Sergey Paltsev and Adam Schlosser @
MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change
Abstract:
The pace and complexity of global change is unprecedented. Nations, regions and the public and private sectors are facing increasing pressures to confront critical challenges in future food, water, energy, climate and other areas. An integrated team of natural and social scientists at MIT Joint Program produces comprehensive global and regional change projections under different environmental, economic and policy scenarios. These projections enable decision-makers in the public and private sectors to better assess impacts, and the associated costs and benefits of potential courses of action. Our modeling system consists of the MIT Earth System Model (MESM), Economic Projection and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model, Integrated Global System Modeling (IGSM) framework, and methods used to assess uncertainty and risk.
We will illustrate the use of our modeling tools by focusing on the 2021 Global Change Outlook, which presents the MIT Joint Program’s projections for the future of the Earth’s energy, managed resources (including water, agriculture and land), and climate, as well as prospects for achieving the Paris Agreement’s short-term targets and long-term goals of keeping average global temperatures below 2°C or even 1.5°C. During our one-hour webinar, we will also discuss potential areas for improving human and Earth system modeling components.
Bios:
Dr. Sergey Paltsev is a Deputy Director of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, a Senior Research Scientist at the MIT Energy Initiative and MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR), and a Director of the MIT Energy-at-Scale Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, USA. He is the lead modeler in charge of the MIT Economic Projection and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model of the world economy.
His research covers a wide range of topics including energy economics, climate policy, taxation, advanced energy technologies, and international trade. Sergey is an Advisory Board Member for the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) Consortium and a Member of the Economy-Wide Modeling Panel for the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Science Advisory Board. Dr. Paltsev is an author of more than 100 peer-reviewed publications in scientific journals and books.
He is a recipient of the 2012 Pyke Johnson Award (by the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, USA, for the best paper in the area of planning and environment), the Best Policy Analysis Paper of 2012 by Environmental Science and Technology Journal of the American Chemical Society and the Best 2004 Research Award by Tokyo Electric Power Company, Japan.
Sergey was a Lead Author of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In 2007-2008 Dr. Paltsev was a member of the Expert Panel on the Economics of Climate Change for the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).
Adam Schlosser is interested in land-climate Interactions, the global water cycle, land biogeochemistry, arctic processes, and regional climate change (uncertainty and extremes). His primary interests are the modeling and prediction of global hydrologic, ecologic, and biogeochemical change using the MIT’s Integrated Global Systems Model (IGSM) that includes model development of its terrestrial component – the Global Land System (GLS). Other research endeavors work to improve our observational capabilities for monitoring, understanding and predicting the Earth’s global water and energy cycles, and currently serves as a member of the NASA Energy and Water Cycle Study (NEWS) Science Integration Team. Current collaborative research activities include the study of extreme precipitation events and associating their potential changes to shifts in climate regimes, the fate of the arctic permafrost under potential climate warming and subsequent impacts on its biogeochemistry and trace-gas emissions, and climate-water issues on adaptation.
A Senior Research Scientist in the Center for Global Change Science since 2014, Schlosser also serves as the Assistant Director of Research for the Joint Program at MIT.
Summary:
World model of impact of climate change on society
Risks
Physical: direct impact on
Transition: challenges of moving to a low-carbon future
Observation:
Energy use is responsible for for 73% of greenhouse gas emissions
Buildings, transport, industry, etc.
Agriculture: 18.5%
Many different types of emissions from many different activities
Can’t focus on a single area
Must make improvements across economy/society
Possible approach: Offsets/nature-based solutions
Developed a comprehensive simulation to model impact of various world/economic events on emissions
18 global regions
Can refine in specific sub-regions for targeted studies
Coupled to the MIT Earth System Model (physical climate model)
Probabilistic ensemble modeling
Agent models
Each region is optimizing its behavior for its own benefit
Representative consumer: maximizing utility,
Industry-specific producers: maximizing profit (oil, gas, livestock, etc.)
Industries in different regions use different methods of production, with their own carbon emissions
Government: maximizing taxes and policy goals
E.g. takes in taxes from gas cars, when cars transition to electric, this gas goes away so government needs to drop services or create new taxes
Have menu of policy options
Supports for industries: direct, loan guarantee, tax support
Emissions pricing
Regulation
Trade policy
Impact of climate change on the economy is not well known
Know agricultural land productivity
Quantifying the discount rate for future benefits
Model’s assumptions are based on current technology, but can be adapted to tech innovations (e.g. fusion power)
Have published many studies
MIT Global Change outlook
Geopolitics of Renewables
Global Electrification of Vehicles
Health and Climate Change
Where they can use Alphabet’s help
More economic data and data-based modeling methods (e.g. ML)
Faster ML-based climate models
Analyze climate impacts at finer spatial scales
Scenario discovery: targeting a wide range of targets (e.g. health, equity, economic well-being)
Modeling customers elasticity of demand in response to prices of goods (e.g. gas, water, electricity) that may become more/less expensive as a result of climate policies, climate change or technology breakthroughs