Climate protection measures pay off in the short term

Climate protection costs now and only brings benefits much later – this is often considered an argument why measures are so difficult to tackle. A study invalidates this view.

Durham – Climate action could benefit the economy for years to come – by reducing air pollution.

This is shown by researchers using the example of the USA. Measures that lead to compliance with the two-degree target could save the US alone 163 trillion US dollars by 2050, including through healthier people and higher crop yields, reports Drew Shindell’s group from Duke University in Durham (North Carolina, USA) in the journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences” (“PNAS”).

“Studies have shown that long-term damage from unchecked climate change exceeds global climate protection costs, but that the costs far exceed short-term climate benefits, undermining immediate action,” the researchers write.

Include benefits in the cost-benefit balance

If combustion engines are replaced by electric motors to protect the climate and increasingly fewer fossil fuels are used to generate energy, then there are also fewer exhaust gases and the air becomes cleaner. Shindell and colleagues argue that these advantages should be included in the cost-benefit balance.

For their calculations, the scientists used the latest scenarios from the 6th assessment report of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), the first part of which was published on August 9, 2021: the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSP). They show various social and economic development paths up to the year 2100 and are used in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6), for which the most important global climate models were evaluated. On this basis, the researchers calculated the changes until 2070 for the nation and the individual US states.

At the national level, Shindell’s team compares the scenario with the second most ambitious goal (limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius) with the second worst scenario (warming by 3.6 degrees by 2100). Although the development paths that are furthest apart have not been related to one another, the differences are enormous: the measures for the two-degree target would prevent 4.5 million premature deaths in the USA, and 1.4 million hospital stays , 300 million days of lost work, 1.7 million cases of dementia and the loss of 440 million tons of crops.

“The total monetized benefits this century are dominated by health and are much larger than in previous analyzes due to a better understanding of the effects of heat and air pollution on human health,” the researchers point out.

Avoided damage exceeds costs for climate protection

By 2030, the economic gain from clean air could amount to five to 25 times the cost of climate protection. According to the calculations, the avoided damage caused by heat will exceed the costs of climate protection between 2040 and 2055. Damage caused by higher sea levels, heavy weather events, droughts and forest fires are not even included in this.

For Sebastian Helgenberger from the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam, it is very important that such economic calculations are carried out: “They make it clear that climate protection measures are also worthwhile in the short term”. By underpinning the urgency to act with opportunities, more people could be motivated to actively protect the climate. Helgenberger refers to similar studies by the Federal Environment Agency (UBA). As early as 2014, a UBA study found that through ambitious climate protection⁠ alone, Germany’s gross domestic product could be around 30 billion euros higher in 2030.

Karsten Haustein from the Helmholtz Center Hereon in Geesthacht also finds the study very good and very significant. He sees as their main aspect that the high initial costs of climate protection measures are more than compensated if the avoided health costs due to the reduced air pollution are included. “As a result, the argument that is repeatedly put forward about an unreasonable cost burden collapses,” explains Haustein. To the best of his knowledge, this should look no different for Europe and Germany than it was shown in the study for the USA. dpa