Industrial Non-Energy, Non-CO 2 Greenhouse Gas Emissions

• Published in: Technological forecasting & social change Vol. 63; no. 2; pp. 313 - 334
• Main Author: Fenhann, Jørgen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Inc 2000
• ISSN: 0040-1625; 1873-5509
• DOI: 10.1016/S0040-1625(99)00107-9

In this article we project emissions of three groups of greenhouse gases—perfluorocarbons (PFCs), sulphur hexafluoride (SF 6), and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)—through the year 2100. These gases were added to the gases CO 2, CH 4 and N 2O under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The emission projections are based on the projections for population and GDP, as well as the qualitative descriptions of the four storylines (A1, A2, B1, and B2) developed within an international, interdisciplinary effort to formulate new greenhouse gas (GHG) emission scenarios reported in this issue. To cover industrial non-energy, non-CO 2 greenhouse gases, emission projections of N 2O from the production of adipic acid were also calculated. Emission trajectories for CFCs, HCFCs, halons, carbon tetrachloride, methyl chloroform and methyl bromide were included by directly using the Montreal Protocol scenario (A3) from the 1998 Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion. There are three main ways of estimating the future trends for the emissions of the greenhouse gases discussed in this article: the increases could be linear, they could follow an S-curve, or they could be exponential, proportional to GDP development. This article refers to existing studies using these methods and integrates them. The result of the calculations shows that the total emission range for the industrial non-energy, non-CO 2 greenhouse gases is within 0.5–1.3 GtC in the period 2010–2100, when total emissions of CFCs and HCFCs are low.