Global socio-economic and climate change mitigation scenarios through the lens of structural change

Julien Lefevre (), Thomas Le Gallic, Panagiotis Fragkos, Jean-Francois Mercure (), Yeliz Simsek and Leonidas Paroussos
Additional contact information
Julien Lefevre: AgroParisTech, CIRED - Centre International de Recherche sur l'Environnement et le Développement - Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AgroParisTech - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - Université Paris-Saclay - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Thomas Le Gallic: CIRED - Centre International de Recherche sur l'Environnement et le Développement - Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AgroParisTech - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - Université Paris-Saclay - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Panagiotis Fragkos: E3-Modelling
Yeliz Simsek: University of Exeter

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: This paper analyses structural change in the economy as a key but largely unexplored aspect of global socioeconomic and climate change mitigation scenarios. Structural change can actually drive energy and land use as much as economic growth and influence mitigation opportunities and barriers. Conversely, stringent climate policy is bound to induce specific structural and socioeconomic transformations that are still insufficiently understood. We introduce Multi-Sectoral Integrated Assessment Models as main tools to capture the key drivers of structural change and we conduct a multi-model study to assess main structural effectschanges of the sectoral composition and intensity of trade of global and regional economiesin a baseline and 2°C policy scenario by 2050. First, the range of baseline projections across models, for which we identify the main drivers, illustrates the uncertainty on future economic pathways-in emerging economies especially-and inform on plausible alternative futures with implications for energy use and emissions. Second, in all models, climate policy in the 2°C scenario imposes only a second-order impact on the economic structure at the macrosectoral level-agriculture, manufacturing and services-compared to changes modelled in the baseline. However, this hides more radical changes for individual industries-within the energy sector especially. The study, which adopts a top-down framing of global structural change, represents a starting point to kick-start a conversation and propose a new research agenda seeking to improve understanding of the structural change effects in socioeconomic and mitigation scenarios, and better inform policy assessments.

Keywords: Structural change; Socio-economic pathways; Climate policy; Multi-sectoral macroeconomic modelling; Energy sector (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-ene, nep-env, nep-hme, nep-int and nep-tid
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-03622209v1
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in Global Environmental Change, 2022, 74, pp.102510. ⟨10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2022.102510⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-03622209v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03622209

DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2022.102510

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().