Suchergebnisse

Producción Científica ; The Energy Roadmap 2050 (ER2050) is committed to achieve the European Union's emissions mitigation goals by reducing energy use and a transition to renewables. The macroeconomic impacts of the Ref16 and 'EUCO' scenarios of this strategy have been reported to entail an absolute decoupling between GDP growth and energy use. The aim of this paper is assessing the ER2050 targets with a novel modelling methodology based on Post-Keynesian Economics, i.e. demand-led economic growth and Ecological Economics, i.e. taking into account absolute biophysical (energy availability) constrains to economic growth. Thus, this article presents the Economy module of the Integrated Assessment Model MEDEAS-Europe, combining System Dynamics and Input-Output analysis, and evaluates the ER2050 targets under different scenarios regarding primary income distribution, foreign trade, labour productivity, industrial policy and working time reduction. Our results show that GDP growth and employment creation may be halted due to energy scarcity if the ER2050 targets are met even considering great energy efficiency gains. In addition, the renewables share would increase enough to reduce the energy imports dependency, but not sufficiently to meet the emissions targets. Only a Post-Growth scenario would be able to meet the climate goals and maintain the level of employment. ; European project H2020-LCE-2015-2 (691287) ; Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (Project ECO2017-85110-R)

Producción Científica ; A diversity of integrated assessment models (IAMs) coexists due to the different approaches developed to deal with the complex interactions, high uncertainties and knowledge gaps within the environment and human societies. This paper describes the open-source MEDEAS modeling framework, which has been developed with the aim of informing decision-making to achieve the transition to sustainable energy systems with a focus on biophysical, economic, social and technological restrictions and tackling some of the limitations identified in the current IAMs. MEDEAS models include the following relevant characteristics: representation of biophysical constraints to energy availability; modeling of the mineral and energy investments for the energy transition, allowing a dynamic assessment of the potential mineral scarcities and computation of the net energy available to society; consistent representation of climate change damages with climate assessments by natural scientists; integration of detailed sectoral economic structure (input–output analysis) within a system dynamics approach; energy shifts driven by physical scarcity; and a rich set of socioeconomic and environmental impact indicators. The potentialities and novel insights that this framework brings are illustrated by the simulation of four variants of current trends with the MEDEAS-world model: the consideration of alternative plausible assumptions and methods, combined with the feedback-rich structure of the model, reveal dynamics and implications absent in classical models. Our results suggest that the continuation of current trends will drive significant biophysical scarcities and impacts which will most likely derive in regionalization (priority to security concerns and trade barriers), conflict, and ultimately, a severe global crisis which may lead to the collapse of our modern civilization. Despite depicting a much more worrying future than conventional projections of current trends, we however believe it is a more realistic counterfactual scenario that will allow the design of improved alternative sustainable pathways in future work. ; Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (Project CO2017-85110-R) ; Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (Project JCI-2016–28833) ; MEDEAS project, funded by the European Union's Horizon2020 research and innovation programme under grant agree-ment no. 691287. ; LOCOMOTION project, funded by the EuropeanUnion's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programmeunder grant agreement no. 821105