G2WS Tutorial

Purpose of G2WS (Geopolitical Global Warming Simulator)

G2WS is a web simulator to experience the CCEM Model.

The main idea is "to see the consequences of your beliefs"

• You edit the "beliefs", what CCEM calls the KNUs, with the slider

• You see the results of the corresponding simulation instantly as a set of charts (GDP, temperature, energy, etc.)
  
  

The  Web interface shows two  chart  viewers and two sets of sliders :

1. the bottom -left sliders allow to change the main KNUs, which  are the  key beliefs used by CCEM

2. the bottom-right sliders allow  to change the  zone policies

3. the  top-left chart viewer is used for the "input" chart (see the illustration below)

4. the top-right chart viewer is used for the  "output" charts  (five sets of charts are available)

The purpose of G2WS is to let you experience CCEM (a System Dynamics Model) by playing with some of the input parameters and seeing the propagated results.

How to use G2WS

You need to open the g2wsimulation.com Web page.

When you start, you get the default setting for the KNUs and the policies.

You may use the drop-down menus to :

• get some information about CCEM  (CCEM & About buttons)

• select the "input" set of charts

• select the "output" set of charts

• select the "current zone" of focus to one geopolitical block amongst US, Europe, China, India and RestOfWorld, or select "World" to see all of them at once.

• reset all sliders to the default values

• get access to this tutorial

• open a "setup" section at the bottom of the web page (for expert use)

Whenever you touch a slider, the CCEM model is recomputed, from years 2010 to 2100.

The following figure shows the G2WS interface with some explanations.

Each the chart (left or right) may displayed in one of the the three following modes:

• "line" : each time series is displayed with a colored line, unless the chart is "cumulative" (showing the breakdown of a value, GDP or Energy, between categories). Cumulative charts, such as "Energy" in the previous illustration, are displayed with colored areas. This "line"mode is the default mode. In the line mode, a "smoothing" is applied to remove  small fluctuations that are often artifacts from the modeling.

• "dot": the dot mode is more precise, each value of the time series is represented with a small dot. The "smoothing" is not applied and you can use your cursor to hover each dot to get the exact value. You will see a  small back "display" area appear on the upper-right corner of the chart, with the exact X and Y value for the dot.

• "tags": the Y value is displayed on the chart for (approximately) every dot over 10 (to avoid overcrowding). Notice that you may use the time zoom buttons below the chart to restrict the time horizon that is being displayed, in which case the dots will become bigger and easier to see & inspect.

You can switch from one mode to another with the small back button on the left-upper corner of the chart. When you start in "line" mode, the button is labelled  "Dot". If you move to "dot" mode, the button becomes "tags", etc.

Understanding the Sliders

There are 6 slides that represent the main KNUs (click on the name to get access to more detailed information): 

• Fossil Fuel Reserves: expressed in PWh, the KNU is a curve that represents the amount of Oil, Gas and Coal reserves depending on the selling price (that governs a feasible extraction price).

• Green Energy Growth rate : this slider acts on the speed at which renewable energy may be deployed. If you play with this slider you will see that you also need to adjust, with the next slider, the speed at which electricity may become the leading way of using primary energy .

• Electrification.  Decarbonization of energy is made of producing green electricity and transitioning from fossil fuel direct use to electricity use. Electrification (the rate of energy consumed as electricity) is one of the most important KNUs of energy transition. It is also referred to as the "viscosity of energy transition", in reference to Vaclav Smil's book "How the World Really Works".

• Direct impact of global warming consequences on the GDP. This is also a topic of heavy debate. The KPI used by CCEM is the loss of GDP if the temperature hits +3C by 2100 (world average surface temperature).

• Impact of "global pain" on productivity. CCEM proposes a "pain" metric, that reflects the unhappiness of the population in front of recession, energy shortage, lack of material economy outcome and global warming impact. This slider allows to introduce a feedback loop that represents the fact that "unhappy people work less" (less engagement, more strikes, more absenteeism, riots or unrest, etc.).

• Adaptation will become necessary as global warming intensifies. It is modeled as an "insurance policy": one invests to protect  their assets, and the impact of global warming catastrophes is lessened. The slider controls the return on investment of this insurance.

