Staff at the Joint Institute develop and use models to simulate the economic and physical impacts of global change policy options. The GCAM, for example, gives analysts insight into how regional and national economies might respond to climate change mitigation policies including carbon taxes, carbon trading, and accelerated deployment of energy technology.
- Second Generation Model - The Second Generation Model (SGM) is a computable general equilibrium model of the world with 8 regions. The SGM projects energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions into the future and is used to investigate the impact of climate change policies and technologies for emissions mitigation. The SGM incorporates all aspects of the economy with an emphasis on energy supply and transformation. The SGM is written in C++ and runs on a PC in 5 year time steps from 2001 to 2101. For more information, contact Kate Calvin (katherine.calvin@pnl.gov) or Marshall Wise (marshall.wise@pnl.gov).
- Global Change Assessment Model - The Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM) is a partial equilibrium model of the world with 14 regions. GCAM is used to project energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, and to investigate the impact of climate change policies and technologies for emissions mitigation. GCAM, however, includes an agriculture land-use module and a reduced form carbon cycle and climate module in addition to its incorporation of demographics, resources, energy production and consumption. The GCAM operates in 15 year time steps from 1990 to 2095 and is now implemented in C++ within the Object-Oriented Energy, Climate, and Technology Systems (ObjECTS) framework. For more information, contact Kate Calvin (katherine.calvin@pnl.gov) or Marshall Wise (marshall.wise@pnl.gov).
- EPIC - (aka WinEPIC) The Environmental Policy Integrated Climate (EPIC) Model is a process-based agricultural systems model composed of simulation components for weather, hydrology, nutrient cycling, pesticide fate, tillage, crop growth, soil erosion, crop and soil management and economics. Staff at PNNL have been involved in the development of this model by integrating new sub-models for soil carbon dynamics and nitrogen cycling. For more information, contact Cesar Izaurralde (cesar.izaurralde@pnl.gov)
