PPP-correction of the IPCC emission scenarios - does it matter?
Working paper
Åpne
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http://hdl.handle.net/11250/180559Utgivelsesdato
2004Metadata
Vis full innførselSamlinger
- Discussion Papers [1002]
Sammendrag
Abstract:
Ian Castles and David Henderson have criticized IPCC’s Special Report on Emissions Scenarios
(SRES) (IPCC, 2000) for using market exchange rates (MER) instead of purchasing power parities
(PPP) when converting regional GDP into a common denominator. The consequence is that poor
countries generally appear to be poorer than they actually are. An overstated income gap between
rich and poor countries in the base year gives rise to projections of too high economic growth in the
poor countries because the scenarios are constructed with the aim of reducing the income gap.
Castles and Henderson claim that overstated economic growth means that greenhouse gas
emissions are overstated as well. However, because closure of the emission intensity gap between
the rich and the poor parts of the world is another important driving force in the scenarios, we argue
that the use of MER in the SRES scenarios has not caused an overestimation of the global emission
growth because the two types of errors effectively neutralize one another.