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

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Abstract
We report results from a "top down" energy-economy model employing "bottom up" assumptions embedded in an integrated assessment framework, the Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM). The analys~s 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 m~ddleo f the eighteenth century. While all energy technologies play roles in reducing future fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions, the introduction of advanced biomass energy production technology plays a particularly important role. If biomass energy can be made available at $2.40/GJ or less in quantities sufficient to make it the core energy supply technology in the middle of the next century,more » then emissions can be cut dramatically relative to the reference case. The problem of emiss~ons reduction becomes one of technology development and deployment in this case, and not one of fiscal and regulatory intervention. « less

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