ABSTRACT
The balance of evidence suggests that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) (of which CO2 is the most important) are having a discernible impact on the global climate and that this impact is expected to grow stronger over the next 100 years. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2007) has projected increases ranging up to 6.4ºC in the global average temperature by 2100, with important regional variations. Consequently, there have been international efforts to develop policies that will control or reduce GHG emissions, culminating in the proposed setting of legally binding reductions targets at the 1997 Kyoto conference. These targets have been subsequently agreed by a large number of states and, with the exception of the USA (and a few other OECD states), now ratified as the Kyoto Protocol. The initial Kyoto agreements run until 2012 and negotiations are now under way for the ‘post-2012’ international climate change policy, which are planned to be agreed in a conference in Copenhagen in December 2009. This policy debate has been informed by economic and engineering assessments of methods of GHG mitigation and their economic consequences.
