Technology Strategies for Low-Carbon Economic Growth : A General Equilibrium Assessment
This paper investigates the potential for developing countries to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions without slowing their expected economic growth. A theoretical frame- work is developed that unifies bottom-up marginal abatement cost curves and par...
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| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2016
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2016/07/26561773/technology-strategies-low-carbon-economic-growth-general-equilibrium-assessment http://hdl.handle.net/10986/24823 |
| Summary: | This paper investigates the potential
for developing countries to mitigate greenhouse gas
emissions without slowing their expected economic growth. A
theoretical frame- work is developed that unifies bottom-up
marginal abatement cost curves and partial equilibrium
techno-economic simulation modeling with computational
general equilibrium (CGE) modeling. The framework is then
applied to engineering assessments of energy efficiency
technology deployments in Armenia and Georgia. The results
facilitate incorporation of bottom-up technology detail on
energy-efficiency improvements into a CGE simulation of the
economy-wide economic costs and mitigation benefits of
technology deployment policies. Low-carbon growth
trajectories are feasible in both countries, enabling
reductions of up to 4 percent of baseline emissions while
generating slight increases in GDP (1 percent in Armenia and
0.2 percent in Georgia). The results demonstrate how MAC
curves can paint a misleading picture of the true potential
for both abatement and economic growth when technological
improvements operate within a system of general equilibrium
interactions, but also highlight how using their underlying
data to identify technology options with high opportunity
cost elasticities of productivity improvement can lead to
more accurate assessments of the macroeconomic consequences
of technology strategies for low-carbon growth. |
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