Terrence Iverson

The Supply-side Case for Carbon Capture and Storage

In a world in which participation in a global climate treaty is incomplete and where it is politically infeasible to permanently retire valuable fossil fuel deposits, renewables suffer from 100 percent supply side leakage over the long run. In contrast, CCS permanently retires the carbon embedded in fossil fuel deposits, and thus does change the long run climate outcome. Despite this difference, renewables have the potentially substantial merit of delaying the onset of severe climate damages. If participation is high, this delaying effect could be large, on the order of centuries. In contrast, when participation is low, the delaying effect of renewables is smaller, and the relative case for CCS increases. In quantitative analysis, Terrence Iverson has found that the role of CCS for climate policy is most important when the coalition comprises about 40 percent of global energy demand. Moreover, renewables suffer from Green-Paradox-like price effects, while CCS does not.

Mr Iverson is an environmental economist whose primary focus is on using aggregate macroeconomic models to study issues in the economics of climate change. He has published in top environmental economics field journals and in top interdisciplinary climate policy and global environmental change journals. His current research focuses on thinking critically about options for steering the global economy to ensure that a significant portion of the fossil carbon embedded in the earth's crust remains locked in the ground over the long run.

Terrence Iverson is Assistant Professor at Colorado State University. He holds an MA and a PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.