Prof. Dr. Wilfried Rickels

Wilfried Rickels

Fellow, Kiel Centre for Globalization
Director of Research Group “Global Commons and Climate Policy”, Kiel Institute for the World Economy
Email: wilfried.rickels@ifw-kiel.de
Tel.: +49(0)431-8814-408

Research Interests:

  • Ocean Sustainability
  • Climate Engineering

Integrating Carbon Dioxide Removal into European Emissions Trading

8th March 2022
KCG Secretary
Authors: Wilfried Rickels, Alexander Proelß, Oliver Geden, Julian Burhenne, Mathias Fridahl (Frontiers in Climate, 2021, 3: 690023)

In one of the central scenarios for meeting an European Union-wide net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions target by 2050, the emissions cap in the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) becomes net negative. Despite this ambition, no mechanism allows for the inclusion of CO2 removal credits (CRCs) in the EU ETS to date[...]

Implications of Temperature Overshoot Dynamics for Climate and Carbon Dioxide Removal Policies in the DICE Model

8th March 2022
KCG Secretary
Authors: Wilfried Rickels, Jörg Schwinger (Environmental Research Letters, 2021, 16(10): 104042)

Assessing climate policies that involve temporary overshoot of temperature targets requires an accurate representation of carbon cycle and climate dynamics. Here, we compare temperature overshoot climate policies obtained with the dynamic integrated climate–economy (DICE) integrated assessment model using two different climate-carbon cycle sub-models: first, the original DICE implementation, and second an implementation of the finite amplitude impulse response (FaIR) simple climate model[...]

The Blue Carbon Wealth of Nations

7th March 2022
KCG Secretary
Authors: Christine Bertram, Martin Quaas, Thorsten B. H. Reusch, Athanasios T. Vafeidis, Claudia Wolff, Wilfried Rickels (Nature Climate Change, 2021, 11: 704–709)

Carbon sequestration and storage in mangroves, salt marshes and seagrass meadows is an essential coastal ‘blue carbon’ ecosystem service for climate change mitigation. Here we offer a comprehensive, global and spatially explicit economic assessment of carbon sequestration and storage in three coastal ecosystem types at the global and national levels[...]

Social Science Research to Inform Solar Geoengineering

7th March 2022
KCG Secretary
Authors: Joseph E. Aldy, Tyler Felgenhauer, William A. Pizer, Massimo Tavoni, Mariia Belaia, Mark E. Borsuk, Arunabha Ghosh, Garth Heutel, Daniel Heyen, Joshua Horton, David Keith, Christine Merk, Juan Moreno-Cruz, Jesse L. Reynolds, Katharine Ricke, Wilfried Rickels, Soheil Shayegh, Wake Smith, Simone Tilmes, Gernot Wagner, Jonathan B. Wiener (Science, 2021, 374(6569): 815–818)

As the prospect of average global warming exceeding 1.5°C becomes increasingly likely, interest in supplementing mitigation and adaptation with solar geoengineering (SG) responses will almost certainly rise. For example stratospheric aerosol injection to cool the planet could offset some of the warming for a given accumulation of atmospheric greenhouse gases (1)[...]

Short-windedness Would Weaken Effective Climate Policy

19th November 2021
KCG Secretary
Authors: Wilfried Rickels, Sonja Peterson (Environmental and Resource Economics, 2020, 76: 447–517)

Committing to rigid shutdown measures to contain the spreading of the corona virus has been undertaken on the tacit assumption that these measures will be temporary and can be loosened when the COVID-19 infection rates decrease and discontinued altogether once vaccines are available. Mitigating climate change and achieving ambitious temperature targets as set out in the Paris Agreement require a long-term structural change taking us away from our current carbon-intensive economy to a zero-carbon and then net-negative carbon economy[...]

(Mis)conceptions about Modelling Negative Emission Technologies

19th November 2021
KCG Secretary
Authors: Wilfried Rickels, Christine Merk, Fabian Reith, David P. Keller, Andreas Oschlies (Environmental Research Letters, 2019, 14(10), Article: 104004)

Intentionally removing carbon from the atmosphere with negative emission technologies (NETs) will be important to achieve net-zero emissions by mid-century and to limit global warming to 2 °C or even 1.5 °C (IPCC 2018). Model scenarios that consider NETs as part of mitigation pathways are still largely restricted to afforestation and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), while the '[f]easibility and sustainability of [NETs] use could be enhanced by a portfolio of options deployed at substantial, but lesser scales, rather than a single option at very large scale' (IPCC 2018, p 19)[...]