Thailand’s Economy-wide Implications of Delaying Carbon Emissions Peak to 2030: An NDC Pathway to Net-Zero by 2050

Information from the abstract

Abstract Thailand has strong commitments to achieve long-term net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while maintaining sustained economic growth. Delaying the peak of GHG emissions can significantly undermine national climate targets and macroeconomic conditions. However, there is uncertainty about the economic and technological implications of delaying the national emissions peak while still meeting the second Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC3.0) target for 2035 and long-term net-zero goals. This paper aims to explore the macroeconomic and energy system impacts of delaying Thailand’s GHG emissions peak using a soft-linked modeling framework that integrates a bottom-up, technology-rich energy system AIM/Enduse model with a top-down computable general equilibrium AIM/CGE model. This study evaluates four decarbonization scenarios, each targeting net-zero GHG emissions by 2050 or 2060 while striving to meet Thailand’s conditional and unconditional NDC3.0 targets for 2035, respectively. Two of these scenarios assume a GHG emissions peak by 2025, while the other two delay it until 2030. Results show that delaying the emissions peak increases cumulative GHG emissions by 1-3% compared with the accelerated emissions peak pathway in the unconditional and conditional scenarios, respectively. The carbon price trajectories indicate that accelerating emissions peak requires stronger carbon prices in the near term to promote early emissions reductions and expedite deployment of low-carbon technologies. Although the delayed emissions peak pathway results in a short-term GDP gain of 0.03% to 0.12% in the conditional scenario in the near term, it leads to higher mitigation costs in later periods through rapidly increasing carbon prices after 2030. By 2045, carbon prices in both scenarios converge, indicating that delaying mitigation does not reduce the long-term cost of achieving net-zero emissions but instead shifts the mitigation burden to later periods. Therefore, accelerating emissions peak and implementing early mitigation actions lowers cumulative emissions, providing a reduced long-term mitigation pressure toward Thailand’s net-zero pathway.

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Related topics: Environmental Impact and Sustainability · Climate Change Policy and Economics · Integrated Energy Systems Optimization