• Energy Research

This dataset contains the underlying raw modelling data for the journal article by Al Khourdajie et al., 2024 published in Energy and Climate Change in February 2024.

Abstract This paper compares recent global energy scenarios developed by governments, international bodies, businesses and the scientific community. We divide the scenarios into three broad classes: outlooks which extrapolate current trends and anticipate policy developments; exploratory scenarios which may consider disruptions; and normative scenarios which derive energy system pathways consistent with a long-term goal. Many organisations are starting to blend outlooks, exploratory and normative approaches. The paper covers trends in primary energy demand to 2040, snapshots of the energy mix in 2040, drivers of demand, and the evolution of scenarios projections developed in recent years. We find sharp divergences between outlooks and normative scenarios compatible with the Paris Agreement on climate change. All published outlooks imply that the world is not on an energy pathway compatible with the Paris Agreement. We conclude with an assessment of emerging themes including: scenario benchmarking and group think; adaptation of scenarios to real world developments; and the plausibility of different types of scenarios. We propose that more dialogue between scenario developers from the scientific community and those working in governments and commercial organisations could be beneficial. Research focusing on the organisational processes through which scenarios are developed could usefully extend this work.

AbstractGlobal greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can be traced to five economic sectors: energy, industry, buildings, transport and AFOLU (agriculture, forestry and other land uses). In this topical review, we synthesise the literature to explain recent trends in global and regional emissions in each of these sectors. To contextualise our review, we present estimates of GHG emissions trends by sector from 1990 to 2018, describing the major sources of emissions growth, stability and decline across ten global regions. Overall, the literature and data emphasise that progress towards reducing GHG emissions has been limited. The prominent global pattern is a continuation of underlying drivers with few signs of emerging limits to demand, nor of a deep shift towards the delivery of low and zero carbon services across sectors. We observe a moderate decarbonisation of energy systems in Europe and North America, driven by fuel switching and the increasing penetration of renewables. By contrast, in rapidly industrialising regions, fossil-based energy systems have continuously expanded, only very recently slowing down in their growth. Strong demand for materials, floor area, energy services and travel have driven emissions growth in the industry, buildings and transport sectors, particularly in Eastern Asia, Southern Asia and South-East Asia. An expansion of agriculture into carbon-dense tropical forest areas has driven recent increases in AFOLU emissions in Latin America, South-East Asia and Africa. Identifying, understanding, and tackling the most persistent and climate-damaging trends across sectors is a fundamental concern for research and policy as humanity treads deeper into the Anthropocene.

The data is available for download at the AR6 Scenario Explorer hosted by IIASA. As part of the IPCC's 6th Assessment Report (AR6), authors from Working Group III on Mitigation of Climate Change undertook a comprehensive exercise to collect and assess quantitative, model-based scenarios related to the mitigation of climate change. Building on previous assessments, such as those undertaken for the 5th Assessment Report (AR5) and the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C (SR15), the calls for AR6 for scenarios have been expanded and includes economy-wide GHG emissions, energy, and sectoral scenarios from global to national scales, thus more broadly supporting the assessment across multiple chapters (see Annex III, Part 2 of the WGIII report for more details). The compilation and assessment of the scenario ensemble was conducted by authors of the IPCC AR6 report, and the resource is hosted by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) as part of a cooperation agreement with Working Group III of the IPCC. The scenario ensemble contains 3,131 quantitative scenarios with data on socio-economic development, greenhouse gas emissions, and sectoral transformations across energy, land use, transportation, buildings and industry. These scenarios derive from 191 unique modelling frameworks, 95+ model families that are either globally comprehensive, national, multi-regional or sectoral. The criteria for submission included that the scenario is presented in a peer-reviewed journal accepted for publication no later than October 11th, 2021, or published in a report determined by the IPCC WG III Bureau to be eligible grey literature by the same date. The AR6 scenario database is documented in Annex III.2 of the Sixth Assessment Report of Working Group III. For the purpose of the assessment, scenarios have been grouped in various categories relating to, among other things, climate outcomes, overshoot, technology availability and policy assumptions. For ease of use, the dataset is split into multiple files: Scenarios data for the Global region Scenarios data for R5 regions Scenarios data for R6 regions Scenarios data for R10 regions Scenarios data for ISO-3 (country) regions Global metadata indicators file National metadata indicators file The data is available for download at the AR6 Scenario Explorer hosted by IIASA. The license permits use of the scenario ensemble for scientific research and science communication, but restricts redistribution of substantial parts of the data. Please refer to the FAQ and legal code for more information. In addition to the data you may find more relevant information and cite one of the relevant chapters of the WG III report. If working with global or regional (R6, R10) data: Keywan Riahi, Roberto Schaeffer, et al. Mitigation Pathways Compatible with Long-Term Goals, in "Mitigation of Climate Change". Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Geneva, 2022. url: http://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-3/ If working with national data (ISO region data): Franck Lecocq, Harald Winkler, et al. Mitigation and development pathways in the near- to mid-term, in "Mitigation of Climate Change". Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Geneva, 2022. url: http://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-3/ If you find the metadata files particularly useful: Celine Guivarch, Elmar Kriegler, Joana Portugal Pereira, et al. Annex III: Scenarios and Modelling Methods, in "Mitigation of Climate Change". Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Geneva, 2022. url: http://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-3/ Scenarios data also supports analysis in Chapters 2, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12 and 15

