In their Policy Forum, “The costs of ‘costless’ climate mitigation” (1 December 2023, p. 1001), M. J. Kotchen et al. assert that the greenhouse gas mitigation potential identified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its latest assessment report is larger and cheaper than what is found in widely used cost-benefit–based (as opposed to processbased) integrated assessment models such as DICE, FUND, and PAGE. They suggest that the IPCC report underestimates the costs of mitigation by excluding hidden or nonmonetary costs in various sectors. Their criticism of the IPCC assessment is unfounded.@en

The greenhouse gas mitigation potential of different economic sectors in three world regions are estimated using a bottom-up approach. These estimates provide updates of the numbers reported in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR4). This study is part of a larger project aimed at comparing greenhouse gas mitigation potentials from bottom-up and top-down approaches. The sectors included in the analysis are energy supply, transport, industry and the residential and service sector. The mitigation potentials range from 11 to 15GtCO₂eq. This is 26-38% of the baseline in 2030 and 47-68% relative to the year 2000. Potential savings are estimated for different cost levels. The total potential at negative costs is estimated at 5-8% relative to the baseline, with the largest share in the residential and service sector and the highest reduction percentage for the transport and industry sectors. These (negative) costs include investment, operation and maintenance and fuel costs and revenues at moderate discount rates of 3-10%. At costs below 100US$/tCO₂, the largest potential reductions in absolute terms are estimated in the energy supply sector, while the transport sector has the lowest reduction potential.

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