ABOUT COP27 AND PARIS AGREEMENT FUTURE

Since its creation in 2003, as an offshoot of the University of Geneva where two of its founders taught, ORDECSYS has participated in numerous R&D projects on the theme of the economics of climate policies. On the occasion of the COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, it seemed appropriate to draw the main conclusions of this work, by providing references to the articles and books published. This work covers a period of some twenty years. A broad overview of the results of this work provides a perspective on the evolution of the perception of the problem of climate change associated with human activities and the economic and technical policies envisaged to resolve it.

• Coupling climate and economic dynamics:  From the outset, in 2003, the founders of ORDECSYS have applied large system optimization techniques to couple economic growth models with climate evolution models.
• Analyzing the security of Europe's energy supply: back in 2010, an ORDECSYS team was involved in a study of the long-term security of supply in the European zone. A study to be reconsidered in light of recent events concerning the disruption of gas deliveries from Russia.
• Cost-benefit or cost-effectiveness analysis? By participating in several European research projects, ORDECSYS researchers have developed models for the economic analysis of climate policies in a cost-benefit approach. They have also shown that climate policies can be analyzed by introducing a constraint on a cumulative GHG emissions budget into economic growth models, in a cost-effectiveness analysis.
• Fair burden sharing: ORDECSYS work then focused on the difficult problem of how to fairly distribute the efforts and costs of emission reductions and climate change mitigation. Using integrated and hierarchical modeling, it was shown that a fair distribution of an emissions budget is possible and can lead to a relatively low and balanced cost in eight regions of the world.
• Assessing the economic impact of the Paris Agreement: In 2018 ORDECSYS researchers used modeling tools, developed through participation in several European research projects, to assess the economic impact of the Paris Agreement.
• Modeling direct CO2 capture from the air: A recent IPCC report presents several emission trajectories proposed by different integrated assessment models to meet the Paris Agreement targets. They all envisage a very stringent reduction pathway to achieve carbon neutrality (i.e. zero net emissions) by the end of the century. Once a carbon-neutral regime is achieved, the only emissions that should be allowed are those that are offset by direct air carbon reduction (DCR) activity. ORDECSYS researchers looked at the prospects of CDR technologies for fossil fuel energy-producing and exporting countries, particularly Qatar and the Gulf States.
• Explore possible futures of Paris agreements with the SORMAC-23 model.