Development perspectives of Sub-Saharan Africa under climate policies

Progress in international climate negotiations depends crucially on the contribution of developing countries. Development perspectives determine their incentive structure. This study investigates into two related research questions: Does climate policy slow economic growth of Sub-Saharan Africa? What are interregional and intraregional distributional impacts of climate policies? Based on a scenario analysis with the energy-economy-climate model REMIND, we estimate the economic costs and transformation needs under different assumptions on (i) climate stabilization target, (II) policy and technology cooperation, and (iii) burden sharing. This scenario analysis is supplemented by an ex-post assessment of distributional effects within the Sub-Saharan Africa region based on stylized facts of energy consumption. - Climate change mitigation is affordable and compatible with economic growth - While mitigation costs can be reduced for Sub-Saharan Africa by delayed action, early action can even generate benefits (beyond avoided damages) when global action takes international equity into account - Direct (domestic) mitigation costs can potentially be reduced (up to 8 percentage points) due to revenues on the carbon and biomass market. - Climate policy causes the price for liquid energy to rise much faster in a mitigation scenario than in the business-as usual scenario; until 2030 this increase even exceeds that of the increase in per capita income, resulting in a decline of non-energy consumption