Technology Strategies for Low-Carbon Economic Growth : A General Equilibrium Assessment

Wing, Ian Sue ; Timilsina, Govinda

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: climate change;    economic growth;    technological change;    general equilibrium model;    green growth;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-7742
RP-ID  :  WPS7742

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This paper investigates the potentialfor developing countries to mitigate greenhouse gasemissions without slowing their expected economic growth. Atheoretical frame- work is developed that unifies bottom-upmarginal abatement cost curves and partial equilibriumtechno-economic simulation modeling with computationalgeneral equilibrium (CGE) modeling. The framework is thenapplied to engineering assessments of energy efficiencytechnology deployments in Armenia and Georgia. The resultsfacilitate incorporation of bottom-up technology detail onenergy-efficiency improvements into a CGE simulation of theeconomy-wide economic costs and mitigation benefits oftechnology deployment policies. Low-carbon growthtrajectories are feasible in both countries, enablingreductions of up to 4 percent of baseline emissions whilegenerating slight increases in GDP (1 percent in Armenia and0.2 percent in Georgia). The results demonstrate how MACcurves can paint a misleading picture of the true potentialfor both abatement and economic growth when technologicalimprovements operate within a system of general equilibriuminteractions, but also highlight how using their underlyingdata to identify technology options with high opportunitycost elasticities of productivity improvement can lead tomore accurate assessments of the macroeconomic consequencesof technology strategies for low-carbon growth.