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Industrial ecology in integrated assessment models

Nature Climate Change volume 7, pages 13–20 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

Technology-rich integrated assessment models (IAMs) address possible technology mixes and future costs of climate change mitigation by generating scenarios for the future industrial system. Industrial ecology (IE) focuses on the empirical analysis of this system. We conduct an in-depth review of five major IAMs from an IE perspective and reveal differences between the two fields regarding the modelling of linkages in the industrial system, focussing on AIM/CGE, GCAM, IMAGE, MESSAGE, and REMIND. IAMs ignore material cycles and recycling, incoherently describe the life-cycle impacts of technology, and miss linkages regarding buildings and infrastructure. Adding IE system linkages to IAMs adds new constraints and allows for studying new mitigation options, both of which may lead to more robust and policy-relevant mitigation scenarios.

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Figure 1: Schematic of the general structure of integrated assessment models (IAMs).
Figure 2: Overview of the main descriptive and assessment methods in industrial ecology.
Figure 3: Visualization of the integration of the IAM and IE perspectives on society's biophysical basis.

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Acknowledgements

A.A. received support from the Research Council of Norway through the Centre for Sustainable Energy Studies (contract 209697). The research was conducted without involvement of the funding sources. The authors thank V. Krey (MESSAGE), G. Luderer (REMIND), and S. Fujimori (AIM/CGE) for providing additional information and for commenting on earlier versions of this work. The authors thank E. Ó Broin for helping to review the AIM-CGE model and for his contribution to framing our review approach. The authors remain solely responsible for the content of this Perspective and for possible mistakes in the model review.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, D-79106, Germany

    Stefan Pauliuk

  2. Department for Energy and Process Engineering, Industrial Ecology Programme, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, NO-7491, Norway

    Anders Arvesen & Konstantin Stadler

  3. Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, New Haven, 06511, Connecticut, USA

    Edgar G. Hertwich

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  1. Stefan Pauliuk
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  2. Anders Arvesen
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S.P. and E.H. designed the approach, A.A., K.S., and S.P. performed the review, and all authors contributed to writing the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stefan Pauliuk.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Pauliuk, S., Arvesen, A., Stadler, K. et al. Industrial ecology in integrated assessment models. Nature Clim Change 7, 13–20 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3148

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