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Achieving long-term climate mitigation goals in Japan faces several challenges, starting with the uncertain nuclear power policy after the 2011 earthquake, the uncertain availability and progress of energy technologies, as well as energy security concerns in light of a high dependency on fuel imports. The combined weight of these challenges needs to be clarified in terms of the energy system and macroeconomic impacts. We applied a general equilibrium energy economic model to assess these impacts on an 80% emission reduction target by 2050 considering several alternative scenarios for nuclear power deployment, technology availability, end use energy efficiency, and the price of fossil fuels. We found that achieving the mitigation target was feasible for all scenarios, with considerable reductions in total energy consumption (39%–50%), higher shares of low-carbon sources (43%–72% compared to 15%), and larger shares of electricity in the final energy supply (51%–58% compared to 42%). The economic impacts of limiting nuclear power by 2050 (3.5% GDP loss) were small compared to the lack of carbon capture and storage (CCS) (6.4% GDP loss). Mitigation scenarios led to an improvement in energy security indicators (trade dependency and diversity of primary energy sources) even in the absence of nuclear power. Moreover, preliminary analysis indicates that expanding the range of renewable energy resources can lower the macroeconomic impacts of the long term target considerably, and thus further in depth analysis is needed on this aspect. Key policy insights For Japan, an emissions reduction target of 80% by 2050 is feasible without nuclear power or CCS. The macroeconomic impact of such a 2050 target was largest without CCS, and smallest without nuclear power. Energy security indicators improved in mitigation scenarios compared to the baseline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Decentralized electrification using local resources can reduce regional disparity in rural and remote areas in terms of supply reliability and cost, as well as promote income generation. In this research an optimization energy model is introduced for designing decentralized energy systems using biomass for rural electrification in developing countries. Regional disparity is incorporated disaggregating electricity demand into urban, rural and remote areas. The model has been applied for designing a decentralized system using agricultural waste and forest biomass in a region in Colombia, South America. The resulting design includes biomass technologies in remote areas, reducing supply cost by 30% in this region. Using agricultural waste for electricity generation increases unit costs by 25% and reduces 15% of CO2 emissions compared to the current energy system. Using all biomass to meet current demand lowers the efficiency of the system, resulting in high system costs and emissions reduction. Reduction of disparity in electricity access among regions using local biomass needs to balance the increase in energy system costs and CO2 emissions reduction. For instance, using 30% of available biomass reduces 22% of system CO2 emissions, and provides 121USD/house/yr and 99 USD/house/yr of additional income in rural and remote areas, respectively. Design of the energy system considering regional disparity shows that fuel transportation costs and efficiencies of biomass conversion technologies have significant impact on system configuration and performance. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Synthesizing and communicating knowledge on climate change to policymakers and stakeholders is often difficult due to the complexity and diversity of underlying research. As a "translation" instrument, we present the mipplot tool, an open-source R package that can be used to visualize data of long-term climate mitigation scenarios. With simple commands and under a user-friendly language platform, this tool generates plots in multiple languages for any scenario dataset following the data submission format of the Integrated Assessment Modeling Consortium. The plots can be generated both by function call in R environment and by an interactive interface in a web browser environment, which offers greater flexibility of inputs and suits both experts and non-experts. Moreover, its capability of specifying aggregation rules and different display languages extends its applicability to a broader range of users. • An open-source R package mipplot is presented to visualize the data of long-term climate mitigation scenarios. • It is enhanced in the flexible usability by function calls and interactive interface. • It includes multi-language outputs. • Via mipplot , both expert and non-expert users can access the research outcomes from IAM climate mitigation scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]