An expert panel of distinguished economists, including three Nobel laureates, has found that, among the possible approaches to reducing harm from climate change, R&D on solar radiation management (SRM) technology is likely to offer the best ratio of benefits to costs. According to the panel, R&D on marine cloud whitening was the single most promising use of resources, but R&D on aerosol injection also earned a “very good” rating. It was ranked third among the 15 specific options that the panel considered. Expert panel member and Nobel laureate economist Thomas Schelling said, “we found that climate engineering has great promise. Even if one approaches it from a skeptical viewpoint, it is important to invest in research to identify the limitations and risks of this technology sooner rather than later.” View the full results.
The expert panel was composed of Prof. Jagdish Bhagwati of Columbia University; Prof. Finn E. Kydland of the University of California, Santa Barbara; Thomas Schelling, professor emeritus at the University of Maryland; Prof. Vernon L. Smith of the Chapman University’s Argyros School of Business and Economics and the School of Law; and Prof. Nancy Stokey of the University of Chicago.
In all, the panel considered 15 options drawn from eight assessment papers. It considered options in climate engineering, forestry, adaptation, energy R&D, and technology transfer, as well as cuts in CO2, black carbon, and methane. For each policy area, at least one shorter paper critiqued the primary papers. The question posed by the analysis was: “If the global community wants to spend up to, say $250 billion per year over the next 10 years to diminish the adverse effects of climate changes, and to do most good for the world, which solutions would yield the greatest net benefits?”
The expert panel considered SRM options based on an assessment paper by Eric Bickel of the University of Texas at Austin and me. Papers by Roger Pielke Jr. and Anne Smith critiqued the Bickel and Lane analysis. The Bickel/Lane paper noted that the net benefits from SRM might amount to between $4 trillion and $14 trillion. The paper considered the use of SRM in conjunction with a number of hypothetical greenhouse gas control regimes. It found that poorly structured GHG control regimes would dramatically raise the benefits of an SRM option. (The paper suggested several factors that seem likely to cause actual GHG control regimes to fall far short of those that would be optimal.) The Bickel-Lane paper also cautioned, though, that various potentially harmful side effects might flow from SRM deployment. The scale of effects, it noted, could only be determined through a careful and systematic R&D program. It recommended no decision of SRM deployment be made until such a R&D program had been successfully conducted.