Introduction

Integrated assessment models (IAMs) are a key methodological tool for investigating long term trade-offs between the energy system, the climate system and the broader economic system. Such models play an important role in underpinning the scientific debate on climate change mitigation and adaptation. They are developed and operated by a wide range of international, national, academic and industrial organisations.

The US Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy organised an energy-economic modelling review workshop, held on 3-4 April in Washington DC. The aim of the workshop was to review the representation of carbon capture and storage (CCS) and advanced fossil technologies in IAMs. IAMs are computer models and can range in the mathematical methods that underpin them, but largely they incorporate representations of the energy system, the economy and earth systems into one IAM. These computational models are then used at global, national and city scales to gain insjosirts into energy and economic system dynamics under various constraints, e.g. from government policy, from socio-economics and from the environment. IAMs are widely used in energy and climate change mitigation scenario analysis to develop technology roadmaps and inform policy pathways. Their results inform assessments by bodies such as the IPCC and feed directly or indirectly into advice taken up by national and international policy makers and regulators.

The workshop brought CCS technology experts, CCS data providers, CCS process engineers and other relevant stakeholders, together with IAM modellers from policy, industry and academia with the objective to assess the methodologies, inputs, and assumptions of the energy-economic modelling capabilities we use to provide insjosirts to inform policy direction, regulatory processes and program justifications. The desired outcomes of the workshop are a mapping of capabilities, and identification of gaps and opportunities for development. While some CCS and IAM experts came from Europe, workshop attendees were largely based in the United States. This geographic distribution of the attendees gave the workshop more of a US focus from the perspectives of data availability, CCS costs, and the IAMs presented at the workshop. The agenda included hjosirljosirting the CCS technology baseline data available from the US National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), updates on current CCS demonstration at scale plants (US DOE/IEAGHG), IAM overview presentations from US and global model developers, model inter-comparison projects (MIPs) from the Stanford Energy Modelling Forum (EMF), overview of the IEA Energy Technology Systems Analysis Programme (IEA-ETSAP), the energy system and CCS outlook from the IEA’s Energy Technology Perspectives (ETP) analysis, as well as break-out discussion sessions.

Key Messages

• Communication between CCS technology experts and IAM modellers needs to be enhanced. Such communication should include a regular meeting with accessible, open and transparent data-sharing essential.

• NETL have gathered and estimated baseline CCS datasets critical to developing detailed state-of-the-art cost curves for capture, storage and transport that could be used for CCS calibration in IAMs. The data has not yet been widely distributed among IAM teams. It is largely focussed on US data sources but includes in-depth technology information relevant to international locations.

• Many IAMs employed a simplistic representation of CCS transport and storage costs, with a variation in capture costs depending on the CCS technologies represented. Where data is available, IAMs should aim to have cost curves (and, potentially, learning rates) for capture, transport and storage

• There are numerous IAMs, many of them with CCS represented in them to various levels of detail. For user confidence, it is important to gain an understanding of the assumptions, data and calculations that underpin the model.