ABSTRACT

Significant benefits may result from efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions. However, emissions reductions will not be imposed unless those benefits are perceived to outweigh the costs of achieving them. Thus, Working Group III (WGIII) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) focused a good deal of attention on reviewing the available projections of the costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. My review of Chapters 8 and 9 of the IPCC WGIII report (IPCC 1996)—on the costs of greenhouse gas emissions reductions—is organized in four main parts: what is in the chapters; what is included that is of potential value to the policymaking and research communities; what of potential value to the policymaking and research communities is left out or incompletely described; and what areas of future research seem most likely to improve our ability to make decisions based, at least in part, on projections of the costs of carbon emissions abatement.