The data is available for download at the AR6 Scenario Explorer hosted by IIASA.<<< click here. As part of the IPCC's 6th Assessment Report (AR6), authors from Working Group III on Mitigation of Climate Change undertook a comprehensive exercise to collect and assess quantitative, model-based scenarios related to the mitigation of climate change. Building on previous assessments, such as those undertaken for the 5th Assessment Report (AR5) and the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C (SR15), the calls for AR6 for scenarios have been expanded and includes economy-wide GHG emissions, energy, and sectoral scenarios from global to national scales, thus more broadly supporting the assessment across multiple chapters (see Annex III, Part 2 of the WGIII report for more details). The compilation and assessment of the scenario ensemble was conducted by authors of the IPCC AR6 report, and the resource is hosted by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) as part of a cooperation agreement with Working Group III of the IPCC. The scenario ensemble contains 3,131 quantitative scenarios with data on socio-economic development, greenhouse gas emissions, and sectoral transformations across energy, land use, transportation, buildings and industry. These scenarios derive from 191 unique modelling frameworks, 95+ model families that are either globally comprehensive, national, multi-regional or sectoral. The criteria for submission included that the scenario is presented in a peer-reviewed journal accepted for publication no later than October 11th, 2021, or published in a report determined by the IPCC WG III Bureau to be eligible grey literature by the same date. The AR6 scenario database is documented in Annex III.2 of the Sixth Assessment Report of Working Group III. For the purpose of the assessment, scenarios have been grouped in various categories relating to, among other things, climate outcomes, overshoot, technology availability and policy assumptions. The AR6 Scenarios Database is jointly published by the Integrated Assessment Modeling Consortium & International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. The data is available for download at the AR6 Scenario Explorer hosted by IIASA.<<< click here. For ease of use, the database is provided as multiple files: Filename Description Region coverage Uncompressed Size (MB) Standard files for assessment AR6_Scenarios_Database_World_v1.1.csv All data reported for the World region, primarily from integrated assessment models (IAMs), as well as variables from the climate assessment World only 353 AR6_Scenarios_Database_R5_regions_v1.1.csv All data reported and aggregated to R5 regions, primarily from IAMs. 5 global regions 847 AR6_Scenarios_Database_R6_regions_v1.1.csv All data reported and aggregated to R6 regions (as preferred by IPCC), primarily from IAMs. 6 global regions 408 AR6_Scenarios_Database_R10_regions_v1.1.csv All data reported and aggregated to R10 regions, primarily from IAMs. 10 global regions 1,266 AR6_Scenarios_Database_ISO3_v1.1.csv Ass data reported at the country level, primarily from national integrated assessment and energy systems models, but also IAMs for major countries. Country level 1,155 AR6_Scenarios_Database_metadata_indicators_v1.1.xlsx Wide range of categorical and numerical indicators calculated for each model-scenario. Primarily world data 3 Additional "climate assessment" files New in v1.1 AR6_Scenarios_Database_World_ALL_CLIMATE_v1.1.csv Same as World snapshot above, but with all the climate assessment data for MAGICC and FaIR models included World only 3,006 AR6_Climate_Diagnostics_CICERO-SCM_v1.1.csv Climate assessment data for the CICERO-SCM model World only 743 AR6_Climate_Diagnostics_metadata_indicators_v1.1.xlsx Full set of categorical and numerical indicators relating to the climate assessment, calculated for each model-scenario World only 2 AR6_historical_emissions.csv Historical CO2 and GHGs for world region used in climate assessment World only 0.01 The data is available for download at the AR6 Scenario Explorer hosted by IIASA. The license permits use of the scenario ensemble for scientific research and science communication, but restricts redistribution of substantial parts of the data. Please refer to the FAQ and legal code for more information. In addition to the data you may find more relevant information and cite one of the relevant chapters of the WG III report. If working with global or regional (R6, R10) data: Keywan Riahi, Roberto Schaeffer, et al. Mitigation Pathways Compatible with Long-Term Goals, in "Mitigation of Climate Change". Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Geneva, 2022. url: http://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-3/ If working with national data (ISO region data): Franck Lecocq, Harald Winkler, et al. Mitigation and development pathways in the near- to mid-term, in "Mitigation of Climate Change". Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Geneva, 2022. url: http://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-3/ If you find the metadata files particularly useful: Celine Guivarch, Elmar Kriegler, Joana Portugal Pereira, et al. Annex III: Scenarios and Modelling Methods, in "Mitigation of Climate Change". Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Geneva, 2022. url: http://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-3/ Scenarios data also supports analysis in the Summary for Policy Makers, Technical Summary and Chapters 2, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12 and 15. Climate assessment of global emissions pathways The climate assessment of the long-term global emissions scenarios was undertaken as part of the Chapter 3 assessment. The workflow is available at https://github.com/iiasa/climate-assessment and published in Kikstra et al. 2022. The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report WGIII climate assessment of mitigation pathways: from emissions to global temperatures. Geoscientific Model Development https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2022-471. Scripts for this assessment are at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7304736 For these purposes, the full climate assessment data is provided, as documented in the table above. Release notes for v1.1 Following feedback and identification of some issues between the versions available to authors in preparation of the published report and the v1.0 public release, updates are made to v1.1.Changes made here are made with the intention of facilitating and improving the reproducibility of the IPCC report. There are no resulting corrections to the report and its findings, as these issues were identified by authors and manually addressed. Full list of release notes is published on the Downloads page https://data.ene.iiasa.ac.at/ar6/#/downloads The data is available for download at the AR6 Scenario Explorer hosted by IIASA.<<< click here.

