Working Paper n° 2024-01-34

Sophie CHLELA, Sandrine SELOSSE, Climate actions effects on ressource sustainability in a carbon constrained world

This paper analyzes carbon dioxide removal (CDR), with a focus on Bioenergy Carbon Capture and Storage, as climate actions related to the Sustainable Development Goal 13. It examines this goal’s interlinkage to other UN goals such as SDG6 (water) and SDG7 (energy) in accordance with the concept of the water-energy-land nexus. To align the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) to the Paris Agreement long-term goal of net-zero emissions, the global energy system’s evolution is studied, using the global and regional outputs of the techno-economic optimization of TIAM-FR that incorporates various mitigation options including a disaggregated biomass representation. In addition, a water module is used to assess water withdrawals and consumptions. The analysis is made under three climate scenarios. Results show that bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (CCS) contributes to decarbonizing the energy mix (SDG7) even with sustainability constraints. Also, carbon capture and storage technologies are a plausible solution to keep the temperature limit at 1.5 degrees, but impact water use due to their use of water-intensive resources and technologies (SDG13 in trade-off with SDG6). The analysis shows that the Paris Agreement scenarios, both with and without temperature overshoot, increase global water use by 65% and 62%, respectively, by 2050 compared to 2020. Regionally, water-scarce areas like the Middle East and India exhibit similar patterns, whereas Africa shows lower water use compared to an NDC scenario by leveraging itsrenewable energy potential.

Working Paper n° 2023-02-33

Nikolaos PAPASTEFANAKIS, Sandrine SELOSSE and Nadia MAIZI, Increasing Renewable Energy Integration in European Islands with Storage Stakes: A Case Study of Evia, Greece

Prospective modelling is a valuable mathematical tool for supporting long-term strategic planning in the face of un-certainties associated with future events. This analysis is conducted by defining potential future trajectories – sce-narios, with the goal of exploring possible energy futures. The TIMES model is a partial equilibrium linear program-ming optimization tool that ensures the supply-demand equilibrium. This model identifies future expansion in-vestments that are required in the power system to meet forecasted demand while adhering to techno-economic and environmental constraints, all at the lowest possible cost. The energy systems prospective modelling results of the two demonstration sites (Procida and Hinnoya) showed that the proposed solutions of the GIFT project that offer flexibility and grid congestion relief, they promote also the further use of RES. More information about the mo-delling and the results can be found in Deliverable 2.4 (Chlela et al., 2021).

Working Paper n° 2023-01-32

Thibault BRIERA, Capturing physical, technical and economic constraints on electricity generation: a description of the IMACLIM-R electricity module

IMACLIM-R is a twelve region, recursive hybrid general equilibrium model that in- cludes a technology-rich,bottom-up electricity module. The long-term investment decision is represented by a modified multinomial logit structure in which 20 explicit technologies compete based on the most current electricity generation costs. The cost competition takes place under imperfect foresight and with various possible regimes of beliefs about future climate policy. Key characteristics of electricity supply are presented: Capital obsolescence, fuel efficiency, load factor, carbon capture and storage, renewable integra- tion challenges. Both investment and dispatch decisions are made on an annual basis, beginning in 2015, to provide meaningful insights into future electricity systems, their contribution to climate change mitigation, and their linkages with the rest of the economy.

Working Paper n° 2022-01-31

Mahmoud MOBIR, Nadia MAÏZI, Vincent MAZAURIC, Sandrine SELOSSE, Alfredo SAMPERIO, Feasibility of an «All Electric» energy system: A prospective study to 2050

In 1881, two electricians built the world’s first power system in England. It supplied seven arc lamps at 250 volts and 34 incandescent lamps at 40 volts. However, supply to the lamps was intermittent and in 1882 Thomas Edison and his company, The Edison Electric Light Company, developed the first steam-powered electric power station on Pearl Street in New York City. From this first attempt, several systems started to spread across the United States and Europe. and power companies had built thousands of power systems (both direct and alternating current) in the United States and Europe. Years after, it has become possible to transport electricity over long distances. Power distribution then started to expand throughout the world, propelling the second industrial revolution, and becoming progressively a major source of energy supply. Global electricity consumption has increased by around 70% since 2000, and it accounts for 19% of total final consumption today compared to just over 15% in 2000…

Working Paper n° 2021-02-30

Carlos ANDRADE, Sandrine SELOSSE, Nadia MAÏZI, Thirty years since the circular economy concept emerged: has it reached a consensus?

