Abstract
Policies adopted to mitigate global warming will have implications for specific sectors, such as the coal industry, the oil and gas industry, electricity, manufacturing, transportation and households. A sectoral assessment helps to put the costs in perspective, to identify the potential losers, and the extent and location of the losses, as well as to identify the sectors that may benefit. However, it is worth noting that the available literature to make this assessment is limited: there are few comprehensive studies of the sectoral effects of mitigation, compared with those on the macro gross domestic product (GDP) effects, and they tend to be for Annex B countries and regions. There is a fundamental problem for mitigation policies. It is well established that, compared to the situation for potential gainers, the potential sectoral losers are easier to identify, and their losses are likely to be more immediate, more concentrated, and more certain. The potential sectoral gainers (apart from the renewables sector and perhaps the natural gas sector) can only expect a small, diffused, and rather uncertain gain, spread over a long period. Indeed many of those who may gain do not exist, being future generations and industries yet to develop.