Estimating the Emissions Reductions from Supply-side Fossil Fuel Interventions - Brian C. Prest, Harrison Fell, Deborah Gordon, and TJ Conway

We find a rough band of central estimates for life-cycle emissions reductions from supply-side interventions in the range of 40–50 percent of the gross life-cycle emissions of each barrel curtailed, depending on the relative emissions intensity of the curtailed and substitute sources of supply. [...] For reference, the emissions intensity of oil sands is about 650 kgCO2e/boe, suggesting net emissions reductions on the order of about half of the gross life-cycle GHG emissions of the curtailed barrel. [...] As an example, passenger electric vehicles have a per-mile emissions intensity of roughly one-fourth of that of gasoline vehicles at the current emissions intensity of the US electric grid.12 At the modestly higher carbon intensity of the global average grid,13 the per-mile emissions intensity of EVs rises to about one-third of that of gasoline vehicles. [...] We summarize a subset of these simulations in Table 4, which presents the expected value (average) of the net change in emissions from this exercise for each of the nine categories of curtailed sources and the percent of the 10,000 draws that lead to net emission reductions. [...] We find that the emissions reductions from supply-side interventions are on the order of 40–50 percent of the gross emissions of each barrel curtailed, depending on the relative emissions intensity of the curtailed and substitute sources of supply.