Transformation to a Low Carbon Society

Achieving that goal will require policymakers around the world to make informed choices about investments and incentives with the goal of reducing the carbon intensity of economic activities by 40 percent over the next two decades.

IIASA has a two-pronged modeling approach to decarbonization: the Model for Energy Supply Strategy Alternatives and their General Environmental Impact (MESSAGE) and the Greenhouse gas–Air pollution Interactions and Synergies model (GAINS). IIASA’s global and regional energy supply scenarios, based on the MESSAGE model, emphasize the dynamics of transformational changes and the requirements of the transitions from the medium to the long term under environmental and climate change constraints. The shorter-term-oriented GAINS model, usually defined at the national scale, focuses on near- and medium-term technology choices to achieve specific air pollutant and greenhouse gas reduction goals. Efforts will be made to further develop these two approaches so that they complement each other and thus permit an integrated assessment of climate policies bridging important spatial and temporal scales. This will involve (i) downscaling approaches for the spatially explicit representation of the energy scenario work to selected local and national levels, and (ii) extending the GAINS framework to longer time horizons and scaling it up to the regional and global level.

Last edited: 27 August 2012