The economy system is mainly based on extracting raw materials to be used as inputs that altogether with tech­nology and labor will be transformed into final products that later will be sold to consumers. These products would be used through their life cycle, and will be replaced as soon as the object has accomplished its duty or a new product shows up in the market with better features, and replace the obsoletes ones. The obsolete products are thrown into landfills, or are incinerated which damages the environment not just by polluting, but by making firms require new raw materials to produce new goods (Andersen Mikael 2006). In addition, through all this cycle, some other facts are to be considered, such as the emission of pollutants when the production activities take place and when the final goods are used; such as CO2 emissions produced by cars. All of this is leading to different problems such the depletion of primary re­sources that causes economic and social problem, and the constant emission of pollutants is crucially affecting the environment…

Working Paper n° 2021-01-29

Rabab AKKOUCHE, Gilles GUERASSIMOFF, Sandrine SELOSSE, Quels freins à l’amélioration
énergétique des bâtiments publics en France

This article was written within the framework of the European Project Pays-Ecogétiques of the Interreg Alcotra program co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund.

Les bâtiments publics sont les bâtiments « dont les personnes publiques (État1, opérateurs de l’Etat et collectivités territoriales) sont propriétaires, qu’elles les occupent ou non » (Le Blog Immo, 2018). Ils représentent une part importante du parc immobilier français avec un total de
191.000 bâtiments en 2018 occupant une surface d’environ 99 millions de mètres carrés (Projet loi de finance, 2020) (Direction de l’Immobilier de l’Etat, 2018). Au niveau du tertiaire, Le parc public représente près du tiers du parc national (“La rénovation des bâtiments publics,”
2020). Au-delà de son ampleur, le patrimoine immobilier public est caractérisé par sa singularité sur plusieurs niveaux, ce qui peut représenter des contraintes quant à sa gestion. En effet, le parc immobilier public est caractérisé par (Lourdin, 2010) (Direction de l’Immobilier de l’Etat, 2018)…

Working Paper n° 2018-02-28

Florian LEBLANC, Long-term macroeconomic impact of US unconventional Oil and Gas production : a general equilibrium perspective

The shale gas and oil revolution in the United States has given hope of a new source of energy abundance for countries rich in these resources. In Europe in particular, several countries have undertook explorations with the idea of supporting economic growth and industrial competitiveness by producing cheaper energy. In this article, we conduct a prospective analysis of the long-term economic impact of shale oil and gas production in the United States. First, we quantify the limits of GDP increases due to technical inertia within the economy, separating the effect on oil and gas markets. In a second step, we analyze policies aiming at supporting competitiveness of highly exporting industries. Within the general equilibrium Imaclim-R model, when it comes to improve wellfare with the production of unconventionnal resource, we highlight a trade-off between industrial competitiveness on one hand, and global employment in the economy on the other hand.

Working Paper n° 2018-01-27

Gaëlle LE TREUT, A proposal for assessing inventories of embodied emissions in trade and consumption at the country scale: an application to the French case

In United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change territorial-based inventories, the CO2 emissions embodied in international trade are not assessed while they represent a lever to control carbon leakage and understand competitiveness concerns. Accounting these emissions, and therefore accounting consumption-based emissions, is not obvious. In the literature, dierent methods exist to evaluate alternative emissions inventories. However, methods are data-intensive and models mainly rely on existing global databases with balanced bilateral trade flows. The control of these databases and the articulation with country-scale prospective models remain dicult. This paper proposes a method based on the Input-Output analysis, at a given year, to evaluate contrasted emissions inventories for single country relying on national hybrid database in both volume and in monetary flows. Notwithstanding, it embarks exogenous information on major international partners. By applying the methodological proposal on the French case, the paper provides original insights on the key drivers of emissions. We show that consumptionbased emissions are much higher than production-based emissions in France, and, we study the drivers of emissions embodied in household consumptions with sectoral distribution. We analyse the sensitivity to results of the sectoral granularity of the database. The original idea of this method is to allow an easy articulation with the IMACLIM-France CGE model to analyse how French climate policies impacts macroeconomic situation, sectoral competitiveness and emissions -regarding dierent scopes for inventories.

