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Air-climate-energy investigations with a state-level Integrated Assessment Model: GCAM-USA
Citation:
Loughlin, Dan, Chris Nolte, S. Smith, J. West, W. Shi, Y. Ou, AND F. Alborzi. Air-climate-energy investigations with a state-level Integrated Assessment Model: GCAM-USA. Presented at 14th Annual CMAS Conference, Chapel Hill, NC, October 05 - 07, 2015.
Impact/Purpose:
Describes ongoing activities by EPA scientists and collaborators to apply a state-level Integrated Assessment Model to investigate synergies and tradeoffs among air, climate and energy goals.
Description:
The Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM) is a global integrated assessment model used for exploring future scenarios and examining strategies that address air pollution, climate change, and energy goals. GCAM includes technology-rich representations of the energy, transportation, building, and agricultural sectors, which are linked to representations of the economy, climate, and land use systems. For various scenarios, GCAM produces estimates of technology adoption, fuel use, and climate and air pollutants. GCAM has been used in high-profile applications, including the production of the Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5 W/m2 scenario. A new version, GCAM-USA, represents the U.S. at the state-level within the coupled global model. We describe GCAM-USA and highlight updates to more fully account for U.S. air quality regulations, as well as to generate scenarios exploring the air-climate-energy nexus. Finally, we describe efforts to integrate GCAM-USA into the Office of Research and Development’s GLIMPSE project.