How may solar geoengineering impact global prospects for climate change mitigation?

[Geoengineering News]

This item and others will be in the monthly “Solar Geoengineering Updates Substack” newsletter: https://solargeoengineeringupdates.substack.com/

-----------------------------------------------------------------

https://academic.oup.com/oxrep/article-abstract/39/4/828/7425305?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Authors 

Katharine Ricke, Anthony Harding

https://doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/grad044

Published: 22 November 2023

Citations: Katharine Ricke, Anthony Harding, How may solar geoengineering impact global prospects for climate change mitigation?, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Volume 39, Issue 4, Winter 2023, Pages 828–841, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/grad044

 

Abstract

As disruptions from climate change increase, so will the urgency to find shorter-term approaches to ameliorating its harms. This may include calls to implement solar geoengineering, an approach to cooling the planet by reflecting incoming sunlight back to space. While the exact effects of solar geoengineering are still highly uncertain, physical science to date suggests that it may be effective at reducing many aspects of climate change in the short term. One of the biggest concerns about solar geoengineering is the extent to which it may interfere with crucial emissions reductions policies, i.e. mitigation. There are multiple channels by which geoengineering could alter mitigation pathways, both financial and behavioural. Here we define three such linkages and present the evidence available to constrain their potential magnitudes. Because solar geoengineering is not a substitute for mitigation, policies to develop or implement technologies that could be used to carry it out should be designed to accentuate its complementary nature to mitigation and deter the possibility it is used to delay decarbonizing the economy.

Source: Oxford Academic