Working Paper n° 2017-02-26

Edi ASSOUMOU, Frédéric GHERSI, Jean Charles HOURCADE, Jun LI, Nadia MAÏZI and Sandrine SELOSSE, Reconciling top-down and bottom-up energy/economy models: a case of TIAM-FR and IMACLIM-R

Recent global economic and environmental forecasts consistently show a trend of continuous decline in natural resources, degradation of environmental quality, increasing vulnerability of economic growth as a result of environmental stress, competition for land and natural resources, soaring energy prices and climate change. These forecasts partly rest on significant efforts by the scientific community over the past three decades to improve knowledge of the interactions between economic growth and the environment; particularly modelling methods have developed to become increasingly applied to the assessment of the environmental and economic consequences of various energy demand and greenhouse gas policies. However, the significantly diverging viewpoints of models developed by energy engineers, or ‘bottom-up’ (BU) models, and those developed by economists, or ‘top-down’ (TD) models, hinder effective dialogue and mutual understanding between researchers from different academic backgrounds. The purpose of this paper is to promote a constructive dialogue between modellers from each side of the modelling paradigms, based on a comparative critique of the BU TIAM-FR model and the TD IMACLIM-R model. The comparison terms extend from the theoretical foundations of each model to their structure and specifications, and applicability to policy assessment. Preliminary numerical simulations are developed to demonstrate the relevance of linking the two models, while the technical challenges and methodological limitations of coupled simulations are addressed.

Working Paper n° 2017-01-25

Sandrine SELOSSE and Nadia MAÏZI, The decarbonized pathways of post-Paris climate policy

The historic climate agreement adopted by all countries in December 2015 marks a turning point towards a decarbonized world. Applying a long-term prospective approach, and more precisely the bottom-up optimization model TIAM-FR, we investigate different greenhouse gas emissions mitigation trajectories to discuss these pathways and the corresponding technological solutions in global and regional perspectives. The contribution to GHG mitigation varies according to regions’ development; as the technological choices regarding climate constraints and the evolution of the energy system. Climate constraints tending toward a 2°C objective involve significant decarbonization of the power system with considerable investments in renewable energies in the lower and higher constraints, as well as in carbon capture and storage technologies (CCS), notably bio-energy and CCS (BECCS). CCS technologies start to be installed when climate constraints are high (2°C) but not in scenarios expressing national pledges. It is interesting to note that in case of a ban on BECCS, the latter is compensated not by a higher development of fossil CCS technologies, but by an increase in renewable energies.

Working Paper n° 2016-06-24

Gaëlle LE TREUT and Emmanuel COMBET, Climate policy design and the competitiveness of the French industry: A computable general equilibrium analysis

The paper proposes a method to keep benefits from both sectorial and general equilibrium analysis. This method has originally been developed to build a hybrid energy-economy Input-Output Table (IOT) at a regional scale but it can be apply for any quantity flows. The approach consists in combining economic and physical data from sectors analysis with monetary input-output data from national accounts within a consistent and comprehensive “hybrid” accounting system. It goes beyond previous disaggregation techniques only based on economic data. We illustrate the procedure with French data, and we analyse the effects of a unilateral French carbon tax reform using a country-scale CGE model, IMACLIM-S. The results show that keeping aggregated heterogeneous industrial sectors can be misleading when exploring distributive consequences of a carbon price policy…

Working Paper n° 2016-05-23

Julien LEFEVRE, A description of the IMACLIM-BR model: a modeling framework to assess climate and energy policy in Brazil

The Imaclim modeling approach has been developed at CIRED since the early 90s. At the core of the blueprint has been the objective to build hybrid modeling architectures to articulate energy system and economy-wide representations to explore energy-climate-economy futures. Imaclim-BR is a hybrid CGE modeling platform of the Brazilian economy specifically designed to build consistent projections of the energy-GHG emissions-economy system in Brazil over the medium to long term. It makes it especially possible to assess the macroeconomic implications of price or quantity-based carbon and energy policy. This working paper provides a full description of the IMACLIM-BR model. Section 2 characterizes the model in a compact format with its key equations in order to highlight its main specifics. Section 3 provides a comprehensive description and formulary of the central model version. Section 4 details the specifics of two expanded versions.

Working Paper n° 2016-04-22

Jules SCHERS, Frédéric GHERSI and Franck LECOCQ, Modelling climate mitigation and economic growth in relation to employment and skills in South Africa

Our paper deals with the interaction between South Africa’s carbon mitigation and employment challenges. We use IMACLIM-SA, an open-economy, ‘hybrid’ CGE model that projects the economy to 2035, disaggregated in 10 sectors and 5 household classes. Our model has low-, medium- and high-skill labour markets with equilibrium unemployment. We highlight problems with using a standard definition of skills as categories of educational attainment and propose three research avenues to improve modelling of skills. We then analyse a carbon tax with 5 revenue recycling options and a “positional” definition of educational attainment. A tax of 100 Rand/tCO2 recycled in sales tax cuts induces GDP and employment gains, but does not reduce inequality. A higher tax is needed to achieve South Africa’s Intended Nationally Determined Contribution of the COP21. Additionally, we find that recycling carbon tax proceeds into investment in skills would already be justified if it induces a slight productivity improvement.

