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The Energy Modeling Forum 24 study included a set of policy scenarios designed to compare economy wide market-based and sectoral regulatory approaches of potential U.S. climate policy. Models from seven teams participated in this part of the study assessing economy-wide cap-and-trade climate policy and sectoral policies in the transportation and electric sector in terms of potential greenhouse gas emissions reductions, economic cost, and energy systems implications. This paper presents an overview of the results from the U.S. policy scenarios, and provides insights into the comparison of results from the participating models. In particular, various metrics were used to compare the model results including allowance price, the efficient frontier, consumption loss, GDP loss, and equivalent variation. We find that the choice of economic metric is an important factor in the comparison of model results. Among the insights, we note that the carbon price should cautiously be considered when other non-cap sectoral policies affecting emissions are assumed in tandem. We also find that a transportation sector policy is consistently shown to be inefficient compared to an economy-wide capand-trade policy with a comparable level of emissions reductions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an overview of the study design and the results of the EMF 24 U.S. Technology Scenarios. The EMF 24 U.S. Technology Scenarios engaged nine top energy-environment-economy models to examine the implications of technological improvements and technological availability for reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 50% and 80% by 2050. The study confirms that mitigation at the 50% or 80% level will require a dramatic transformation of the energy system over the next 40 years. The study also corroborates the result of previous studies that there is a large variation among models in terms of which energy strategy is considered most cost-effective. Technology assumptions are found to have a large influence on carbon prices and economic costs of mitigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on findings of the study titled "The EMF24 Study on U.S. Technology and Climate Policy Strategies," along with an introduction to the issue. Topics include aim of the study, which is understanding interactions between climate policy architectures and energy technology availabilities in the U.S.; comparison between models of the U.S. and European Union (EU); significance of United Nations Climate Change conference; and stabilization of greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations.

This paper presents a framework for pricing the climate resilience of an energy infrastructure project through assessing the value of its required debt and equity investments. Integrating climate scenarios into an asset valuation model provides useful and specific insights for risk management, but there is a lack of academic and market tools that effectively address this need. The critical barrier is that climate-related risks (physical and transition) are typically indirect variables in the cash flow calculation, and they should be computed based on the direct variables such as revenue, capital expenditures, operating expenses, and financing costs. The implementation of this framework shows how to delineate climate-related risks that are asset-specific and transforms them into financial risks. Using cash flow simulation and scenario analysis, it estimates an energy infrastructure asset's probability of default due to climate-related risks and the size and timing of the losses for any given default. To demonstrate the framework's application, we simulate the price climate-related risks of a utility-scale electricity generation facility powered by natural gas. • The analysis focuses on climate-related financial risk assessment of infrastructure assets. • An asset-level and forward-looking climate risk assessment framework is developed. • It tests single or combined climate risk scenarios on conventional financial metrics. • A case study on a natural gas power plant in the United States is demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editors discuss various reports within the issue on topics including the features of the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), the emission inventory used for the RCPs, and the harmonization of greenhouse gas emissions, concentrations and radiative forcing.

The article offers comments of several critics on the article "Why Economic Analysis Supports Strong Action on Climate Change," by Simon Dietz and Nicholas Stern. According to Robert Mendelsohn, Dietz and Stern in their article focus on climate advocacy rather than environmental economics. However, Thomas Sterner and U. Martin Persson supported Dietz and Stern, in highlighting the combined weight of ethical considerations and the large-scale risks that climate change poses.

In this article, the author offers critical analysis of the "Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change ," with particular focus on the climate change mitigation cost and integrated estimation features adopted in the review. The author argues that the framework adopted in Stern review to formulate policy recommendations is hard to understand and mismatches with the problem being discussed. The article also offers a quick review of literature on green house gas mitigation costs.

The article provides an overview of a study on the economic and energy sector impacts of multigas mitigation of anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHG). Known as Energy Modeling Forum (EMF)-21, the study's major elements include the data development of the non-carbon dioxide GHG (NCGGs) and sinks emissions and mitigation costs. It aims to improve the understanding of the effects of including NCGGs and sinks (terrestrial sequestration) into short- and long-term mitigation targets. It also aims to advance the integrated assessment and climate economic modeling.

In this article, the ratio of central station electricity to final energy is used as a measure of electrification. It is well known that this ratio tends to increase with gross domestic product. We show that not only is electrification a characteristic of a reference case with economic growth, but that it is significantly accelerated by a general limitation on carbon emissions. That is, limits on CO2 concentrations, implemented efficiently across the whole economy, result in a higher ratio of electricity to total final energy use. This result reflects the relatively greater suite of options available in reducing CO2 emissions in power generation than in other important components of the economy. Furthermore, electrification is stronger, the more stringent the constraint on CO2 emissions, although the absolute production of electricity may be either greater or smaller in the presence of a CO2 constraint, depending on the technologies available to the sector and to end-use sectors. The base technology scenario we examined was purposefully pessimistic about the evolution of central station and distributed electric technologies, lessening the degree of electrification. The better the performance of the set of options for emissions mitigation in power generation, the greater the acceleration of electrification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most fractional flow, manpower planning models devised for the organizational level of systems assume that the transition fractions are either fixed or can be manipulated at will. As neither of these assumptions is very realistic, we present a model in which the transition fractions are the product of interactions among three sets of economic agents: the organization, its competitors in the manpower market, and its employees. The sensitivity of the model is explored and possible extensions are considered. A numerical example illustrates the model's practical applicability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]