Renewable and distributed resources in a post-Paris low carbon future: The key role and political economy of sustainable electricity

Three recent roadmap analyses outline routes to a low-carbon economy that model the decarbonization of the electricity sector and the pervasive electrification of the transportation and industrial sectors. Using independent cost estimates and sequentially relaxing the constraints on resource selection, this paper compares the resource costs of the resulting portfolios of assets needed to meet the need for electricity. It supports the claim that the long run costs of the 100% renewable portfolios are less than business-as-usual portfolios, and finds that the environmental merit order of asset selection is quite close to the economic merit order. Neither fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage nor nuclear power enters the least-cost, low-carbon portfolio. Rigorous least-cost constraints on decarbonization render the pollution constraint is superfluous. The paper evaluates the Paris Agreement on climate change in light of these findings. The Agreement is described as a progressive, mixed market economic model with a governance structure based on a polycentric, multi-stakeholder approach for management of a common pool resource. It also notes that the political economy of the Agreement is consistent with current academic analysis of policy responses to the challenges of climate change and management of a large, focal core resource system. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.