Regional Analysis

MIT Climate Resilience Planning: Flood Vulnerability Study

The MIT Flood Vulnerability Study is one key part of a broader initiative led by the MIT Climate Resiliency Committee and the MIT Office of Sustainability to understand and recommend how MIT can continue to fulfill its mission in the face of intensifying climate risks over the next 100 years and beyond. Risks include precipitation flooding, sea level rise/storm surge and chronic heat stress. This study seeks to translate the science of campus-based flooding risk from climate change into operational and strategic guidance for informing campus planning and management.

Inspired by the MIT Plan for Action on Climate Change, one key research and academic objective of this study is to utilize the MIT campus as a test bed for climate innovation. The study engages MIT’s global research expertise in downscaling global MIT climate models for application testing on the MIT campus, as well as expertise and tools advancing the MIT Stormwater Management and Landscape Ecology Plan.

This Joint Program Report presents findings for Flood and Vulnerability Study Phase 1A – Evaluation of Precipitation Probabilities and Preliminary Campus Flood Risks. The primary purpose of Phase 1A is to quantify MIT Cambridge campus flood risks under current and future climate change conditions over a range of probabilities. Findings include predicted precipitation probabilities, campus flooding exposure from precipitation based on current and future climate conditions, campus flooding exposure from sea level rise and storm surges, and results from the testing of one potential flood mitigation solution. The co-authors conclude the report by outlining planning recommendations and next steps.

Finding itself in the post-Paris world: Russia in the new global energy landscape

Because the Russian economy relies heavily on exports of fossil fuels, the primary source of human-induced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, it may be adversely impacted by Paris Agreement-based climate policies that target reductions in GHG emissions. Applying the MIT Economic Projection and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model to assess the impacts of the Paris Agreement on the Russian economy, this study projects that climate-related actions outside of Russia will lower the country’s GDP growth rate by about one-half of a percentage point. The Paris Agreement is also expected to raise Russia’s risks of facing market barriers for its exports of energy-intensive goods, and of falling behind in the development of low-carbon energy technologies that most of the world is increasingly adopting. The researchers argue that to address these risks, the country needs a new comprehensive development strategy that accounts for the post-Paris global energy landscape. They offer suggestions for key elements of such a strategy, including diversification of the economy, moving to low-carbon energy sources and investing in human capital development. The study simulates three simple diversification scenarios showing that redistribution of incomes from the energy sector to the development of human capital would help avoid the worst possible outcomes.

As nations gathered in Bonn, Germany, for this year’s UN climate summit, one item on their agenda was determining whether pledged climate efforts are sufficient to achieve the targets of the 2015 Paris Agreement. Researchers at MIT have been working with the Mexican government to explore policy options that can help the country meet its international commitment of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 22 percent by 2030, compared with business as usual.

Helping Mexico design an effective climate policy

As it builds the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Blue Nile, one of the two main tributaries of the Nile River, Ethiopia looks forward to producing a significant amount of hydropower, which could boost regional energy security and job creation. At the same time, there’s concern that the filling of the GERD reservoir could reduce the reliability of Nile River water flowing downstream to Egypt, posing a serious risk to its economy.

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and the Nile Basin: Implications for Transboundary Water Cooperation
Potential Impacts of Climate Warming and Increased Summer Heat Stress on the Electric Grid: A Case Study for a Large Power Transformer (LPT) in the Northeast United States

Nine of the ten biggest blackouts in U.S. history were caused by hurricanes, whose sustained winds knocked out power lines over broad geographical areas. Topping the list is Hurricane Maria, which in October disabled the electric grid in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, leaving the majority of the population without power for months. Climate scientists project that as the global average surface temperature continues to rise, so too will the frequency and intensity of major storms as well as of heat waves and high temperatures. As a result, we are likely to see even more widespread power outages—not only from hurricane winds but also from the effects of prolonged and extreme heat on a critical yet vulnerable component of the power grid: the large power transformer (LPT).     

LPTs are transformers rated at or above 100 MVA (Mega Volt-Amperes), and thousands are deployed across the U.S. But the current stock of LPTs is old; 70 percent or more are 25 years or older out of an expected lifetime of 40 years, and they are very costly and time-consuming to replace. Driven by global warming, more frequent and intense heat waves may degrade the operational lifetimes of LPTs and increase the risk of their premature failure. Overheating reduces the structural integrity of the electrical paper insulation used in LPTs, causing catastrophic short circuits; the failure rate becomes more pronounced as the temperature rises, causing more intense chemical reactions that age the insulation. Widespread LPT failure could lead to long-lasting grid disruption and major economic losses.