Working Paper n° 2016-03-21

Seungwoo KANG, Sandrine SELOSSE and Nadia MAÏZI, Methodological long-term analysis of global bioenergy potential

This report presents the methodology investigated in order to make more suitable and relevant the representation of bioenergy resources in the long term bottom up optimization model, TIAM-FR. Indeed, the current simplified representation is not suitable for distinguish different use for each proper bioenergy source. Furthermore, considering the important role of global bioenergy trade in energy system particularly for projecting future energy system, disaggregation of these resources appears as an essential requirement. In this study, based on the complementary purpose of improving the description of the bioenergy chain as well as the necessity of re-estimation of potentials, we focused on development of energy crops and woody biomass chains rather than Industrial wastes, municipal wastes, and landfill gas, which are not currently being traded intra regions for energy uses. In the case of energy crops, otherwise, the higher disaggregation will allow apply crop-specific biofuel policies as limiting the use of edible sources for energy purpose to avoid eventual conflicts with food security issues.

In South America and the Caribbean, a region representing a relevant share of global GHG emissions with a weight of 7.7% in 2011, slightly more than its share of the world’s population (6.9% in 2010), the latest estimates point to a 1.5% to 5% GDP loss by 2050. Particularly, Brazil already ranks fourth in the world when it comes to national contributions to global warming and a strong increase in GHG emissions can be anticipated in the years to come throughout the region on a BAU basis. In this context, quite logically, the region has a relevant role to play in mitigating global emissions. The energy sector, the largest contributor to GHG emission, shows promising potential to achieve climate mitigation worldwide and South American NAMAs consider it extensively.
Given Latin America’s regional specificities, what contributions can its energy sector make to the fight against climate change, and at what cost? This paper investigates this specific aspect of the energy-climate nexus in Latin America through the prism of ongoing climate negotiations. This analysis focuses on the climate commitment of Latin America pledged before the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) asked to publish through the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Paris in December and which led to the signing of a historical global agreement on climate change. We use a bottom-up energy prospective model from the MarkAl/TIMES family with four contrasted scenarios for future climate policies in South America.

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A sustainable energy future requires a wide range of different mitigation options that can reduce the CO2 emissions. Particularly, renewables and carbon capture and storage appear as preferred or more largely evocated options. The aim of this study is to analyze alternative development paths of the energy system investigating different constraints on the use of CCS and BECCS, under climate policy context, and using the global multiregional optimization model, TIAM-FR. The analyze also focuses on the increasing pressure involved by the development of carbon capture technologies (fossil and biomass) on the water resources. Water and energy are indeed inextricably linked and interdependent sectors. Water requirements of existing and emerging technologies (such as carbon capture technologies) are so necessary to completely assess the water impacts of a developing decarbonizing economy.

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Pure and Plug-in-Hybrid electric vehicles are promoted in several countries because they can provide an appropriate technological answer to EU’s energy and environmental goals. But quantifying their benefit is complex since electromobility poses specific challenges in terms of time scale, sectors coordination and infrastructure. The overall objective of the EV-STEP project was to quantify some of the technical and economic conditions of the development of electrified mobility in Europe by 2030 and beyond. In complement to the EU scale evaluation based on the TIMES pan EU and IMACLIM-P models additional case studies were defined in the EV-STEP project’s methodology to investigate dedicated local issues with a higher level of technical detail. The EV-CAP model developed within EV-STEP is described in the first part, the second part reports insights on the potential load curve impact drawn from the local case study of the Paris Ile de France Region.

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Latin America presents important energy resources and a relatively low level of CO2 emissions. Energy needs increase and are expected to increase more and more with the objective of development and of energy access. Moreover, Latin America is already impacted by climate change with, for example, first snow, inundation, etc. So to evolve his development in sustainable manner, low carbon strategy has to be developed. This paper focuses on long term analysis of energy climate issues in Latin America and particularly studies the impact of climate policy on its energy system. Solutions to tend toward a decarbonized system are analyzed and a focus is made on Biomass with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). Notably, an interesting result is the fact that, while the carbon capture and storage option is favored in case of bioplants development, appearing as a first climate-protect option, this is not the case with fossil power plants, and renewables development is preferred, even when BECCS is “excluded”.

