Staff at the Joint Institute develop and use models to simulate the economic and physical impacts of global change policy options. The Second Generation Model (SGM), 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 13 regions. The SGM is used to project energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions and to investigate the impact of climate change policies and technologies for emissions mitigation. The SGM incorporates all aspects of the economy with emphasis on demographics, resources, agriculture, energy supply and transformation, energy intense industries, household consumption, and government expenditure. The SGM is written in FORTRAN and runs on a PC in 5 year time steps from 1990 to 2050. For more information, contact Leon Clarke (Leon.Clarke@pnl.gov).

  An operating version of the US SGM Model is now available. Click here for details.

• MiniCAM - MiniCAM is a partial equilibrium model of the world with 14 regions. MiniCAM is used to project energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, and to investigate the impact of climate change policies and technologies for emissions mitigation. MiniCAM, 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 MiniCAM 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 Son Kim (son.kim@pnl.gov) or Steve Smith (ssmith@pnl.gov).
  
  
• EPIC - 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)