Integrated assessment models and input–output analysis: bridging fields for advancing sustainability scenarios research

Abstract

Technology-rich Integrated assessment models (IAMs) and Environmentally-Extended Input-Output Analysis (EEIOA) are widely employed for sustainability analysis, each offering unique strengths.IAMs focus on forward-looking scenarios, exploring technological shifts and climate change mitigation costs. EEIOA provides more comprehensive but static assessments of environmental and socioeconomic impacts throughout supply chains, adopting a lifecycle perspective. I conduct a literature review to assess the current state of IAM-IO integration, paving the way for future research opportunities with advanced models. Existing studies have loosely linked IAM and IO models to improve one field or the other. This perspective highlights the potential for more advanced IAM-IO model linking and identifies three domains within sustainability scenarios research where IAM-IO integration could play a crucial role : the energy-industry nexus in decarbonization pathways, multi-dimensional sustainability impact assessment and demand-side solutions and post-growth climate mitigation scenarios. The expected research insights may be pivotal to design effective sustainable policies.

Emerging consensus on net energy paves the way for improved integrated assessment modeling

“…176,177 In an attempt to bridge the gap with Industrial Ecology (IE), several IAMs (notably REMIND and MESSAGE) have explored the implications of incorporating life cycle assessment coefficients from input–output (I–O) tables such as THEMIS 178–180 or EXIOBASE, 181 highlighting the potential for sustainability research areas such as the energy-industry nexus and post-growth scenarios. 182 Efforts are also underway for examining the contribution of improved Energy System Models (ESM). 183,184 Still, most IAMs operate within the neoclassical equilibrium framework, and thus do not properly capture the feedback from the energy system on the economy.…”

Emerging Consensus on Net Energy Paves the Way for Improved Integrated Assessment Modeling

“…Dynamic constraints on extraction rates have also been introduced, as in REMIND (Baumstark et al, 2021) or TIAM-UCL (Pye et al, 2020b) models, as well as specific rules trying to mimic the behavior of swing producers, as in IMACLIM-R or IMAGE, albeit in a very simplified way and mostly for the oil market (Faehn et al, 2020;Foure et al, 2020). In an attempt to bridge the gap with Industrial Ecology (IE), several IAMs (notably REMIND and MESSAGE) have explored the implications of incorporating life cycle assessment coefficients from input-output (I-O) tables such as THEMIS (Pehl et al, 2017;Arvesen et al, 2018;Luderer et al, 2019) or EXIOBASE (Budzinski et al, 2023), highlighting the potential for sustainability research areas such as the energy-industry nexus and post-growth scenarios (Lefèvre, 2023). Efforts are also underway for examining the contribution of improved Energy System Models (ESM) (Huang and Eckelman, 2020;Kullmann et al, 2021).…”