Environmental impact assessment for climate change policy with the simulation-based integrated assessment model E3ME-FTT-GENIE

摘要

A high degree of consensus exists in the climate sciences over the role thathuman interference with the atmosphere is playing in changing the climate.Following the Paris Agreement, a similar consensus exists in the policycommunity over the urgency of policy solutions to the climate problem. Thecontext for climate policy is thus moving from agenda setting, which has nowbeen mostly established, to impact assessment, in which we identify policypathways to implement the Paris Agreement. Most integrated assessment modelscurrently used to address the economic and technical feasibility of avoidingclimate change are based on engineering perspectives with a normative systemsoptimisation philosophy, suitable for agenda setting, but unsuitable to assessthe socio-economic impacts of a realistic baskets of climate policies. Here, weintroduce a fully descriptive, simulation-based integrated assessment modeldesigned specifically to assess policies, formed by the combination of (1) ahighly disaggregated macro-econometric simulation of the global economy basedon time series regressions (E3ME), (2) a family of bottom-up evolutionarysimulations of technology diffusion based on cross-sectional discrete choicemodels (FTT), and (3) a carbon cycle and atmosphere circulation model ofintermediate complexity (GENIE-1). We use this combined model to create adetailed global and sectoral policy map and scenario that achieves the goals ofthe Paris Agreement with >70% probability of not exceeding 2{\deg}C of globalwarming. We propose a blueprint for a new role for integrated assessment modelsin this upcoming policy assessment context.