Optimal Use of Carbon Sequestration in a Global Climate Change Strategy : Is there a Wooden Bridge to a Clean Energy Future?

s. Whether it should be part of a global
climate mitigation strategy, however, remains controversial.
One of the key issues is that, contrary to emission
abatement, carbon sequestration might not be permanent. But
some argue that even temporary sequestration is beneficial
as it delays climate change impacts and "buys"
time for technical change in the energy sector. To
rigorously assess these arguments, the authors build an
international optimization model in which both sequestration
and abatement can be used to mitigate climate change. They
confirm that permanent sequestration, if feasible, can be
overall part of a climate mitigation strategy. When
permanence can be guaranteed, sequestration is equivalent to
fossil-fuel emissions abatement. The optimal use of
temporary sequestration, on the other hand, depends mostly
on marginal damages of climate change. Temporary
sequestration projects starting now, in particular, are not
attractive if marginal damages of climate change at current
concentration levels are assumed to be low.