CIRCULAR ECONOMY AND CLIMATE MITIGATION: BENEFITS AND CONFLICTS

Circular economy (CE) has been acknowledged as a promising concept with expected benefits on greenhouse gas emissions. However, at national scale, the effects of circular strategies are not yet addressed. This paper evaluates the interactions between CE and climate change mitigation. It takes the energy system, of the Portuguese open economy, to explore how circular economy options intertwines with carbon mitigation. The technological bottom-up model TIMES_PT is used to generate six scenarios regarding distinct CE strategies, namely: a reference case without CE; four CE scenarios reflecting different CE principles including, reducing demand/production sharing economy, equipment' repairing and recycling; and an additional scenario covering all the CE strategies. We find, that at in general CE can lead to a reduction of energy intensity and contribute to climate change mitigation. Moreover, CE can reduce the energy system costs, particularly if it is considered a sharing economy with lower equipment stocks. However, the benefits of CE for climate mitigation are not straightforward. A trade-off effect of CE is the price increase and the lower availability of some sub-products which, under a cost-effective energy system perspective, may lead to subsequent replacements that may not be optimal from a mitigation perspective.