There are 6 sliders that represent the policies that CCEM understands for geopolitical blocks (called "zones"). When you change one of these sliders, the change applies to the "current zone", unless you have selected "World" (then changes apply to all zones).

• Carbon Tax: each zone can declare a carbon tax that applies to its own production.

• Adaptation: how much each zone wants to spend on its adaptation strategy.

• AI labor replacement: how much AI may replace existing or declining labor forces, as opposed to augmenting them.

• Energy Transition Acceleration: CCEM works with a KNU about the possible energy transition, and a factor for each zone that represents how much effort is made (0% is "I do not care", 100% is "let's work and invest to move energy consumption to greener sources as fast as possible")

• Efficiency acceleration: similarly, CCEM implements the possibility for zones to accelerate their R&D and investment into better energy efficiency, with a consequence of accelerating the energy de-densification.

• Voluntary Sobriety: this policy represents the choice, pushed by citizens, to give up some energy use (such as petrol car or private jets).

Each slider moves from 0% to 100%, where 50% is the default value (for the KNUs).

To understand what changing the KNU means, CCEM gives back a KPI associated to each of them

• Total amount of oil reserves, as of 2010, etc.

• the page associated with each KNU explains the associated slider, as well as the KPI used for feedback.

There is now a setup option to access to more parameters

• Energy Density in GDP. Over the past 50 years, the quantity of energy necessary to produce one dollar of GDP has decreased (quite slowly if we consider constant dollar, more steadily when inflation is factored in, that is with current dollars).

• Population Impact. This parameter represents the impact of global warming on population evolution, both through additional deaths and sickness, as well as an additional decline with the birth rate.

• Return on Investment. The CCEM model 4 (M4) is based on a constant that is the "default RoI" (calibrated from the past). 

• CBAM: Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism =  a tax on imports based on CO2 emissions and carbon tax differences.

You will notice that the "setup mode" also opens a text window with two buttons "GetConfig" and "Put Config".

• GetConfig fills the text window  with a  parameter string that you can  copy and save for future use.

• PutConfig plays the  configuration held by the text  window (you can paste an old one, or do  some editing).
  
  

Understanding the Charts

Here are the seven families of charts for "input":

• energy: worldwide energy production for Oil, Coal, Gas and Clean (renewable and nuclear), expressed in PWh.
  This is a "cumulative" chart, a color corresponds to each type of primary energy, whose production is illustrated by the colored area.

• Zone PWH: This cumulative chart shows the consumption of each geopolitical block (US, EU, China, India and RestOfWorld), expressed in PWh.

• inventories:  fossil fuel reserves for Oil, Coal and Gas, at the current production price (inventories are not numbers, they are functions which tell how much GToe (ton of oil equivalent) may be extracted for  given expected selling price (that drives the admissible production price).

• transition: looking at energy consumption globally (all sources), with CO2/Kwh, total production, total saving and missed energy consumption because of shortage (compared to 2010 prices). It is interesting to notice the range of CO2/KWh decrease, which is always slower than you might expect, and very much linked with energy transition.

• prices:  energy selling prices for Oil, Coal, Gas and Clean.
  Remember that forecasted future energy prices are a model artefact, where the price is used to balance supply and demand. As an approximation, energy price evolution is interesting and evocative of a trend, but cannot expect to reflect what the future of energy markets will be like.

• electricity:  this chart shows a few KPIs associated with electrification : total electricity production, clean electricity, electrification ratio and "transition" (amount of fossil energy consumption that has transferred to electricity)

• policies: this chart shows a few KPIs associated with zone policies (the "current zone" is either US, EU, CN, IN or RestOfWorld, and is selected with the "Zones" drop-down menu).

Note that the charts "energy" and "transitions" are zone-dependent : if you select a specific geographical zone, you will get the data for this zone, not for the world.

Here are the ten families of charts for "output"

• results: world GDP (in constant dollars !), energy, CO2 emission and temperature (x 10). Temperature here means average world surface temperature; it is multiplied by 10 so that changes are easier to spot. Recall that pre-industrial is 13.9C and 2010 value is 14.53C.

• World economy: constant dollars GDP for each zone. Inflation is notoriously hard to forecast, so it is advised to focus more on the constant dollars numbers.

