ADVANCE

Advanced Model Development and Validation for Improved Analysis of Costs and Impacts of Mitigation Policies

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'Integrated assessment and energy-economy models have become central tools for informing long-term global and regional climate mitigation strategies. There is a large demand for improved representations of complex system interactions and thorough validation of model behaviour in order to increase user confidence in climate policy assessments. ADVANCE aims to respond to this demand by facilitating the development of a new generation of integrated assessment models. This will be achieved by substantial progress in key areas where model improvements are greatly needed: end use and energy service demand; representation of heterogeneity, behaviour, innovation and consumer choices; technical change and uncertainty; system integration, path dependencies and resource constraints; and economic impacts of mitigation policies. In the past, methodological innovations and improvements were hindered by the unavailability of suitable input data. The ADVANCE project will make a large and coordinated effort to generate relevant datasets. These datasets, along with newly developed methodologies, will be made available to the broader scientific community as open-access resources. ADVANCE will also put a focus on improved model transparency, model validation, and data handling.

A central objective of ADVANCE is to evaluate and to improve the suitability of models for climate policy impact assessments. The improved models will be applied to an assessment of long-term EU climate policy in a global context, and disseminated to the wider community. The ADVANCE consortium brings together long-standing expertise in integrated assessment and energy-economy modelling with a strong expertise in material flows, energy system integration, and energy service demand.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

Integrated assessment models (IAMs) are an essential tool for evaluating strategies that address climate change. An EU initiative is working on further advancing the state-of-the-art of IAM tools for analysing climate change mitigation policies.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

IAMs represent the multifaceted interactions between environmental and socioeconomic factors that determine future climate change and the effectiveness of related policies. IAMs integrate various disciplines, and become increasingly broad in scope, for instance by including the land use sector. The information gained from these tools is widely used to advise policymakers.

The EU-funded http://www.fp7-advance.eu/ (ADVANCE) project aims to develop next-generation IAMs by enhancing model methodologies for representing crucial dynamics of the transition towards a low-carbon economy, thus improving model performance in characterising mitigation pathways, policy costs and impacts.

To achieve this, the project has identified several priority areas for methodological improvements. These cover energy demand, efficiency potentials and consumer behaviour, technological innovation, uncertainty, as well as systems integration and resource constraints.

Project partners studied energy demand in the transport, industry and buildings sectors and took stock of their representation in existing IAMs. They produced several reports on improving the representation of energy policies and technological change in IAMs, and on how IAMs reproduce key features of human behaviour.

The team has also generated relevant datasets for wind and solar resources and worked on methods for representing the variability of renewable energy sources. These and other datasets, together with newly developed methodologies, will be made available to the broader scientific community via a web-based platform currently under development.

A gap analysis was carried out to outline policy areas already covered by the participating models and to set priorities for further model development with a focus on their application to policy impact assessments.

ADVANCE is developing, implementing and testing innovative modelling approaches to evaluate and improve the suitability of IAMs for climate policy impact assessments. The improved IAMs will not only be applied to the assessment of long-term EU climate policy, but also to global climate change mitigation strategies.