DYNAMIC

DYNamic feedbacks of climate impacts on current Adaptation and Mitigation Investment Choice

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'This projects proposes a novel framework to modeling the economic consequences of climate change impacts and the induced policy responses, in terms of both mitigation and adaptation strategies at regional scale. To accomplish this task, state-of-the-art IAMs will be modified to include (1) The causal chain between sectoral and regional economic activity and emissions; (2) The climate change feedbacks induced by temperature increase on the different economic sectors and regions; (3) The optimal policy response in terms of mitigation; (4) The optimal policy response in terms of regional and sectoral adaptation. This is a challenging task because of the different nature of adaptation and mitigation and the need of combining optimization with a regional/sectoral detail in a general equilibrium framework, but feasible. Integrating adaptation strategies in an optimization framework will allow to quantify adaptation needs under different mitigation and climate change damage scenarios and to study cross-sectoral spillovers and interactions between the two policy responses, with a sectoral resolution. The project proposed is intrinsically interdisciplinary, requiring a clear understanding of the scientific basis for estimating climate impacts and the skill to combine rigorous empirical analysis with judgment and assumptions in order to cope with incomplete or incommensurate data. The work will be articulated in three main activities: (1) Model development and coding; (2) Data gathering; and (3) Numerical exercises. The expected impact of this research is high because it will develop a roadmap that will serve the future research on induced regional adaptation in a macroeconomic framework.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

Researchers are modelling the economics of mitigation and adaptation strategies in response to climate change.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

Different regions and economic sectors are dealing with the impact of climate change in different ways. A framework to optimise these responses under different scenarios is needed.

The EU-funded 'Dynamic feedbacks of climate impacts on current adaptation and mitigation investment choice' (DYNAMIC) project is currently developing such a framework. The process involves creating a database of relevant climate change impacts and responses, as well as the costs and benefits of these responses.

Researchers began by characterising global mitigation and adaptation responses to climate change damage within different sectors. They found that the agriculture and energy sectors had the most data available to allow response modelling for a large number of countries.

Team members were then able to estimate the response of cereal productivity in tropical and temperate regions to global rain and temperature variations. They also looked into cereal exposure and vulnerability, and the different responses of irrigated versus rainfed grains.

One output of the project's work in the agricultural sector is a database of productivity shocks for different warming scenarios up to 2050. It covers 163 countries and 7 cereals (irrigated wheat, rainfed wheat, irrigated rice, rainfed rice, irrigated maize, rainfed maize and rainfed sorghum).

For the energy sector, researchers have initiated an assessment of climate change impacts on the energy demand from different economic sectors (residential, industrial, commercial, agriculture) and on the energy supply from hydropower. Here, the focus is on temperature, humidity and, in the study on hydroelectricity, on extreme events such as droughts.

The final project deliverable will be a roadmap to guide future research on the economics of climate change impacts and adaptation strategies. Ultimately, this will ensure optimal policy responses.