This study provides insight into the feasibility of a CO₂ trunkline from the Netherlands to the Utsira formation in the Norwegian part of the North Sea, which is a large geological storage reservoir for CO₂. The feasibility is investigated in competition with CO₂ storage in onshore and near-offshore sinks in the Netherlands. Least-cost modelling with a MARKAL model in combination with ArcGIS was used to assess the cost-effectiveness of the trunkline as part of a Dutch greenhouse gas emission reduction strategy for the Dutch electricity sector and CO₂ intensive industry. The results show that under the condition that a CO₂ permit price increases from €25 per tCO₂ in 2010 to €60 per tCO₂ in 2030, and remains at this level up to 2050, CO₂ emissions in the Netherlands could reduce with 67% in 2050 compared to 1990, and investment in the Utsira trunkline may be cost-effective from 2020-2030 provided that Belgian and German CO₂ is transported and stored via the Netherlands as well. In this case, by 2050 more than 2.1 GtCO₂ would have been transported from the Netherlands to the Utsira formation. However, if the Utsira trunkline is not used for transportation of CO₂ from Belgium and Germany, it may become cost-effective 10 years later, and less than 1.3 GtCO₂ from the Netherlands would have been stored in the Utsira formation by 2050. On the short term, CO₂ storage in Dutch fields appears more cost-effective than in the Utsira formation, but as yet there are major uncertainties related to the timing and effective exploitation of the Dutch offshore storage opportunities.

The production growth of energy-intensive commodities in physical terms is an important component of bottom-up emission scenarios and a relevant national circumstance to be incorporated in schemes for differentiating greenhouse gas emission allowances. In this study, average future growth rates of physical production are estimated for various branches of the energy-intensive industry in a wide range of countries. To this end, historic patterns of growth were analysed on a per capita basis from the 1980s onwards. Per capita production levels of steel, cement, and refinery products tend to level off for all countries as per capita income increases. These stabilisation levels, however, differ by a factor of 10 from country to country. Petrochemical and total paper and board production per capita, on the contrary, keeps on increasing with increasing income, and per capita aluminium production shows a rather weak relationship to income. Aggregated annual growth of physical production of energy-intensive commodities in this time period amounted to 5.9% in low, 1.1% in middle, and 0.8% in high-income countries. Assuming that a country experiences declining growth rates of physical production as its income increases, these aggregated figures may be used to estimate future growth rates. Projections thus based on recent growth trends suggest that earlier estimates may be improved.

In the coming years the international debate on commitments for the second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol will intensify. In this study, the Global Triptych approach is put forward as an input for international decision-making concerning the differentiation of commitments by 2020. It is a sector- and technology-oriented approach, and we calculated quantitative emission limitation objectives and global emissions starting from bottomup information on long-term reduction opportunities. Central to the calculations were long-term sustainability targets for the year 2050, formulated for (1) energy efficiency in the energy-intensive industry, (2) greenhouse gas intensity of electricity production, and (3) per capita emissions in the domestic sectors. Calculated emission limitation objectives for 13 world regions ranged from about −30% to more than +200%. The ranking of world regions in the differentiation turned out to be independent of the levels chosen for the long-term sustainability targets. The objectives seem sufficient to maintain the long-term possibility of stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations at about 550 ppm CO₂-eq, but will require severe emission reductions. These may be relaxed to a certain degree if stabilization at 650 ppm CO₂-eq is aimed for. We conclude that the bottom-up character of the approach made it possible to examine important basic principles of the Climate Convention, including equity, the needs and circumstances of developing countries, cost-effectiveness and sustainable development.

One of the important bottlenecks for the introduction of emission trading is how allowances should be distributed among the participants in a trading scheme. Both grandfathering on the basis of historic emissions and auctioning have important drawbacks. In this paper, we propose an allowance distribution rule based on benchmarking of production processes: each company’s share in the total allowance is determined by its production level and a reference emission level per product. The scheme shows some important advantages compared to other schemes.

This paper gives an overview of energy efficiencies in six industrial subsectors in fourteen countries in order to indicate what consequences differences in energy efficiency may have for a differentiation of commitments for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Differentiating the burden of greenhouse gas emission reductions among Parties to the UN-FCCC has appeared in recent climate negotiations. Values for the Specific Energy Consumption were compared with structure-corrected values for a reference SEC to obtain an indication of energy efficiency. For some countries, specific energy consumption may be as high as 1.5 to 1.7 times the reference level whereas for other countries factors this factor is not higher than 1.2. In order to establish a differentiation of commitments the room for energy efficiency improvement in each country and each heavy industry subsector was utilized with an equal share in order to achieve an overall 5% reduction of CO₂ emissions. The resulting partial reduction objectives for heavy industry vary from -15% to +20% in 2015 over levels in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The effect of these differences in total allowances is 7% to 10%. Although the values of this exercise are preliminary - due to limited data availability - we demonstrate that it makes sense to account for differences in industrial energy efficiencies in future burden differentiation rules.