Carbon Accumulations and Technical Progress--A Simulation Study of Costs.

Discussions of the global warming problem too often proceed as if there were no economically or operationally feasible substitutes for fossil fuels--other than nuclear energy, which of course has environmental problems of its own. However there is a flourishing engineering-economics literature in such substitutes, primarily renewables, and significant public and private R&D activity. This paper presents the results of a simulation study into the costs of substituting non-net-carbon emitting energy sources for fossil fuels, assuming regulatory constraints or taxes are imposed on carbon emissions. The approach taken is to postulate a feasible investment path in what are termed non-carbon or backstop technologies for two regional groupings--the industrial countries, including Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and the developing countries--and to estimate the costs to each grouping. The carbon taxes or regulations required to bring the substitutions about can then be imputed from the results. Copyright 1992 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd