Page - 19 - in options, Volume summer 2017

www.iiasa.ac.at summer 2017 ◼ options 19 The World in 2050 Messy, interconnected problems are what IIASA thrives on, using systems analysis to tease out the different forces at play. In 2015, an especially tricky challenge emerged in the form of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To reach their targets by 2030, governments must strive to reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable. How do they feed their populations (Goal 2) without destroying biodiversity (Goal 15); or industrialize (Goal 9) without further polluting the sea (Goal 14)? The World in 2050 is an international collaboration in which IIASA is a key player, and it is designed to examine the trade-offs and synergies between the SDGs. The researchers hope to identify the neatest interventions–ones that can achieve many targets in unison–as well as highlighting the pitfalls of pursuing particular goals while ignoring others. IIASA researchers have been modeling these tensions in different regions: In South Asia Shonali Pachauri has been working on the problem as part of the IIASA project Linking Climate and Development Policies–Leveraging International Networks and Knowledge Sharing; and Peter Rafaj has been examining similar issues in South Africa. In South Asia many of the poor burn biomass, such as dung or wood, and in South Africa, a lot of slum households burn coal. Both of these produce noxious indoor pollution. Switching to stoves that use bottled gas, or tapping into the electricity grid, are solutions. But policies to cut carbon and pollutant emissions are likely to increase the price of these. In South Africa a host of measures aimed at tackling climate change and air pollution–such as investments in renewable energy, retrofitting coal power plants to scrub out pollutants, and putting a higher price on carbon–are all pushing up the price of electricity. Many people who have been hooked up to the electricity supply nevertheless find it’s cheaper to use coal. In South Asia, Pachauri has quantified the tensions using an extension of the Model for Energy Supply Strategy Alternatives and their General Environmental Impact called MESSAGE-Access. If things go on as they are, she says, there will likely be 700 million South Asians without access to clean cooking fuels even in 2030. The cost of bringing modern energy to these 700 million people would be US$29 billion, but that’s without the effect of carbon reduction policies, which could push that cost up by 44%–or mean that another 430 million people (20% of South Asia’s population) were abandoned to dirty fuels. “We’re not saying don’t do climate policy, but we have to be very careful in designing those policies,” says Pachauri. Climate policy must be smart For both South Asia and South Africa, the researchers found that the poor must be shielded against fuel price rises to help them move to modern energy. In South Africa, Rafaj and other authors, including Harold Annegarn of the Energy Institute in Cape Town, South Africa, used the Greenhouse Gas and Air Pollution Interaction Synergies (GAINS) model which has informed policy in Europe and South Asia. They found that the money intended for retrofitting coal stations to remove air pollutants would be more effectively spent eliminating air pollution on the ground—by upgrading stoves, subsidizing electricity use, insulating homes, and suppressing dust. “You’re talking about a very large expenditure on very old plants for marginal benefit versus a direct and significant reduction in domestic exposure,” says Annegarn. One consequence of the energy policy debate in South Africa was that the government has allowed coal stations to postpone their retrofits, provided they fund on-the-ground interventions. If fully implemented, the GAINS analysis might become a centerpiece for the future local decision making. New policies in India too are more aligned with results from the MESSAGE-Access analysis. A new Indian scheme provides free stoves and gas cylinders to women from poor households in addition to subsidizing the fuel (for everyone). “Our analysis shows that for poor households the upfront cost of the stove and cylinder is a bigger hurdle than the fuel costs,” says Pachauri. Meanwhile, Pachauri is also expanding analysis to consider how the energy access Sustainable Development Goal interacts with others. The good news is that it seems to support them more than it undermines them. Another way of letting air out of the balloon? AI Further info § Obersteiner M, Walsh B, Frank S, Havlik P, et al. (2016). Assessing the land resource-food price nexus of the Sustainable Development Goals. Science Advances 2 (9): e1501499. [pure.iiasa.ac.at/13809] § Cameron C, Pachauri S, Rao N, McCollum D, Rogelj J, & Riahi K (2016). Policy trade-offs between climate mitigation and clean cook-stove access in South Asia. Nature Energy 1: e15010. [pure.iiasa.ac.at/11689] § Lam NL, Pachauri S, Purohit P, Nagai Y, Bates MN, Cameron C, & Smith Kirk R (2016). Kerosene subsidies for household lighting in India: what are the impacts? Environmental Research Letters 11 (4): 044014. [pure.iiasa.ac.at/12652] § Klausbruckner C, Annegarn H, Henneman LRF, & Rafaj P (2016). A policy review of synergies and trade-offs in South African climate change mitigation and air pollution control strategies. Environmental Science & Policy 57: 70-78. [pure.iiasa.ac.at/11707] Brian Walsh walsh@iiasa.ac.at Shonali Pachauri pachauri@iiasa.ac.at Peter Rafaj rafaj@iiasa.ac.at