油气行业甲烷减排成本：调查与综合（英）

Joseph E. Aldy, Forest L. Reinhardt, and Robert N. Stavins About the Authors Joseph E. Aldyis the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of the Practice ofEnvironmental Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, a university fellow of Resourcesfor the Future (RFF), a faculty research fellow of the National Bureau of EconomicResearch, and a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.Aldy served as the Special Assistant to the President for Energy and Environment,reporting through both the National Economic Council and the Office of Energy andClimate Change at the White House. Forest L. Reinhardtis the John D. Black Professor of Business Administrationat Harvard Business School, and senior associate dean for Faculty Promotionsand Tenure. He is the author ofDown to Earth: Applying Business Principles toEnvironmental Management, and serves on the Board of Tutors for the HarvardCollege concentration in Environmental Science and Public Policy, on the SteeringCommittee of the Harvard University Center for the Environment and of the HBS-Harvard Kennedy School Joint Degree Programs. Robert N. Stavinsis a A.J. Meyer Professor of Energy and Economic Developmentat the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, a universityfellow of RFF, and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.Stavins directs the Harvard Environmental Economics Program, Graduate Studies forthe Doctoral Program in Public Policy, the Doctoral Program in Political Economy andGovernment, and the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements. He also is co-chair ofthe Harvard Business School-Kennedy School Joint Degree Programs. Acknowledgements The authors are grateful for excellent research assistance by Bhavani K., Natalie Baker,and Alisha Shaparia, and valuable comments on a previous version of the manuscriptby Lauren Beatty, Maureen Lackner, Gabe Lade, and Levi Marks. The Harvard Initiativeon Reducing Global Methane Emissions—a Research Cluster of the Salata Institute forClimate and Sustainability at Harvard University—provided financial support for thisresearch. The authors, who are responsible for all remaining errors, can be reached at:joseph_aldy@hks.harvard.edu,freinhardt@hbs.edu, androbert_stavins@harvard.edu. About RFF Resources for the Future (RFF) is an independent, nonprofit research institution inWashington, DC. Its mission is to improve environmental, energy, and natural resourcedecisions through impartial economic research and policy engagement. RFF iscommitted to being the most widely trusted source of research insights and policysolutions leading to a healthy environment and a thriving economy. Working papers are research materials circulated by their authors for purposes ofinformation and discussion. They have not necessarily undergone formal peer review.The views expressed here are those of the individual authors and may differ from thoseof other RFF experts, its officers, or its directors. Sharing Our Work Our work is available for sharing and adaptation under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license. Youcan copy and redistribute our material in any medium or format; you must giveappropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made,and you may not apply additional restrictions. You may do so in any reasonablemanner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.You may not use the material for commercial purposes. If you remix, transform, orbuild upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material. For moreinformation, visithttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Abstract There is growing recognition of the relative importance of anthropogenic emissionsof methane as a contributor to global climate change. An important source of suchemissions in some countries, including the United States, is the oil and gas (O&G)sector. This points to the importance of developing understanding of the marginalabatement cost functions for methane emissions reductions. Scholars have employeda diverse set of methodologies to estimate abatement costs, including engineeringcost models, econometric analysis of natural gas markets, and statistical retrospectiveanalysis of state-level regulation. We critically examine these approaches andsynthesize their results. We find significant potential for low-cost methane abatementin the O&G sector in the United States and elsewhere, although claims of widespreadnegative abatement cost opportunities should be taken with a grain of salt. We alsofind that the potential for low-cost abatement is not without limit. Whereas it appearsthat cutting methane emissions in half would be relatively inexpensive, a sharp uptickin marginal abatement cost may occur when reductions exceed 60 to 80 percent belowbaseline levels. This threshold may change over time with technological advances inremote sensing, which can reduce abatement costs at vario