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The importance of health co-benefits in macroeconomic assessments of UK Greenhouse Gas emission reduction strategies

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Title The importance of health co-benefits in macroeconomic assessments of UK Greenhouse Gas emission reduction strategies
 
Creator Tarp Jensen H
Keogh-Brown MR
Smith, R.D.
Chalabi Z
Dangour, Alan D.
Davies, M.
Edwards, P.
Garnett, Tara
Givoni M
Griffiths U
Hamilton I
Jarrett J
Roberts I
Wilkinson P
Woodend, John
Haines A
 
Subject climate
agriculture
macroeconomics
greenhouse gases
health
adaptation
 
Description We employ a single-country dynamically-recursive Computable General Equilibrium model to make health-focussed macroeconomic assessments of three contingent UK Greenhouse Gas (GHG) mitigation strategies, designed to achieve 2030 emission targets as suggested by the UK Committee on Climate Change. In contrast to previous assessment studies, our main focus is on health co-benefits additional to those from reduced local air pollution. We employ a conservative cost-effectiveness methodology with a zero net cost threshold. Our urban transport strategy (with cleaner vehicles and increased active travel) brings important health co-benefits and is likely to be strongly cost-effective; our food and agriculture strategy (based on abatement technologies and reduction in livestock production) brings worthwhile health co-benefits, but is unlikely to eliminate net costs unless new technological measures are included; our household energy efficiency strategy is likely to break even only over the long term after the investment programme has ceased (beyond our 20 year time horizon). We conclude that UK policy makers will, most likely, have to adopt elements which involve initial net societal costs in order to achieve future emission targets and longer-term benefits from GHG reduction. Cost-effectiveness of GHG strategies is likely to require technological mitigation interventions and/or demand-constraining interventions with important health co-benefits and other efficiency-enhancing policies that promote internalization of externalities. Health co-benefits can play a crucial role in bringing down net costs, but our results also suggest the need for adopting holistic assessment methodologies which give proper consideration to welfare-improving health co-benefits with potentially negative economic repercussions (such as increased longevity).
 
Date 2013-11
2014-12-16T06:37:35Z
2014-12-16T06:37:35Z
 
Type Journal Article
 
Identifier Tarp Jensen H, Keogh-Brown MR, Smith RD, Chalabi Z, Dangour AD, Davies M, Edwards P, Garnett T, Givoni M, Griffiths U, Hamilton I, Jarrett J, Roberts I, Wilkinson P, Woodcock J, Haines A. 2013. The importance of health co-benefits in macroeconomic assessments of UK Greenhouse Gas emission reduction strategies. Climatic Change 121(2):223-237.
1573-1480
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/52136
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-013-0881-6
 
Language en
 
Rights CC-BY-2.0
Open Access
 
Format p. 223-237
 
Publisher Springer
 
Source Climatic Change