Increased energy use for adaptation significantly impacts mitigation pathways

Climate adaptation actions can be energy-intensive, and this study quantifies their impacts on energy investments, costs, greenhouse gas emissions, and air pollution. The findings reveal that energy needs for adaptation increase significantly over time and with warming, leading to higher greenhouse gas emissions, local air pollutants, and energy system costs. Mitigation pathways accounting for this adaptation-energy feedback would require a higher global carbon price (5-30% higher). However, ambitious mitigation scenarios, while initially more costly, would ultimately see lower energy system costs due to reduced adaptation needs, potentially resulting in net gains in power system costs.

Francesco Pietro Colelli, Johannes Emmerling, Giacomo Marangoni, Malcolm N. Mistry, Enrica De Cian