Article - February 22, 2022
To fully reap the benefits of energy efficiency in accelerating the transition to low-carbon energy systems, economies need to design policy packages that balance emission reduction incentives on both the demand and the supply side. In this paper we carry out a model-comparison exercise, using two well-established global integrated assessment models, PROMETHEUS and TIAM-ECN, to quantitatively analyze the global system-level effects of increased energy efficiency in the context of ambitious post-COVID climate change mitigation scenarios.
Key findings:
- Increasing energy efficiency may lead to substantial long-term economic benefits.
- Carbon price and CCS use may decline by, respectively, 10-15% and 13-90%.
- The additional system costs needed to achieve climate targets may become 6-30% lower.
The full paper can be found here.