Climate Policy

To meet the Paris Agreement’s long-term goal of keeping global climate change below two degrees Celsius, the world needs to rapidly reduce carbon emissions and scale up low-carbon technologies. Decision-makers seeking to lower greenhouse gas emissions must choose from many technology and policy options.

Abstract: The MIT Economic Projection and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model has been widely used in energy, land use, technology, and climate policy studies. Here we provide details of revisions that form the basis of EPPA7, the current version.

Key updates include: 1) using the latest Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP-power) database as the core economic data for the world economy; 2) updating regional economic growth projections; 3) separating extant and vintage capital of the previously aggregated fossil generation; 4) using an innovative approach to calculate the costs of backstop (i.e., advanced) power generation options based on engineering data from the Energy Information Administration; 5) identifying base year biofuel output from existing sectors; and 6) re-parameterizing electric vehicles based on recent studies.

Our simulations demonstrate that with widespread mitigation policies worldwide, regions relying heavily on fossil fuel imports benefit from lower global fossil fuel prices when their domestic emissions targets are lenient, but the benefits dissipate when deeper emissions cuts are imposed domestically. We also provide an illustration how the model output can be used to calculate the net present values of unrealized fossil fuel production and stranded assets from idling coal power generation under various policy scenarios.

The Changing Nature of Climate-Related Risks in Global Wind Power Resources

Abstract: Under the ambitious low-carbon goals set forth by the recent Paris Accord as well as the prospects for large penetration of renewable energy-generation technologies, the need for advances in quantitative insights and foresights into the current and future availability of renewable energy resources is greater than ever. We have analyzed the changing risks in worldwide wind-power resource availability using large-ensemble simulations that span a range of human-forced climate scenarios. To enable this analysis, we construct estimates of wind power density (WPD) via a hybrid method that combines the emerging patterns of change in near-surface winds from climate models with the large-ensemble, probabilistic projections of the MIT Integrated Global System Model (IGSM). Globally speaking, at a “75% consensus” threshold criterion (at least 3 out of every 4 members agree in the sign of change), by mid-century under an emissions scenario that assumes no further actions to limit emissions, an increase of about 2% in annual-averaged WPD is expected. Under the most aggressive mitigation scenario considered associated with a global climate warming target of 1.5˚C, the expected increase is reduced to 0.5%. There is a notable seasonality to these expected global changes, with global WPD increases during December-February, and decreases across all remaining seasons. Salient and coherent geographic patterns are also found, however, there is a strong sensitivity of these results to the strictness of model-trend consensus applied, particularly in the spatial extent of the results that exceed the consensus criterion. At 90% consensus (at least 9 out of every 10 ensemble members must agree in sign of change) only 5%-8% of globe passes this threshold in the ensemble of WPD changes. When contrasting the global-scale trends with respect to onshore and offshore regions, annual WPD will increase slightly offshore (median and average less than 1%) but slightly decrease onshore (-1% in the median), yet the seasonality of these WPD changes is more pronounced.

Like many of its predecessors, the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow concluded with bold promises on international climate action aimed at keeping global warming well below two degrees Celsius, but few concrete plans to ensure that those promises will be kept.

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Computing global change