Abstract
This paper is organized around brief accounts of two modelling initiatives, one with an Australian and the other with a global focus, which have contributed to the policy debate about greenhouse gas abatement. The Australian study involved the combined use of an energy technology programming model, MENSA/MARKAL, with an applied general equilibrium model of the Australian economy, ORANI-F. This interfaced suite of models was used to inform the Australian government’s consultations on environmentally sustainable development. The second study involves the Global 2100 model, which also uses a mathematical programming model of energy technology, but couples it to a macro, rather than an applied general equilibrium model. The latter study is one of several, each based on a different model, used as an input to OECD deliberations on greenhouse. After giving brief accounts of the interfaces between the environmetric and economic component modules of ORANI-F\MENSA/MARKAL and of Global 2100 and a synopsis of what insights into global warming have come out of these models, I set out my ideas about how better interfaces between econometric and environmetric models can be achieved. These suggestions relate more to the ’culture’ of modelling than to technicalities. It seems that the technical (often model-specific) problems encountered at the interfaces will be more tractable if everyone involved adopts the same computer modelling language and standards of documentation. Modellers from both sides will have to discipline themselves to keep their component models down to a size that allows the interfaced system to be solved using computer resources that are routinely available.
Highlights
In this paper 'econometric' will be used in its generic sense, embracing all quantitative approaches to economic argument
The discussion below is organized around brief accounts of two modelling initiatives, one with an Australian and the other with a global focus, which have contributed to the policy debate about greenhouse gas abatement
Unlike the Club of Rome's first consciousness-raising study of the Limits to Growth [15], most economic modellers have attempted to capture the homeostatic mechanisms at work in the economies they studied
Summary
In this paper 'econometric' will be used in its generic sense, embracing all quantitative approaches to economic argument (rather than just those that contain a statistical inferential element). The latter is one of several models used by the OECD to examine the impact on the world economy of cutting CO2 emissions. Unlike the Club of Rome's first consciousness-raising study of the Limits to Growth [15], most economic modellers have attempted to capture the homeostatic mechanisms at work in the economies they studied Such mechanisms usually involve increasing relative prices as signals of accelerating scarcity, with consequent feedbacks upon the rate at which the scarce entity is utilized, together with the increasing use, where available, of substitutes.
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