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Energy models and energy scenarios
Published in Kornelis Blok, Evert Nieuwlaar, Introduction to Energy Analysis, 2020
Kornelis Blok, Evert Nieuwlaar
The IPCC family of scenarios. Energy-related CO2 emissions are just one of the causes of climate change. To analyse the future development of greenhouse gas emissions and the possibilities of mitigating these emissions, much more extended models are needed. These models are often indicated as integrated assessment models (IAMs). An energy system model is part of such integrated models. Next to an energy module, such models will include modules that deal with the modelling of emissions from agriculture, forestry, and land-use change, and emissions from various industrial processes. Furthermore, these models generally are able to calculate not only greenhouse gas emissions, but also resulting atmospheric concentrations of these gases, the impact on temperatures, and further impacts of climate change. It goes without saying that these models are very complex. There is a large variety of integrated assessment models. The various approaches discussed in this chapter are applied in these models, in different combinations.
Biochar, carbon accounting and climate change
Published in Johannes Lehmann, Stephen Joseph, Biochar for Environmental Management, 2015
Annette Cowie, Dominic Woolf, John Gaunt, Miguel Brandão, Ruy Anaya de la Rosa, Alan Cowie
There are two main categories of economic models that are used to address issues such as these of long-term multi-sectorial allocation of resources, allocation of land to different production systems and crops, and the impacts of market interventions on these allocations. The first type includes computable general equilibrium (CGE) or partial equilibrium (CPE) models, which calculate equilibrium prices (i.e. that set of prices for which supply equals demand for all goods) based on equations describing price elasticities of supply and demand. Typically (but not exclusively) equilibrium models use neo-classical economic theory to describe these processes. An important development over recent years has been the integration of detailed spatially-explicit global data on land use and land productivity in to CGEs and CPEs, thus enabling them to be used to investigate issues related to impacts of bioenergy, food and fiber markets on land use and land use change (see, for example, Reidsma et al, 2006; Hertel et al, 2009; Hertel et al, 2010). Examples of equilibrium models that include land allocation and land productivity include GTAP, GCAM, and FAPRI-CARD. Thus, for example, GTAP has been used to argue that the indirect land use change impacts of US corn ethanol would be sufficient to cancel out any benefits corn ethanol has on global warming (Hertel et al, 2010), that the indirect effects of the EU biofuels directive on land use and biodiversity are much larger than its direct effects (Hellmann and Verburg, 2010), and that the EU biofuels directive could slow down or reverse the long-term declining trend in real agricultural prices (Banse et al, 2008). The second approach, used by models such as FASOM, Polysys, and GLOBIOM, involves a constrained optimization approach, in which resources are allocated so as to maximize an economic objective such as consumer plus producer surplus. Models that include economic processes and also include climate-change related impacts, mitigation options and policy constraints (such as target C-abatement or C prices) are referred to as Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), and have become the primary tool at present for investigating long-term climate stabilization scenarios (Moss et al, 2010). A few such models already exist that have a global scope and which include the sectors most critical to describing biochar systems (land productivity, food, forestry, energy, and C markets); examples include GTAP-E (an energy-environmental version of the GTAP model; Burniaux and Truong 2002), GCAM, GLOBIOM. However, no major IAM yet includes biochar as a technological option. Enhancing the capabilities of such models to include biochar would represent a major step towards understanding the role biochar might play in long-term climate stabilization, and what effects it would be likely to have on land use and food security.
Does ideology influence the ambition level of climate and renewable energy policy? Insights from four European countries
Published in Energy Sources, Part B: Economics, Planning, and Policy, 2021
Richard Thonig, Pablo Del Río, Christoph Kiefer, Lara Lázaro Touza, Gonzalo Escribano, Yolanda Lechón, Leonhard Späth, Ingo Wolf, Johan Lilliestam
Third, our paper shows that there is a striking deviation between our identified party positions and what energy system and integrated assessment models find to be “necessary” or “optimal”, for example regarding carbon capture and storage (CCS). Whereas models regularly find that staying below 2 degrees warming is expensive or impossible without CCS (IPCC 2018; Johansson et al. 2012), our results show which options parties and citizens find desirable and are willing to support – and no party in any investigated country currently envisions any CCS in the power sector at all. This may imply that policy-makers are blind to “necessities” related to the 2 degrees target (Trutnevyte et al. 2014). However it also shows, irrespective of modeled “necessities”, that CCS is not an emerging reality in these countries. When no government or party wants to expand CCS it is very unlikely to be developed and deployed in and by those countries within the near future. Unless other countries, for example China or the US, develop and improve the CCS technology, this means that CCS is unlikely to develop and go through its learning curve, making it an expensive option in the longer term. Hence, our policy-centered approach to describing possible futures complements the economics-centered approach of IAMs, describing not what energy policy options are necessary, but which ones are likely to emerge.