Climate change, impacts and vulnerability in Europe ... - MemoFin.fr

Vulnerability to climate changeFinally, it is also important to account for additionalpolicy co-benefits. Mitigation policy has a beneficialeffect in reducing GHG emissions, but alsoreduces emissions of air pollutants which lead toair quality benefits, which importantly are bothlocal and immediate. The GAINS and ALPHAmodels were used to estimate the health andenvironmental benefits of achieving the EU's 2050low-carbon path (Holland et al., 2011). The largebenefits in terms of increased life expectancy andlower pollution‐related impacts were estimated atEUR 48 billion to EUR 99 billion per year in 2050for the EU-27 (current prices, undiscounted), andgenerated very significant economic benefits pertonne of CO2 reduced. Additional economic benefitswould also arise from enhanced energy security andthe reduction in energy importsEven if emissions of GHGs stop today, changesin the climate will continue for many decadesand there is a need to develop adequate adaptiveresponses (adaptation). To allow a fully informedpolicy debate on adaptation, there is a need toconsider the economic aspects of adaptation, thatis, the costs and benefits. There is an emergingliterature on such estimates, and alongsideEuropean estimates many countries are developingeconomic assessments as part of their climate changeand adaptation policy development. Information onthe costs of adaptation is included in the dedicatedEEA report 'Adaptation in Europe'.The remainder of this section presents informationon costs in the main sectors investigated in theClimateCost project.Coastal floodsThe most studied sector to date is the coastal sector,which has long reported European damage costsfrom models such as DIVA (Vafeidis et al., 2008;Hinkel and Klein, 2009) with more detailed studiesfor some Member States (notably the Netherlandsand the United Kingdom, e.g. Evans et al., 2004;Deltacommissie, 2008). Previously reportedestimates from PESETA (Richards and Nicholls,2009; Bosello et al., 2011) have been updated by(Hinkel et al., 2010) and more recently as part of theClimateCost project (Brown et al., 2011). The latteranalysis considered a medium-high emissions A1Bscenario and a mitigation scenario the ENSEMBLESE1 scenario (Lowe et al., 2009; van der Linden andMitchell, 2009). The mitigation scenario leads tolong-term stabilisation at 450 ppm, which has ahigh chance of limiting global warming to less than2 °C, relative to pre-industrial levels, consistentwith the EU target. It also considered an extremesea-level rise consistent with the more recentliterature since the AR4, considering a rise of morethan 1.2 m of sea-level rise (SLR) by 2100 (see forexample Rahmstorf, 2007). Assuming that defencesare not upgraded from the standards modelled inthe 1995 baseline, the costs in Europe are estimatedat around EUR 11 billion/year (for the mid estimateof temperature-sea level response) for the 2050s(annual average costs for the period 2040–2070),rising to EUR 25 billion/year by the 2080s (annualaverage costs for the period 2070–2100) for theA1B scenario (combined effects of climate andsocio‐economic change, based on current prices,with no discounting). It is highlighted there isa wide range around these values due to theuncertainty in projected temperature and sea-levelrise response. Under the E1 (mitigation) scenario,costs in later time periods fall significantly. Theconsideration of a more extreme sea-level scenario(over 1.2 m by 2100) increases the estimated annualdamage costs for the EU to EUR 156 billion/year(undiscounted) by the 2080s — six times higherthan that for the A1B scenario. This is an importantfinding as it highlights the need for both mitigationas well as adaptation as the chances of these extremescenarios are significantly reduced with mitigation.There are also major differences among MemberStates in the costs projected. At the overall Europeanlevel these coastal damage costs are a relatively lowpercentage of GDP, but there are higher relativecosts (as a proportion of GDP) in some countries.Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Portugal andthe United Kingdom are ranked in the top five mostcostly countries for damage costs relative to GDP.River floodsThere are also European-wide damage cost estimatesfor river flooding. Floods already cause majoreconomic costs in Europe and climate changecould increase the magnitude and frequency ofthese events, leading to higher costs. However,these events need to be seen in the context of othersocio‐economic drivers. A range of European andMember State assessments have emerged over recentyears. Analysis from the ClimateCost project (Feyenet al., 2011) using the LISFLOOD model has assessedthe potential costs of river flooding across Europe.The expected annual damage (EAD) costs under anA1B scenario led to estimated costs of EUR 20 billionby the 2020s (2011–2040), EUR 46 billion by the2050s (2041–2070) and EUR 98 billion by the 2080s(2071–2100) (mean ensemble results, combined234 Climate change, impacts and vulnerability in Europe 2012