To assess the risk of LPT failure in coming decades, researchers from the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and MIT Lincoln Laboratory studied the potential impact of global warming and corresponding shifts in summertime “hot days” on LPT lifetime at an LPT location in the U.S. Northeast. They found that for a background 1 ̊C rise in temperature, the lifetime of the transformer decreases by four years, or by 10 percent. Therefore, end-of-century mean global warming projections of approximately 2 ̊C (a climate policy-driven scenario) and 4 ̊C (a business-as-usual scenario) would result in a mean reduction in expected transformer lifetime of 20 to 40 percent. The results are reported in Climatic Change.

The researchers also assessed the future changes in hot-day occurrence under these two climate scenarios, using two different approaches: a conventional method that detects the occurrence of hot days based on the projected daily maximum temperature from a suite of climate models, and a recently developed analogue method that instead uses a suite of model-simulated, large-scale atmospheric conditions associated with local extreme temperature. Both methods indicate strong decadal increases in hot-day frequency. By the late 21st century, the median number of summertime hot days per year could double under the a 2 ̊C scenario and increase fivefold under the 4 ̊C scenario, along with corresponding decreases in transformer lifetime.

Most importantly, the analogue method showed far greater inter-model consensus—i.e., less uncertainty in the results. The improved inter-model consensus of the analogue method is a promising step toward providing actionable information for a more stable, reliable and environmentally responsible national grid.

The Economic Projection and Policy Analysis Model for Taiwan: A Global Computable General Equilibrium Analysis

Taiwan has proposed significant reductions in its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in its nationally determined contribution (NDC) to the Paris Agreement on climate change: a 50 percent cut from the business-as-usual level by 2030. Evaluating the impact of such climate mitigation policy on Taiwan is no easy task because its economy depends heavily on international trade, including imports of fossil fuels that account for nearly all of its energy supply. To date, studies assessing the economic impact of emissions reduction policies on Taiwan’s economy have been conducted solely under a single-country modeling framework, which cannot capture global effects such as impacts of climate mitigation policies abroad. To bridge this gap, researchers from the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and Taiwan’s Institute for Nuclear Energy Research developed a version of the MIT Economic Projection and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model, a global energy-economic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, in which Taiwan is explicitly represented.

The new Economic Projection and Policy Analysis (EPPA)-Taiwan model has enabled the researchers to assess (1) how different reference-year data sets affect results of policy simulations, (2) the importance of structural and parameter assumptions in the model, and (3) the importance of explicit treatment of trade and international policy. Using the model, they found (1) higher mitigation costs across regions using data for the year 2011 rather than for 2007 and 2004 data, due to increasing fossil fuel cost shares over time; (2) lower GDP losses across regions under a broad carbon policy using a more complex model structure designed to identify the role of energy and GHG emissions in the economy, because the formulation allows more substitution possibilities than a much simplified production structure; and (3) lower negative impacts on GDP in Taiwan when it carries out its NDC as part of a global policy compared with unilateral implementation because, under a global policy, producer prices for fossil fuels are suppressed, benefiting Taiwan’s economy.

Answering these questions may help researchers and policymakers to become aware of the potential implications of updating the global economic database, demonstrate the impact of model design on results, and highlight the roles of policies implemented abroad in determining the domestic policy implications of Taiwan. Through their evaluation of the first stage of development of the EPPA-Taiwan model, the researchers have identified many additional steps to make the model more realistic.

Abstract: We present and evaluate a new global computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to focus on analyzing climate policy implications for Taiwan’s economy and its relationship to important trading partners. The main focus of the paper is a critical evaluation of data and model structure. Specifically, we evaluate the following questions: How do the different reference year data sets affect results of policy simulations? How important are structural and parameter assumptions? Are explicit treatment of trade and international policy important? We find: (1) Higher mitigation costs across regions using data for the year of 2011, as opposed to cases using the 2007 and 2004 data, due to increasing energy cost shares over time. (2) Lower GDP losses across regions under a broad carbon policy using a more complex model structure designed to identify the role of energy and GHG emissions in the economy, because the formulation allows more substitution possibilities than a more simplified production structure. (3) Lower negative impacts on GDP in Taiwan when it carries out its national determined contribution (NDC) as part of a global policy compared with unilateral implementation because, under a global policy, producer prices for fossil fuels are suppressed, benefitting Taiwan’s economy.

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