches make sense for guiding these adjustments as we proceed? What are the key uncertainties that limit our current ability to pre-specify attractive policy trajectories? As we proceed, what information will be available to consider in decisions to tighten or relax the schedule of emissions reductions, and how should it be incorporated?
To what degree is it feasible or appropriate to pre-commit a future trajectory of emissions cuts? What tools are available to today’s decision-makers to do so? (e.g., current laws or regulations; establishment of new institutions with specific continuing authority; constitutional provisions; promoting formation of political and economic actors with interests in achieving the required long-term energy transformation; etc.) How can/should such near-term initiatives attempt to balance the conflicting goals of making future decision-makers stick with the program, versus allowing them to respond to new information about climate-change risks and the performance and cost of mitigation options?

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