What if energy decoupling of emerging economies were not so spontaneous? An illustrative example on India

Sandrine Mathy and Céline Guivarch ()
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Céline Guivarch: 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 - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: Reference GHG emissions scenarios are critical for estimates of the costs of stabilization and for climate policy recommendations. But recently, existing reference scenarios, notably the SRES, have been the target of criticisms that question their relevance in the light of current emissions trends, dispute the suitability, for developing countries, of the modeling methodologies used and suggest they convey too optimistic views on spontaneous energy decoupling of emerging countries economies. This article focuses on an illustrative example on India. It proposes an alternative reference scenario built with a modeling framework representing as realistically as possible the processes driving energy intensity and carbon intensity changes, in particular accounting for the interactions between energy systems and economic constraints and capturing the sub-optimalities of the energy sector. The mechanisms leading to moderate energy decoupling in this alternative scenario are analysed. From a methodological point of view, our results call for the improvement of the realism of modeling tools for scenarios elaboration. From a mitigation point of view, it appears that the challenge for climate policies to lift the barriers to the diffusion of energy efficiency improvement in India is considerable, but we identify a potential for synergies between development policies and climate policies.

Keywords: India; energy-GDP decoupling; investment constraint; power sector; reference scenario (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-02-06
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-00366274v1
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in 2009

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Working Paper: What if energy decoupling of emerging economies were not so spontaneous ? An illustrative example on India (2009)
Working Paper: What if energy decoupling of emerging economies were not so spontaneous ? An illustrative example on India (2009)
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