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After a large awareness and decades of negotiations, a historic climate agreement is waiting to be adopted by all 195 parties at the UNFCCC, in December during the 2015 Paris Climate Change Conference (COP 21), in order to provide an answer to the climate issue. We analyze a combination of scenarios to discuss the energy-climate regime inherited from the past negotiations and what can be expected for the future decarbonated system.

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This paper presents the construction TIMES-America Latina y el Caribe, the TIMES regional model dedicated to Central and South America and the Caribbean.

Awaiting update

Giving the challenge of mitigating the effects of climate change and so reducing carbon emissions, this study highlights the possible technological trajectories in a future climate regime and particularly the role of carbon capture and storage. This research is developed with TIAM-FR, a bottom-up optimization model describing the world energy system expressed by regions and sectors in great detail of current and future technologies.

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In a context of market coupling, we study analytically the impact of wind farm concentration and of the uncertainty resulting from the introduction of renewable energy on the procurement total cost, on the market welfare and on the ratio of renewable procurements to conventional supplies. Markets having incomplete information on the quantities of renewable energy produced by the other markets, we show that the providers have incentives to buy information regarding the variability of the other markets’ productions. Provided this information could be certified and sold by an external operator, we derive analytically the optimal price for such certified information, depending on the required confidence level.

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In this article, the energy market is a modeled as a Stackelberg game involving three categories of agents: microgrids made of end users sharing the same energy provider, suppliers and generators. The energy production is decentralized involving non-renewables, renewables and demand response performed at the microgrid level. We compute analytically the Nash equilibrium of the game in the generators’ production prices, efforts invested in their capacity, and, in the suppliers’ energy orders. Furthermore, we prove that the generators’ and the demand response prices can be obtained as functions of the price paid by the end users per unit of demand. Finally, coupling the energy and the capacity markets, we design rules for the capacity market guaranteeing the system wide balance and the market opening to new investors while avoiding moral hazard and abuse of dominant positions.

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Ce papier développe une méthodologie de mise en cohérence des données économiques (comptes nationaux) avec les données des bilans de « matière » (bilans énergétiques, etc.) pour calibrer les modèles d’équilibre général des interfaces économie-énergie-environnement. Les difficultés à combiner ces systèmes statistiques, souvent passées sous silence dans les modèles existants, nous incitent à remobiliser les exigences théoriques de la description des flux économiques à la fois en valeur monétaire et en volumes « physiques ». Il en résulte une méthode d’hybridation originale des données qui consiste à s’appuyer sur les flux de matière et des données de prix pour délimiter le circuit des biens matériels au sein du système économique sans altérer la taille de ce dernier. Cette procédure sera appliquée pour construire un tableau entrées-sorties hybride à 18 secteurs pour le Brésil en 2005.

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As part of the Copenhagen Accord, countries have submitted emissions reduction pledges for 2020. Using a long term optimization model (TIAM-FR), we evaluate the implications of these submissions for emission reductions, carbon prices and total cost of the energy system. Our study finds that the pledges are not sufficient to meet the global recommended 2-2.4°C objective. Furthermore, reaching the overall 2°-2.4C objective would involve significant costs for China and India that explains the difficulty of international negotiations.

Keywords: Global warming, Copenhagen Accord, long term optimization model, abatement cost

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The accident in Fukushima, Japan, in March 2011 has reactivated the discussion on how to meet ambitious climate mitigation objectives as some European countries reconsider the contribution of nuclear power in their energy mix. This study evaluates the impact of nuclear power reduction in Europe on the electricity mix under carbon emission reduction scenarios while considering the availability of carbon capture and storage technological options. The potential cost of carbon reduction is also addressed using the bottom-up optimization model TIAM-FR. The results suggest that CCS technologies constitute an interesting option in a case of stringent climate targets and limited nuclear electricity. However, the unavailability of CCS technologies induces a significant increase in carbon cost to achieve the climate policy.

Keywords: Energy modeling ; European Union policies ; Climate change ; TIAM-FR; Nuclear phase out; Carbon Capture and Storage, Bioenergies

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It seems increasingly likely that atmospheric greenhouse gases concentration will overshoot the recommended 400 ppmC02 target. Therefore, it may become necessary to use bioenergy with carbon capture and storage technologies (BECCS) to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. This study evaluates the possible deployment of BECCS in the power sector with the bottom-up multiregional op-timization model TIAM-FR. The results of the long term modeling exercise sug-gest that to achieve a stringent target, BECCS technology represents an environ-mentally and economically viable option. The regional analyze shows that industrialized countries will develop CCS mainly on biomass sources while CCS on fossil fuel is largely deployed in fast developing countries.

