The negotiations for a global climate agreement recognize that substantial and additional funds need to be generated for assisting adaptation in developing countries. Currently, the 2% adaptation levy (AL) on the clean development mechanism (CDM) is intended to serve this purpose under the Kyoto...

This paper computes national carbon mitigation costs using two simple principles: (1) Incremental costs for low-carbon energy investments are calculated using the cost of coal-fired power as the benchmark. (2) All low-carbon energy sources are counted, because reducing carbon emissions cannot be...