The energy sector is not only a major contributor to greenhouse gases, it is also vulnerable to climate change and will have to adapt to future climate conditions. The objective of this study is to analyze the impacts of changes in future temperatures on the heating and cooling services of buildings and the resulting energy and macro-economic effects at global and regional levels. For this purpose, the techno-economic TIAM-WORLD (TIMES Integrated Assessment Model) and the general equilibrium GEMINI-E3 (General Equilibrium Model of International-National Interactions between Economy, Energy and Environment) models are coupled with a climate model, PLASIM-ENTS (Planet-Simulator -Efficient Numerical Terrestrial Scheme). The key results are as follows. At the global level, the climate feedback induced by adaptation of the energy system to heating and cooling is found to be insignificant, partly because heating and cooling-induced changes compensate and partly because they represent a limited share of total final energy consumption. However, significant changes are observed at regional levels, more particularly in terms of additional power capacity required to satisfy additional cooling services, resulting in increases in electricity prices. In terms of macro-economic impacts, welfare gains and losses are associated more with changes in energy exports and imports than with changes in energy consumption for heating and cooling. The rebound effect appears to be non-negligible.To conclude, the coupling of models of different nature was successful and showed that the energy and economic impacts of climate change on heating and cooling remain small at the global level, but changes in energy needs will be visible at more local scale.

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Most of the integrated assessment modelling (IAM) literature focuses on cost-effective pathways towards given temperature goals. Conversely, using seven diverse IAMs we project global energy CO 2 emissions trajectories based on near-term mitigation efforts, and two assumptions on how these efforts continue post-2030. Despite finding a wide range of emissions by 2050, nearly all the scenarios have median warming of less than 3°C in 2100. However, the most optimistic scenario is still insufficient to limit global warming to 2°C. We furthermore highlight key modelling choices inherent to projecting where emissions are headed. First, emissions are more sensitive to the choice of IAM than to the assumed mitigation effort, highlighting the importance of heterogenous model intercomparisons. Differences across models reflect diversity in baseline assumptions and impacts of near-term mitigation efforts. Second, common practice of using economy-wide carbon prices to represent policy exaggerates carbon capture and storage (CCS) use compared to explicitly modelling policies. Ed Summ 2Mitigation pathways tend to focus on an end temperature target and calculate how to keep within these bounds. This work uses seven integrated assessment models to consider current mitigation efforts, and project likely temperature trajectories.

The purpose of this paper is to present the new version of GEMINI-E3, which is the fifth and incorporates significant changes from the previous version in particular with respect to its size and its modularity. GEMINI-E3 is a Computable General Equilibrium Model and represents now a family of models of different specifications and with several successive versions. It retains many specifications that are common to CGE models but also some specific features, mainly concerning the measurement and analysis of the welfare cost of policies and the great detail in the representation of taxation and social security contributions. The paper gives a detailed presentation of the model, its main blocks and equations, and shows how it can be adapted to specific contexts. In particular a new version is being developed jointly with the standard one, taking into account the constraints of the European Monetary Union and the unbalances in the labor markets of industrialized countries (GEMINI-EMU). This clearly shows that CGE models, beside their main virtue that is total consistency at the domestic and at the world levels, are very flexible in their specification.

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In this paper, we explore the impact of several sources of uncertainties on the assessment of energy and climate policies when one uses in a harmonized way stochastic programming in a large-scale bottom-up (BU) model and Monte Carlo simulation in a large-scale top-down (TD) model. The BU model we use is the TIMES Integrated Assessment Model, which is run in a stochastic programming version to provide a hedging emission policy to cope with the uncertainty characterizing climate sensitivity. The TD model we use is the computable general equilibrium model GEMINI-E3. Through Monte Carlo simulations of randomly generated uncertain parameter values, one provides a stochastic micro-and macro-economic analysis. Through statistical analysis of the simulation results, we analyse the impact of the uncertainties on the policy assessment.

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In this paper we report on the coordinated development of a regional module within a world computable general equilibrium model (CGEM) and of a bottom up energy-technology-environment model (ETEM) describing long term economic and technology choices for Switzerland to mitigate GHG emissions in accordance with Kyoto and post-Kyoto possible targets. We discuss different possible approaches for coupling the two types of models and we detail a scenario built from a combined model where the residential sector is described by the bottom-up model and the rest of the economy by the CGEM.