Advanced Energy Technologies and Climate Change an Analysis Using the Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM)

Abstract

The authors report results from a ``top down`` energy-economy model employing ``bottom up`` assumptions and embedded in an integrated assessment framework, GCAM. The analysis shows that, from the perspective of long-term energy system development, differences in results from the ``top down`` and ``bottom up`` research communities would appear to be more closely linked to differences in assumptions regarding the economic cost associated with advanced technologies than to differences in modeling approach. The adoption of assumptions regarding advanced energy technologies were shown to have a profound effect on the future rate of anthropogenic climate change. The cumulative effect of the five sets of advanced energy technologies is to reduce annual emissions from fossil fuel use to levels which stabilize atmospheric concentrations below 550 ppmv, the point at which atmospheric concentrations are double those that existed in the middle of the eighteenth century. The consideration of all greenhouse gases, and in particular sulfur, leads to some extremely interesting results that the rapid deployment of advanced energy technologies leads to higher temperatures prior to 2050 than in the reference case. This is due to the fact that the advanced energy technologies reduce sulfur emissions as well as those of carbon. The short-term coolingmore » impact of sulfur dominates the long-term warming impact of CO{sub 2} and CH{sub 4}. While all energy technologies play roles, the introduction of advanced biomass energy production technology plays a particularly important role. 16 refs., 12 figs., 3 tabs.« less