Low-carbon Economy - Rationale and Aims

Rationale and Aims

Nations may seek to become low-carbon or decarbonised economies as a part of a national climate change mitigation strategy. A comprehensive strategy to mitigate, if that is possible, climate change is carbon neutrality and geoengineering.

The aim of a LCE is to integrate all aspects of itself from its manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, and power-generation, etc. around technologies that produce energy and materials with little GHG emission, and, thus, around populations, buildings, machines, and devices that use those energies and materials efficiently, and, dispose of or recycle its wastes so as to have a minimal output of GHGs. Furthermore, it has been proposed that to make the transition to an LCE economically viable we would have to attribute a cost (per unit output) to GHGs through means such as emissions trading and/or a carbon tax.

Some nations are presently low carbon: societies that are not heavily industrialised or populated. In order to avoid climate change on a global level, all nations considered carbon intensive societies, and societies that are heavily populated might have to become zero-carbon societies and economies. Several of these countries have pledged to cut their emissions by 100% via offsetting emissions rather than ceasing all emissions (carbon neutrality); in other words, emitting will not cease but will continue and will be offset to a different geographical area.