Looking under the hood: A comparison of techno-economic assumptions across national and global integrated assessment models
File(s)1-s2.0-S0360544218325039-main.pdf (3.78 MB)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Integrated assessment models are extensively used in the analysis of climate change mitigation and are informing national decision makers as well as contribute to international scientific assessments. This paper conducts a comprehensive review of techno-economic assumptions in the electricity sector among fifteen different global and national integrated assessment models. Particular focus is given to six major economies in the world: Brazil, China, the EU, India, Japan and the US. The comparison reveals that techno-economic characteristics are quite different across integrated assessment models, both for the base year and future years. It is, however, important to recognize that techno-economic assessments from the literature exhibit an equally large range of parameters as the integrated assessment models reviewed. Beyond numerical differences, the representation of technologies also differs among models, which needs to be taken into account when comparing numerical parameters. While desirable, it seems difficult to fully harmonize techno-economic parameters across a broader range of models due to structural differences in the representation of technology. Therefore, making techno-economic parameters available in the future, together with of the technology representation as well as the exact definitions of the parameters should become the standard approach as it allows an open discussion of appropriate assumptions.
Date Issued
2019-04-01
Date Acceptance
2018-12-18
Citation
Energy, 2019, 172, pp.1254-1267
ISSN
0360-5442
Publisher
Elsevier
Start Page
1254
End Page
1267
Journal / Book Title
Energy
Volume
172
Copyright Statement
© 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Subjects
0913 Mechanical Engineering
0915 Interdisciplinary Engineering
Energy
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2018-12-21