This supplementary material contains the description of the Land-use and Energy-system models developed and applied in this study. It also presents the Scenario Building Procedure and more detailed results of the simulations made, including the georeferenced description of the land-use change, the composition of the energy mix and an analysis of the uncertainties of associated with the findings.
Many countries have implemented national climate policies to accomplish pledged Nationally Determined Contributions and to contribute to the temperature objectives of the Paris Agreement on climate change. In 2023, the global stocktake will assess the combined effort of countries. Here, based on a public policy database and a multi-model scenario analysis, we show that implementation of current policies leaves a median emission gap of 22.4 to 28.2 GtCO 2 eq by 2030 with the optimal pathways to implement the well below 2°C and 1.5°C Paris goals. If Nationally Determined Contributions would be fully implemented, this gap would be reduced by a third. Interestingly, the countries evaluated were found to not achieve their pledged contributions with implemented policies (implementation gap), or to have an ambition gap with optimal pathways towards well below 2°C. This shows that all countries would need to accelerate the implementation of policies for renewable technologies, while efficiency improvements are especially important in emerging countries and fossilfuel-dependent countries.
Although our knowledge of climate change impacts on energy systems has increased substantially over the past few decades, there remains a lack of comprehensive overview of impacts across spatial scales. Here, we analyse results of 220 studies projecting climate impacts on energy systems globally and at the regional scale. Globally, a potential increase in cooling demand and decrease in heating demand can be anticipated, in contrast to slight decreases in hydropower and thermal energy capacity. Impacts at the regional scale are more mixed and relatively uncertain across regions, but strongest impacts are reported for South Asia and Latin America. Our assessment shows that climate impacts on energy systems at regional and global scales are uncertain due partly to the wide range of methods and non-harmonized datasets used. For a comprehensive assessment of climate impacts on energy, we propose a consistent multi-model assessment framework to support regional-to-global-scale energy planning.
he Paris Agreement sets the framework for international climate action. Within that context, countries are aiming to hold warming well below 2 °C and pursue limiting it to 1.5 °C. How such global temperature outcomes can be achieved has been explored widely in the scientific literature [1][2][3][4] and assessed by the IPCC, for example, in its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5; ref. 5 ) and its Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C (SR1.5; ref. 6 ). Studies explore aspects of the timing and costs of emissions reductions and the contribution of different sectors 3,7,8 . However, there has been critique that, with the exception of a few notable studies [9][10][11][12] , the scenarios in the literature first exceed the prescribed temperature limits in the hope of recovering from this overshoot later through net-negative emissions [13][14][15][16] . Some pioneering studies [10][11][12] have explored implications of limiting overshoot through, for example, zero emissions goals, or have looked into the role of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) in reaching different temperature targets 9 . All these studies have relied on one or two models and/or a limited set of temperature targets.We bring together nine international modelling teams and conduct a comprehensive modelling intercomparison project (MIP) on this topic. Specifically, we explore mitigation pathways for reaching different temperature change targets with limited overshoot. We do this by adopting the scenario design from ref. 11 and contrast scenarios with a fixed remaining carbon budget until the time when net-zero CO 2 emissions (net-zero budget scenarios) are reached with scenarios that use an end-of-century budget design. The latter carbon budget for the full century permits the budget to be temporarily overspent, as long as net-negative CO 2 emissions (NNCE)
a b s t r a c t Available online xxxx JEL classification: H23 C88 Q40 Q54 C61 C63 C68 O57 Keywords: Climate policy Low-carbon energy scenarios Mitigation alternatives BrazilThis paper assesses the effects of market-based mechanisms and carbon emission restrictions on the Brazilian energy system by comparing the results of six different energy-economic or integrated assessment models under different scenarios for carbon taxes and abatement targets up to 2050. Results show an increase over time in emissions in the baseline scenarios due, largely, to higher penetration of natural gas and coal. Climate policy scenarios, however, indicate that such a pathway can be avoided. While taxes up to 32 US$/tCO 2 e do not significantly reduce emissions, higher taxes (from 50 US$/tCO 2 e in 2020 to 162US$/tCO 2 e in 2050) induce average emission reductions around 60% when compared to the baseline. Emission constraint scenarios yield even lower reductions in most models. Emission reductions are mostly due to lower energy consumption, increased penetration of renewable energy (especially biomass and wind) and of carbon capture and storage technologies for fossil and/or biomass fuels. This paper also provides a discussion of specific issues related to mitigation alternatives in Brazil. The range of mitigation options resulting from the model runs generally falls within the limits found for specific energy sources in the country, although infrastructure investments and technology improvements are needed for the projected mitigation scenarios to achieve actual feasibility.
Integrated assessment models (IAMs) form a prime tool in informing about climate mitigation strategies. Diagnostic indicators that allow comparison across these models can help describe and explain differences in model projections. This increases transparency and comparability. Earlier, the IAM community has developed an approach to diagnose models (Kriegler (2015 Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change 90 45–61)). Here we build on this, by proposing a selected set of well-defined indicators as a community standard, to systematically and routinely assess IAM behaviour, similar to metrics used for other modeling communities such as climate models. These indicators are the relative abatement index, emission reduction type index, inertia timescale, fossil fuel reduction, transformation index and cost per abatement value. We apply the approach to 17 IAMs, assessing both older as well as their latest versions, as applied in the IPCC 6th Assessment Report. The study shows that the approach can be easily applied and used to indentify key differences between models and model versions. Moreover, we demonstrate that this comparison helps to link model behavior to model characteristics and assumptions. We show that together, the set of six indicators can provide useful indication of the main traits of the model and can roughly indicate the general model behavior. The results also show that there is often a considerable spread across the models. Interestingly, the diagnostic values often change for different model versions, but there does not seem to be a distinct trend.
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