Keywords: Bioenergies, Carbon capture and storage, Long term modeling, Electricity, Environmental policies

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Le Centre de Mathématiques Appliquées de l’Ecole des Mines de Paris, dans le cadre de la Chaire ParisTech Modélisation Prospective au service du Développement Durable, propose une série d’exercices prospectifs élaborés au moyen de son approche bottom-up du système énergétique basée sur l’utilisation de son modèle TIMES-FR : il permet de réaliser une modélisation technico-économique du système France, déclinée ici principalement sur le secteur électrique. Le terme de notre horizon prospectif est l’année 2050.

Cette étude a été réalisée dans le cadre de la Commission Besson afin d’illustrer différents scénarios définis selon les hypothèses de la DG TRESOR. Nous proposons dans ce document un ensemble de résultats permettant d’analyser ces éléments et variantes.

Il est important de souligner que de nombreux autres scénarios pourraient être envisagés par cette même approche, limitant ou favorisant certaines technologies, et intégrant des mesures plus ou moins coercitives sur le contrôle des émissions de CO2 ou la maîtrise de la demande.

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Among technological options to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, Biomass Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage technology (BECCS) is gaining increasing attention. This option offers a unique opportunity for a net removal of atmospheric CO2 while it fulfills energy needs. This results analysis appears in line with the growing body of literature using bottom-up energy models and shows that BECCS has an important role to play in the future energy mix. Most of those studies focus on BECCS global potential whereas it is of interest to understand where this mitigation will be deployed. This key issue will strongly depends on regions’ biomass resources and storage sites endowment. The aim of this study is to assess the global and regional potential of BECCS up to 2050 and to compare it to the deployment of CCS in the power generation. This analysis is conducted with the global multiregional TIAM-FR optimization model. Investigated climate policy scenarios led to a considerable expansion of renewable energy and CCS and BECCS technologies in the power sector. CCS from fossil fuel is mainly deployed in fast developing countries, well endowed with coal and, BECCS is highly distributed in developing countries even if biomass resources are widely available in all regions. This response to carbon constraint is however dependent of the consideration of CO2 negative emissions and of the incentives and appropriate policies created by States. In addition, it required the development of a regulatory framework, sustained R,D&D and infrastructures investments.

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Representing 20% of the world primary energy supply, natural gas is a key component of today’s energy systems. Its lower carbon content per unit of energy, its versatility and relative abundance make it a strategic fuel for addressing both the world’s future demand for energy and the climate change concern. Hence several medium-term projections advocate the increased use of natural gas. Yet while its contribution as a solution to the climate change issue is positive in comparison to more carbonated fossil energy sources, which represent 60% of the world primary energy supply, burning natural gas has an absolute negative emission contribution. How then are its projected uses affected by stringent environmental policies? For what end-use is it the best candidate? In this paper we address these questions for France, which is the fourth largest natural gas market in the European Union and has a 97% import dependency. We focus on end-use sectors and we quantify the evolution of gas allocation up to 2050.Our results highlight significant reductions in the expected growth rate before 2030, followed by a clear decrease that brings the natural gas industry back to its current levels. In a case where it does not succeed in securing a significant market share in the transport sector, consumption in 2050 evens out at around 1990 levels. We quantify the dependency on technological developments for gasification technologies and natural gas-fueled vehicles, and highlight the sensitivity of cross-sector allocation to import prices.

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This paper provides a survey of the policies and measures that are asso-ciated to low carbon societies in the recent literature, both peer-reviewed and “grey”. A first section focuses on carbon pricing, the policy measure most frequently represented.
It starts by analysing the somewhat confusing use made of carbon pricing expertise in policy reports emanating from the French and the British governments, then reviews some modelling results on carbon pricing in a “second best” world, and concludes on the acknowledged limits of this central policy instrument.
A second section lists an impressive collection of more focused policy instruments that are advocated in both governmental and non-governmental literature.
It insists on the contrast between the high degree of precision of some of these policy proposals, and the absence of scientific assessment of their impacts, either from an environmental or an economic point of view. A third section concludes on the research agenda emerging from this hiatus between the large body of scientific literature devoted to carbon pricing, and the policy relevance of much more focused policy instruments.

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