Climate mitigation

A research team across institutions in China and the US has published an article on the health and economic benefits of China’s greenhouse gas mitigation by 2050. TNO in the Netherlands has modelled the possibility to use domestic low-carbon energy sources to help Madagascar reach its GHG emissions reduction target. And researchers in Brazil have included carbon revenue recycling schemes in the TEA model.

The report features research linked to mid-century strategies on shaping long-term baselines with CGE models. Different articles deal with macroeconomic assumptions (including GDP growth projections), long-term consumption trends, key energy and emission trends, and model linking (e.g. CGE models with more detailed energy models). Researchers from the Netherlands and the UK have constructed a metamodel of climate and integrated assessment models that assesses the emissions budget, costs and uncertainty sources of achieving temperature targets.

With the caveat that it is too early for concrete research results, there is already some evidence that modellers are working to integrate the impacts of the crisis in their work. While there are no published studies yet, half of the respondents in the August CCMI survey have indicated that they are working on integrating the impact of Covid-19 in economic recovery plans and current policy scenarios. One of the research streams of the IAMC meeting in December 2020 is dedicated to assessment of the impact of the pandemic and the crisis recovery packages.

This report is the fourth quarterly report of 2020 under the series “Climate change modelling information” financed by the European Commission. The objective of this series is to inform the European Commission and the wider climate change and energy modelling community about recent and relevant policy modelling developments. This report under the “Climate change modelling information” series presents recent developments reported by key international climate modelling institutions. This issue sets a particular emphasis on the Covid-19 public health crisis and its effects, in addition to the regular sections on Nationally Determined Contributions, Mid-century strategies and the Sustainable Development Goals.

This report is the third quarterly report of 2020 under the series “Climate change modelling information” financed by the European Commission. The objective of this series is to inform the European Commission and the wider climate change and energy modelling community about recent and relevant policy modelling developments. This report under the “Climate change modelling information” series presents recent developments reported by key international climate modelling institutions. This issue sets a particular emphasis on the transport sector and the Covid-19 public health crisis and its effects, in addition to the regular sections on Nationally Determined Contributions and the Sustainable Development Goals.

With the caveat that it is too early for concrete research results, there is already some evidence that modellers are working to integrate the impacts of the Covid-19 crisis in their work. Researchers in the UK propose a new approach to estimating the reduction of global CO2 emissions during the crisis by compiling a confinement index of government lockdown policies and reduction of human activities. Scientists measuring the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere estimate that the effect of confinement policies on CO2 emissions will be relatively slow and will not drastically stop the build-up of CO2 in the atmosphere. Finally, a number of researchers form the Union of Concerned scientists issued a warning about the need to address compound climate risks in the Covid-19 and future pandemics.

Two recent studies assess the impact of national climate policies on reaching the Paris Agreement targets – one study does that for the seven highest CO2 global emitters and one study focuses on China. Another study from researchers in China examines the climate and health benefits of phasing out iron and steel production. The authors of the study have compiled a new database of steel plants in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. The section also presents a new integrated assessment model developed at provincial level in South-Korea. Finally, a recent article examines the effects of a potential international emissions trading system in China, South-Korea and Japan.

Two key themes emerge from the developments in this section: the need to integrate models of the transport and energy systems and the need to better represent human behaviour in transport models. Two review articles asses the tools used to model human behaviour in mobility systems, one from the USA and another from Denmark. Another study from Denmark examines the long-term decarbonisation of the transport sector in Denmark. And finally, an article from the JRC analyses the policy options for promoting fuel cell electric vehicles in the EU to drive the reduction of CO2 emissions in the transport sector.

This report is the second quarterly report of 2020 under the series “Climate change modelling information” financed by the European Commission. The objective of this series is to inform the European Commission and the wider climate change and energy modelling community about recent and relevant policy modelling developments. This issue sets a particular emphasis on mid-century strategies, nationally determined contributions (NDCs), and the representation of socio-economic mechanisms. It also informs interested modellers about an upcoming call for tender on Modelling of greenhouse-gas emissions relevant to the Paris Agreement.

Researchers at IIASA have developed a new IAM scenario logic that improves the representation of Paris Agreement temperature targets and climate response uncertainties to make explicit the intergeneration bias of current IAM models, in most of which the burden is carried by future generations. Another study examines decarbonisation pathways and energy investment needs for developing Asia, and concludes that a radical transformation of the energy system is needed to meet the “well below” 2°C target.

