Citation:

Brown, K., T. Hottle, R. Bandyopadhyay, S. Babaee, R. Dodder, O. Kaplan, C. Lenox, AND Dan Loughlin. Evolution of the United States energy system and related emissions under varying social and technological development paradigms: Plausible scenarios for use in robust decision making. ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY. American Chemical Society, Washington, DC, 52(14):8027-8038, (2018).

Impact/Purpose:

This research article describes computer simulations of four possible scenarios for the future US energy system using MARKAL. The results are informative for possible differences in technologies and emissions, and the methodology described can also be used for future energy system analyses. This article will be of interest to those concerned about future technologies and air quality, as well as the energy modeling community who may wish to use these scenarios for additional analyses.

Description:

Energy infrastructure decisions often impact the future energy system and air quality for many decades into the future. Therefore, it is important to properly evaluate those decisions, which is difficult given the high level of uncertainty in projecting the future. This paper uses Scenario Planning to analyze energy futures. Previous stakeholder engagement determined that technological progress and social paradigms are the most important factors for determining disparate futures. Four future scenarios were designed to capture possible impacts of differing technological and social factors on the energy future, and these scenarios were then implemented in US EPA’s MARKAL energy system model to assess implications for energy use and air pollutant emissions. The source and quantity of energy is found to evolve very differently along the four pathways, leading to different emissions results as well. Technological development is found to be an important driver for reducing emissions. These scenarios are designed so that policy choices can be evaluated more thoroughly by exploring uncertainties in future technological and social paradigms, as opposed to using a single baseline for comparison.

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