&#160;HighlightsWe attribute variation across global climate mitigation scenarios to three factors The three factors are climate ambition, scenario background and model choice Many indicators are well-explained by the average effects of one or two factors We also calculate the residual not explained by these average effects This shows which indicators give outliers for some specific input combinations AbstractWe attribute variations in key energy sector indicators across global climate mitigation scenarios to climate ambition, assumptions in background socioeconomic scenarios, differences between models and an unattributed portion that depends on the interaction between these. The scenarios assessed have been generated by Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) as part of a model intercomparison project exploring the Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs) used by the climate science community. Climate ambition plays the most significant role in explaining many energy-related indicators, particularly those relevant to overall energy supply, the use of fossil fuels, final energy carriers and emissions. The role of socioeconomic background scenarios is more prominent for indicators influenced by population and GDP growth, such as those relating to final energy demand and nuclear energy. Variations across some indicators, including hydro, solar and wind generation, are largely attributable to inter-model differences. Our Shapley-Owen decomposition gives an unexplained residual not due to the average effects of the other factors, highlighting some (such as the use of carbon capture and storage (CCS) for fossil fuels, or adopting hydrogen as an energy carrier) with outlier results for particular ambition-scenario-model combinations. This suggests guidance to policymakers on these indicators is the least robust.Graphical AbstractKeywordsEnergy transition, climate change mitigation, Integrated Assessment Models, Shapley-Owen decomposition

AbstractIntegrated assessment models (IAMs) connect trends in future socioeconomic and technological development with impacts on the environment, such as global climate change. They occupy a critical position at the global science‐policy interface. IAMs and associated scenarios have come under intense scrutiny, with critiques addressing both methodological and substantive issues, such as land use, carbon dioxide removal and technology performance. Criticisms have also addressed the transparency of IAM methods and assumptions as well as the transparency of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment of IAMs. This paper, authored by the co‐chairs of IPCC Working Group III and members of the Technical Support Unit, documents activities aiming to enhance the transparency of IAMs and their assessment. It includes a history of IPCC's approach to scenarios covering the formation of the Integrated Assessment Modeling Consortium (IAMC) in 2007 and the emergence of the approach by which IPCC facilitates the development of scenarios, but does not produce them itself. An IPCC Expert Meeting at the start of the current assessment cycle made transparency recommendations targeted at both the research community and IPCC. The community has taken steps to “open the black box” by moving toward open‐source and web‐publishing IAM documentation. IPCC has included an Annex to its next report focusing on scenarios and modeling methodologies. An open call for scenario data linked to the current IPCC report includes an expanded set of input and output variables. This paper ends with suggested criteria for measuring the success of these efforts to improve transparency.This article is categorized under: Integrated Assessment of Climate Change > Applications of Integrated Assessment to Climate Change Integrated Assessment of Climate Change > Integrated Assessment Modeling