Two recent studies from PBL Netherlands provide a 2019 update to greenhouse gas mitigation scenarios for major emitting countries and a meta-analysis on international shipping and aviation emissions projections from Integrated Assessment Models. The 2019 Global Energy and Climate Outlook from the Joint Research Centre examines the role of electrification in the low-carbon transition. An article in the Journal of Transport and Health evaluates the co-benefits of air quality and health improvement in China. And lastly, researchers in Australia are developing a new tool to help policymakers build net-zero emissions scenarios for Australian industries at the national and state/territory levels.

A new metamodel of the costs of climate policy from Utrecht University and PBL Netherlands disaggregates the uncertainties linked to physical and socio-economic factors; it finds that more ambitious climate targets are associated with higher uncertainty in socio-economic factors such as economic growth, population growth and changes in human behaviour. Research from the University of Waterloo in Canada shows the utility of the cross-impact balances (CIB) technique to construct global socio-technical scenarios for climate change research. A paper from the Inter-American Development Bank explores the labour impact of four scenarios of electricity generation in Chile, including three coal power phase-down scenarios.

A recent article estimates the macroeconomic impacts on the European Union’s economy of different EU decarbonisation pathways towards a below 2oC climate stabilisation. Researchers at COPPE/UFRJ have developed a new household income disaggregation method for the TEA model and will use it to assess the heterogeneous effects of introducing different schemes of carbon trading on income distribution in Brazil.

Using an hourly electricity dispatch and capacity investment model, EleMod, researchers in the U.S. investigate the potential role of nuclear power in the decarbonisation of the U.S. electricity sector. They find that, with low electricity generation costs of nuclear, advanced nuclear power can contribute, together with solar and wind, to achieving the 90% CO2 emission reduction target by reducing the carbon price. A study assessing Japan’s mid-century emission pathways is the first to integrate global and national models to show that additional mitigation action beyond the NDC is necessary to achieve the low-carbon budget scenario after 2030. The Center for International Forestry Research in Germany is developing a nature-based solutions framework to inform the Green Climate Fund’s strategic section.

In this section, dedicated to the links between climate and circular economy, a study shows how circular economy could create opportunities for the waste-to-energy sector in Norway to develop and expand into new value chains such as secondary raw materials production. Furthermore, an OECD working paper on the macroeconomics of the circular economy transition offers a critical review of the modelling approaches used in the field.

This report is the first quarterly report of 2020 under the series “Climate change modelling information” financed by the European Commission. The objective of this series is to inform the European Commission and the wider climate change and energy modelling community about recent and relevant policy modelling developments. This issue sets a particular emphasis on mid-century strategies and nationally determined contributions (NDCs).

A range of other recent climate modelling developments are reported on in the third section. At the University College Cork, researchers have for a first time used deep machine learning architectures to model transport service demands. And at Imperial College London, researcher have integrated energy systems and gas infrastructure optimisation models to assess the need for investment in regional gas infrastructure in Southern Brazil.

Various developments linked to the implementation of the NDCs are reported on in the second section. Two of the modelling developments make the process of modelling and analysing NDCs more streamlined and therefore easier – the FRAMES modelling framework for energy-economy policy analysis in developing countries and the TIMES-Starter Model Management Platform. The other research reported in the section enhances the NDCs analysis for specific countries – Brazil, China and Costa Rica.

The first section of the report is dedicated to modelling developments linked to the implementation of mid-century strategies. The majority of developments in this section are dedicated to enhancing existing models with new sectoral coverage and/or new data. The PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency has added a number of industrial manufacturing sectors in the Integrated Model to Assess the Global Environment (IMAGE) model. The Carbon Dioxide Removal Model Intercomparison Project has made available new data to support IPCC science and climate mitigation strategies. Researchers at COPPE/UFRJ have expanded the Brazilian Land Use and Energy System (BLUES) model with data on advanced biofuels conversion routes and land use aspects in Brazil. Another key development is the meta-analysis of how scenarios are used to improve models and long-term strategies. A paper by WRI a new report by The Shift Project are also presented.

This report is the third quarterly report of 2019 under the series “Climate change modelling information” financed by the European Commission. The objective of this series is to inform the European Commission and the wider climate change and energy modelling community about recent and relevant policy modelling developments. This issue sets a particular emphasis on mid-century strategies, nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and modelling covering energy and climate modelling integrating behavioural changes.