This book describes guidelines prepared by the U.S. Country Studies Program for the evaluation of options to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. The U.S. Country Studies Program developed these guidelines in collaboration with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to provide developing countries and countries with economies in transition with reference materials for national mitigation assessments. Over 50 countries participating in the program have used the guidelines, which have been refined to reflect their comments. The guidelines delineate a step-wise methodology for evaluating greenhouse gas mitigation options for the energy and non-energy sectors and describe the applications of common analytical tools. The U.S. Country Studies Program uses these guidelines in conjunction with intensive training workshops and follow up technical assistance during the lifetime of each country's study. The program uses similar reference materials to assist counties with their greenhouse gas emission inventories and evaluations of climate change vulnerability and adaptive responses. These guidelines serve three purposes: to assist countries in making decisions about the scope and methodology for mitigation assessments; to provide countries with guidance and step-by-step instructions on each element of a mitigation assessment; and to help countries determine which analytical tools are best suited to their needs and describe procedures for applying these tools. This book describes the application of the most common and readily available methods and analytical tools. Countries are encouraged, where appropriate, to use their own methods.

Choosing policy responses to mitigate greenhouse gases (GHGs) is one of the great challenges that the United States faces. It will require balancing cost-effectiveness and other objectives that reflect the institutional and political realities of passing major federal legislation with widespread impacts on U.S. producers and consumers. This paper develops a framework for evaluating U.S. GHG-mitigation policy that balances several criteria.

Many economic models exist to estimate the cost and effectiveness of different policies for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Some approaches incorporate rich technological detail, others emphasize the aggregate behavior of the economy and energy system, and some focus on impacts for specific sectors. Understandably, different approaches may be better positioned to provide particular types of information and may yield differing results, at times rendering decisions on future climate change emissions and research and development (R&D) policy difficult. Reliable estimates of the costs and benefits to the U.S. economy for various emissions reduction and adaptation strategies are critical to federal climate change R&D portfolio planning and investment decisions. At the request of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the National Academies organized a workshop to consider these issues. The workshop, summarized in this volume, comprised three dimensions: policy, analysis, and economics. Discussions along these dimensions were meant to lead to constructive identification of gaps and opportunities. The workshop focused on (1) policymakers' informational needs; (2) models and other analytic approaches to meet these needs; (3) important economic considerations, including equity and discounting; and (4) opportunities to enhance analytical capabilities and better inform policy.

Models are fundamental for estimating the possible costs and effectiveness of different policies for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. There is a wide array of models to perform such analysis, differing in the level of technological detail, treatment of technological progress, spatial and sector details, and representation of the interaction of the energy sector to the overall economy and environment. These differences impact model results, including cost estimates. More fundamentally, these models differ as to how they represent fundamental processes that have a large impact on policy analysis-such as how different models represent technological learning and cost reductions that come through increasing production volumes, or how different models represent baseline conditions. Reliable estimates of the costs and potential impacts on the United States economy of various emissions reduction and other mitigation strategies are critical to the development of the federal climate change research and development portfolio. At the request of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the National Academies organized a workshop, summarized in this volume, to consider some of these types of modeling issues.

This book begins with a brief background on greenhouse gases sources and sinks and continues with a discussion in different sectors including forest fluxes to human health and modeling techniques to policy measures. The chapters explore in detail about the GHG emission budgets, mitigation strategies, technical advancement and input-output analysis. Greenhouse gases (GHGs) occur naturally in our atmosphere and are essential to the survival of most of the organisms on the planet earth. GHGs such as such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone etc. play a major role in balancing the radiative budget, by absorbing or emitting some of the infrared rays reflecting from the earth’s surface. But unfortunately, anthropogenic activities like use of fossil fuel, intensive agriculture and livestock farming, use of synthetic fertilizers, deforestation, and industrial processes etc. have drastically interfered in the natural air composition, by releasing excess greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This has led to the increase in the ability of the atmosphere to absorb more infrared energy. This book is a complete information set covering all aspects of GHGs, sources, sinks and control/mitigation strategies. This book is also written in simple language with helpful photographs, diagrams and flowcharts which will make the reader comfortable in understanding the concepts a more relatively easier way. The book is a valuable tool for students in Environmental Science, Ecology, Biological Science, Economics and Agriculture. It is unique to environmental consultants, researchers and other professionals involved in climate change studies, Non-governmental organizations (NGO’s).