The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways and their energy, land use, and greenhouse gas emissions implications: An overview

Journal Article · Sat Sep 09 00:00:00 EDT 2017 · Global Environmental Change

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2016.05.009· OSTI ID:1358497

Riahi, Keywan ^[1]; van Vuuren, Detlef P. ^[2]; Kriegler, Elmar ^[3]; Edmonds, Jae ^[4]; O'Neill, Brian C. ^[5]; Fujimori, Shinichiro ^[6]; Bauer, Nico ^[3]; Calvin, Katherine ^[4]; Dellink, Rob ^[7]; Fricko, Oliver ^[1]; Lutz, Wolfgang ^[1]; Popp, Alexander ^[3]; Cuaresma, Jesus Crespo ^[1]; KC, Samir ^[8]; Leimbach, Marian ^[3]; Jiang, Leiwen ^[5]; Kram, Tom ^[2]; Rao, Shilpa ^[1]; Emmerling, Johannes ^[9]; Ebi, Kristie ^[10] ; Hasegawa, Tomoko ^[6]; Havlik, Petr ^[1]; Humpenoder, Florian ^[3]; Da Silva, Lara Aleluia ^[9]; Smith, Steve ^[4]; Stehfest, Elke ^[2]; Bosetti, Valentina ^[11]; Eom, Jiyong ^[12]; Gernaat, David ^[2]; Masui, Toshihiko ^[6]; Rogelj, Joeri ^[1]; Strefler, Jessica ^[3]; Drouet, Laurent ^[9]; Krey, Volker ^[1]; Luderer, Gunnar ^[3]; Harmsen, Mathijs ^[2]; Takahashi, Kiyoshi ^[6]; Baumstark, Lavinia ^[3]; Doelman, Jonathan C. ^[2]; Kainuma, Mikiko ^[6]; Klimont, Zbigniew ^[1]; Marangoni, Giacomo ^[9]; Lotze-Campen, Hermann ^[13]; Obersteiner, Michael ^[1]; Tabeau, Andrzej ^[14]; Tavoni, Massimo ^[15]

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1. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg (Austria)
2. PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, Bilthoven (The Netherlands)
3. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam (Germany)
4. Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States)
5. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, CO (United States)
6. National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), Tsukuba (Japan)
7. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Paris (France)
8. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg (Austria); Shanghai Univ., Shanghai (China)
9. Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM), Milan (Italy); Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici (Italy)
10. Univ. of Washington, Seattle, WA (United States)
11. Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM), Milan (Italy); Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici (Italy); Bocconi Univ. (Italy)
12. Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States); KAIST College of Busines, Seoul (Republic of South Korea)
13. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam (Germany); Humboldt-Univ. zu Berlin, Berlin (Germany)
14. Wageningen Univ. and Research Centre (Netherlands)
15. Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM), Milan (Italy); Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici (Italy); Politecnico di Milano, (Italy)

This study presents the overview of the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) and their energy, land use, and emissions implications. The SSPs are part of a new scenario framework, established by the climate change research community in order to facilitate the integrated analysis of future climate impacts, vulnerabilities, adaptation, and mitigation. The pathways were developed over the last years as a joint community effort and describe plausible major global developments that together would lead in the future to different challenges for mitigation and adaptation to climate change. The SSPs are based on five narratives describing alternative socio-economic developments, including sustainable development, regional rivalry, inequality, fossil-fueled development, and middle-of-the-road development. The long-term demographic and economic projections of the SSPs depict a wide uncertainty range consistent with the scenario literature. A multi-model approach was used for the elaboration of the energy, land-use and the emissions trajectories of SSP-based scenarios. The baseline scenarios lead to global energy consumption of 400–1200 EJ in 2100, and feature vastly different land-use dynamics, ranging from a possible reduction in cropland area up to a massive expansion by more than 700 million hectares by 2100. The associated annual CO₂ emissions of the baseline scenarios range from about 25 GtCO₂ to more than 120 GtCO₂ per year by 2100. With respect to mitigation, we find that associated costs strongly depend on three factors: (1) the policy assumptions, (2) the socio-economic narrative, and (3) the stringency of the target. The carbon price for reaching the target of 2.6 W/m² that is consistent with a temperature change limit of 2 °C, differs in our analysis thus by about a factor of three across the SSP marker scenarios. Moreover, many models could not reach this target from the SSPs with high mitigation challenges. While the SSPs were designed to represent different mitigation and adaptation challenges, the resulting narratives and quantifications span a wide range of different futures broadly representative of the current literature. This allows their subsequent use and development in new assessments and research projects. Critical next steps for the community scenario process will, among others, involve regional and sectoral extensions, further elaboration of the adaptation and impacts dimension, as well as employing the SSP scenarios with the new generation of earth system models as part of the 6th climate model intercomparison project (CMIP6).

• Research Organization: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• Grant/Contract Number: AC05-76RL01830
• OSTI ID: 1358497
• Report Number(s): PNNL-SA-115333; KP1703030
• Journal Information: Global Environmental Change, Vol. 42, Issue C; ISSN 0959-3780
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
Shared Socioeconomic Pathways
SSP
climate change
RCP
community scenarios
mitigation
adaptation