The economics of carbon sequestration
I’m going to be thinking more about the economics of climate change and the environment going forward. In that vein, I just saw an interesting post from Rob Stavins of the Kennedy School, summarizing the economics of carbon sequestration–that is, using forests as “biological scrubbers by removing (sequestering) CO2 from the atmosphere.”
The question is whether carbon sequestration makes economic and environmental sense. Rob reviews the evidence, including a 2005 paper that he co-authered.
Rob concludes:
A 500 million ton per year sequestration program would be very significant, offsetting approximately one-third of annual U.S. carbon emissions. At this level, the estimated costs of carbon sequestration are comparable to typical estimates of the costs of emissions abatement through fuel switching and energy efficiency improvements. This result indicates that sequestration opportunities ought to be included in the economic modeling of climate policies.
Interesting.
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