• economy: analysis of possible versus actual GDP for the selected zone. The chart shows the actual GDP and what was lost because of global warming damages, of lack of energy and productivity losses because of pain (the opposite of satisfaction)

• current GDP: current dollars GDP for each zone. In this cumulative chart, a fictional inflation is added to get a sense of "current dollar" evolution. This current GDP forecast is useful to compare CCEM with other models, most of which produce current dollars GDP forecasts.

• outcome: this chart combines a few specific "outcome" of the simulation: evolution of "material economy" with the proxies of Steel and Wheat productions (in Gt) and evolution of investments.

• population: this chart shows the total population of a zone (either in 10M for a specific zone or 100M for the world), the percentage of active population, the average age and the approximate birth rate.

• pain: this chart shows the global value of pain (from 0% = no pain to 100% = unbearable), and its breakdown across the four dimensions supported by CCEM :  energy shortage, absence of GDP growth, AI replacement and global warming.

• Earth: global warming stats, such as CO2 concentration in the atmosphere (ppm), world surface average temperature, loss of GDP due to damages expressed as a fraction of GDP and warming pain.

• satisfaction: pain levels for the five zones.

• Kaya: this chart displays the coefficients of the Kaya equation : population (P), CO2 / KWh density, energy density of GDP (kWh/$) and GDP/inhabitant ($/person).

Note that the charts "economy", "population" and "pain" are zone-dependent : if you select a specific geographical zone, you will get the data for this zone, not for the world.

Current Limits of G2WS and Future Directions (August 2026)

Current Limits

• Explanations have been added to all sliders with v9, we now need detailed explanations for charts.

• Setup gives expert users access to some parameters, but many are still hidden. This section will grow with future relases.

Future Directions

• disclose the information sources from which default values are extracted

• Improve future CCEM (v10) 

Frequently Asked Questions

Ask your questions and this FAQ will grow ...

• "Why do we see short oscillations on the charts" in the dot mode ? This is very frequent from energy stats, either price or consumption.
  Indeed, CCEM does not pretend to model the complexity of the Oil or Gas market. If you look at history, there are indeed oscillations, with very different shapes that may not be reproduced (even less forecasted) with a model like CCEM. Energy prices in a CCEM are a signal that regulates supply and demand. The overall long-term evolution is calibrated with long-term price elasticity, but the short term evolutions are "modeling artefacts". Somehow, their presence indicate that oil (for instance) markets would be volatile at the moment we see the oscillation in CCEM. This is not uninteresting and removing these oscillations with extra-dampening would serve no purpose. Hence the current compromise which is to show them in the detailed "dot" mode and hide them (a little) in the default "line" mode.

• "How to store a specific configuration of the slider as a scenario ?", to be able to compare or to return to the same environment later.
  This is, indeed, a necessary feature to explore the model. Because G2WS is intended to be a simple Web Page, waiting for G3WS to provide with full client/server services, it is "stateless" or "memory-less". Still, G2WS provides, if you open the bottom of the page with the "setup" button, a text window where you can get save (get) the configuration or replay (push) a configuration that you have stored previously or edited.

• How does the "impact on human productivity" factor work ?
  This factor represents the impact of un-happiness (pain in CCEM) on labor productivity. It is the combined effects of absenteeism, strikes, demotivation, etc. This is one factor for which there is not much literature available yet, so the CCEM model simply sets the loss of productivity as "the factor driven by the slider" (0 by default) times the pain (a percentage from 0% to 100%, driven by global warming, shortages, and decline of economic prosperity).

• Why do charts change their scale dynamically ? when some output like GDP goes down with some slider changes, this makes it more difficult to capture the change.
  Automatic  X & Y scaling is a useful feature to maximize readability, but sometimes vertical re-scaling does not help. G2WS version 9 adapts dynamic vertical scaling only when the values grow. This makes understanding the effect of each slider easier.

• Why is "warming pain" a non-continuous step function  ?  When you look at the  "Earth" output chart, you will notice that "warming pain " is not continuous.
  This is an editor's choice to reflect that pain as a function of global  warming does not have to be continuous . The level of  psychological pain caused by  global warming is an input parameter to CCEM, which you will be able to change in the future.
  
  

Some Technical Insights

This section is under construction