Steven J. Smith

Model Documentation for the MiniCAM

The MiniCAM, short for the Mini-Climate Assessment Model, is an integrated assessment model of moderate complexity focused on energy and agriculture sectors. The model produces emissions of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide) and other radiatively important substances such as sulfur dioxide. Through incorporation of the simple climate model MAGICC, the consequences of these emissions for climate change and sea-level rise can be examined. The MiniCAM is designed to be fast and flexible.

Radiative Forcing Due to Reactive Gas Emissions

Abstract Reactive gas emissions (CO, NOx, VOC) have indirect radiative forcing effects through their influences on tropospheric ozone and on the lifetimes of methane and hydrogenated halocarbons. These effects are quantified here for the full set of emissions scenarios developed in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report on Emissions Scenarios. In most of these no-climate-policy scenarios, anthropogenic reactive gas emissions increase substantially over the twenty-first century. For the implied increases in tropospheric ozone, the maximum forcing exceeds 1 W m−2 by 2100 (range −0.14 to +1.03 W m−2). The changes are moderated somewhat through compensating influences from NOx versus CO and VOC. Reactive gas forcing influences through methane and halocarbons are much smaller; 2100 ranges are −0.20 to +0.23 W m−2 for methane and −0.04 to +0.07 W m−2 for the halocarbons. Future climate change might be reduced through policies limiting reactive gas emissions, but the potential for explicitl...

Climate Change Mitigation: An Analysis of Advanced Technology Scenarios

This report documents a scenario analysis that explores three advanced technology pathways toward climate stabilization using the MiniCAM model.

The Value of End-Use Energy Efficiency in Mitigation of U.S. Carbon Emissions

This report documents a scenario analysis exploring the value of advanced technologies in the U.S. buildings, industrial, and transportation sectors in stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. The analysis was conducted by staff members of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), working at the Joint Global Change Research Institute (JGCRI) in support of the strategic planning process of the U.S. Department of Energy (U.S. DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). The conceptual framework for the analysis is an integration of detailed buildings, industrial, and transportation modules into MiniCAM, a global integrated assessment model. The analysis is based on three technology scenarios, which differ in their assumed rates of deployment of new or presently available energy-saving technologies in the end-use sectors. These technology scenarios are explored with no carbon policy, and under two CO2 stabilization policies, in which an economic price on carbon is applied such that emissions follow prescribed trajectories leading to long-term stabilization of CO2 at roughly 450 and 550 parts per million by volume (ppmv). The costs of meeting the emissions targets prescribed by these policies are examined, and compared between technology scenarios. Relative to the reference technology scenario, advanced technologies in all three sectors reduce costsmorexa0» by 50% and 85% for the 450 and 550 ppmv policies, respectively. The 450 ppmv policy is more stringent and imposes higher costs than the 550 ppmv policy; as a result, the magnitude of the economic value of energy efficiency is four times greater for the 450 ppmv policy than the 550 ppmv policy. While they substantially reduce the costs of meeting emissions requirements, advanced end-use technologies do not lead to greenhouse gas stabilization without a carbon policy. This is due mostly to the effects of increasing service demands over time, the high consumption of fossil fuels in the electricity sector, and the use of unconventional feedstocks in the liquid fuel refining sector. Of the three end-use sectors, advanced transportation technologies have the greatest potential to reduce costs of meeting carbon policy requirements. Services in the buildings and industrial sectors can often be supplied by technologies that consume low-emissions fuels such as biomass or, in policy cases, electricity. Passenger transportation, in contrast, is especially unresponsive to climate policies, as the fuel costs are small compared to the time value of transportation and vehicle capital and operating costs. Delaying the transition from reference to advanced technologies by 15 years increases the costs of meeting 450 ppmv stabilization emissions requirements by 21%, but the costs are still 39% lower than the costs assuming reference technology. The report provides a detailed description of the end-use technology scenarios and provides a thorough analysis of the results. Assumptions are documented in the Appendix.«xa0less

Long-Term Modeling of Wind Energy in the United States

An improved representation of wind energy has been developed for the ObjECTS MiniCAM integrated assessment modeling framework. The first version of this wind model was used for the CCTP scenarios, where wind accounts for between 9% and 17% of U.S. electricity generation by 2095. Climate forcing stabilization policies tend to increase projected deployment. Accelerated technological development in wind electric generation can both increase output and reduce the costs of wind energy. In all scenarios, wind generation is constrained by its costs relative to alternate electricity sources, particularly as less favorable wind farm sites are utilized. These first scenarios were based on exogenous resource estimates that do not allow evaluation of resource availability assumptions. A more detailed representation of wind energy is under development that uses spatially explicit resource information and explicit wind turbine technology characteristics.

Long-Term US Industrial Energy Use and CO2 Emissions

We present a description and scenario results from our recently-developed long-term model of United States industrial sector energy consumption, which we have incorporated as a module within the ObjECTS-MiniCAM integrated assessment model. This new industrial model focuses on energy technology and fuel choices over a 100 year period and allows examination of the industrial sector response to climate policies within a global modeling framework. A key challenge was to define a level of aggregation that would be able to represent the dynamics of industrial energy demand responses to prices and policies, but at a level that remains tractable over a long time frame. In our initial results, we find that electrification is an important response to a climate policy, although there are services where there are practical and economic limits to electrification, and the ability to switch to a low-carbon fuel becomes key. Cogeneration of heat and power using biomass may also play a role in reducing carbon emissions under a policy constraint.

Global Deployment of Geothermal Energy Using a New Characterization in GCAM 1.0

This report documents modeling of geothermal energy in GCAM 1.0 (formerly MiniCAM) from FY2008 to FY2009, from the inputs to the U.S. Climate Change Technology Program report (Clarke et al., 2008a) to the present representation, which will be used in future work. To demonstrate the newest representation, we describe the procedure and outcome of six model runs that illustrate the potential role of geothermal energy in the U.S. and global regions through different futures climate policy, development and deployment of engineered, or enhanced, geothermal systems (EGS), and availability of other low-cost, low-carbon electricity generation technologies such as nuclear energy and carbon capture and storage (CCS).

input4MIPs.PNNL-JGCRI.emissions.CMIP.CEDS-2017-10-05

CMIP6 Forcing Datasets (input4MIPs): The forcing datasets (and boundary conditions) needed for CMIP6 experiments are being prepared by a number of different experts. Initially many of these datasets may only be available from those experts, but over time as part of the input4MIPs activity most of them will be archived by PCMDI and served by the Earth System Grid Federation (https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/search/input4mips/ ). More information is available in the living document: http://goo.gl/r8up31

Historical Emissions (1851-2014 reformatted) - CEDS - v2016-07-26

CMIP6 Forcing Datasets (input4MIPs): The forcing datasets (and boundary conditions) needed for CMIP6 experiments are being prepared by a number of different experts. Initially many of these datasets may only be available from those experts, but over time as part of the input4MIPs activity most of them will be archived by PCMDI and served by the Earth System Grid Federation (https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/search/input4mips/ ). More information is available in the living document: http://goo.gl/r8up31 - This data version 2016-07-26-sectorDim is deprecated. Please use the current version(s) 2017-05-18,2017-08-30,2017-10-05; see http://goo.gl/r8up31 for more information