Assessing mitigation options for greenhouse warming

Greenhouse gases and global warming have received increasing attention in recent years and gained a prominent place on national andinternational agendas.In 1988 the United States Congress asked the U.S.National Academy of Sciences to conduct a study on the policyimplications of greenhouse warming.One of the tasks in the study was to examine mitigation options and develop an assessment methodologyfor them.This task was undertaken by a panel of 19 scientists,economists,and engineers.The author was the Chairman of that panel.In thispaper,the methodology developed-the“technologicar costing”method-is briefly reviewed and the reasons for choosing it over economicmodeling were discussed.It concludes with a discussion on how the greenhouse warming problem may affect the energy and power systemof the future.