http://cimearth.org/ en webmaster@ci.uchicago.edu Copyright 2009 2009-10-16T12:52:28+00:00 http://www.cimearth.org/cim-earth/our_research/ http://www.cimearth.org/cim-earth/our_research/#When:03:29:59Z CIM-EARTH is a collaborative, multi-institutional project to design a large-scale integrated modeling framework as a tool for decision makers in climate and energy policy. CIM-EARTH is intended to enhance economic detail and computational capabilities in climate change policy models, and to nucleate and support a broad interdisciplinary and international community of researchers and policymakers. Human prosperity depends fundamentally on energy usage, and that usage must increase many times over if the developing world is to advance out of poverty. Supplying energy to meet human needs is difficult enough; worse still is that a byproduct of most energy production – carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning – leads to unwelcome changes in the world’s climate. Energy usage now threatens the prosperity it helped create. The problem is inherently a global one: governments, industries, and individuals worldwide are linked in a single energy system whose emissions then affect climate throughout the world. Many scientists now feel that transforming the means by which we capture and use energy is the defining challenge of our time. 2009-07-30T03:29:59+00:00 http://www.cimearth.org/cim-earth/postdoc-opportunity/ http://www.cimearth.org/cim-earth/postdoc-opportunity/#When:12:52:28Z The University of Chicago invites applications for a postdoctoral research position as part of a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional team studying climate and energy policy.  The position will focus on integrated economic, technology, and policy analysis of electric power generation, emphasizing potential transition paths to a low-carbon power system in the coming decades.  Initial work will focus on improving representation of the electricity sector for the CIM-EARTH CGE model (see http://www.cimearth.org for more information), and analysis of topics including market-based and regulatory policies for sustainable electricity, and the interplay of alternative and possibly competing low-carbon generation technologies under different scenarios. Qualified applicants will have a substantively interdisciplinary background, combining expertise in economics, technology analysis, and modeling; in addition, knowledge of techniques for risk and uncertainty analysis is sought. Detailed knowledge of the energy sector is required, along with modeling experience, sound programming ability, solid communication skills, and an ability to engage in collaborative research.  The research will be collaborative between the University of Chicago and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), and the position will include a modest amount of travel to LBNL. To apply:  please send CV and contact information for three references to Heidi Levin at hjlevin@ci.uchicago.edu, with the subject line:  Energy Post-Doc.  The University of Chicago is an Affirmative Action / Equal Opportunity Employer 2009-10-16T12:52:28+00:00 http://www.cimearth.org/cim-earth/variables/ http://www.cimearth.org/cim-earth/variables/#When:21:31:42Z At CIM-EARTH we are constantly performing new studies to explore new economic and environmental phenomena, new sources of forecast uncertainty, or just running updated versions of the model. There are many different variables that can be explored in the data analysis portal, and new ones will be added with each new study. Here we briefly describe the variables that can be explored with each study. For more details about the studies, see the data-set explanation page. Variables from the elasticity and share sweeps We performed 2 major studies with the CIM-EARTH version 0.1 prototype to explore the forecast sensitivity to model parameter uncertainty. In the data analysis portal, you can explore many different variables associated with these studies. We constructed this prototype with regional and sectoral resolution appropriate for a detailed international study of carbon leakage (an undesirable economic effect of unilateral carbon policy in which the increased price of fossil fuels causes energy intensive industries such as cement, steel, aluminum, and chemical production to move offshore to countries without such policies) and its implications for global economic and environmental conditions, so many of the variables that we are measuring are related to this study. It is thus possible to explore the model time series forecast of The gross domestic product (GDP) of individual model regions. Economy wide CO2 emissions of individual model regions. The total revenue of a collection of energy intensive industries—steel and iron, chemicals, precious and non-ferrous metals, and cement—for individual model regions. The industrial and consumer demands for electricity. The industrial and consumer demands for refined petroleum fuels. For many of these variables, the user has the choice to output the gross values, the share of the global total, or the per-capita value. For regional populations, we use forecasts provided by the United Nations with a ‘medium fertility’ assumption. 2009-09-24T21:31:42+00:00 http://www.cimearth.org/cim-earth/data_sets/ http://www.cimearth.org/cim-earth/data_sets/#When:16:08:25Z There are multiple data sets to work with.  The difference between these data sets has to do with how uncertainties are calculated.  Read about each set individually below. Elasticity Sweep The elasticity sweep refers to a set of model runs (approximately 5,000) performed to explore the sensitivity of forecasts to uncertainty in a set of static economic parameters called substitution elasticities. These elasticities control the ability of firms and consumers to respond to variations in price signals by substituting out of demand for one commodity and into another. This study was performed on the CIM-EARTH v01 prototype by varying 71 unique substitution elasticity parameters: 16 independent parameters (one for each commodity producing sector) control firms’ abilities to substitute between capital and labor as the relative price of the two factors changes, 16 independent parameters (Armington elasticities; one for each imported commodity) control the ability of importers to substitute import demand of a particular commodity between different trade partners, 16 independent parameters (one for each imported commodity) control the substitutability for firm and consumer demand between the domestic and imported versions of each of the 16 different commodities, and 23 other elasticities that control the ability of different sectors of the economy to substitute between various types of production inputs—types of fossil energy inputs, aggregate energy inputs vs. the aggregate of capital and labor, and raw resource inputs (land or raw fossil fuel resources) vs. non-resource inputs. A detailed explanation of the study is available in the paper, Propagation of data error and parametric sensitivity in computable general equilibrium model forecasts Share Sweep The share sweep refers to a set of model runs (approximately 10,000) performed to explore the sensitivity of forecasts to uncertainty in the underlying expenditure data which is used to calibrate the models share parameters. These parameters are calibrated so that the model reproduces the known data for a single base year (or set of years) accurately. In this case the model is calibrated to 2004 using version 7 of the GTAP expenditure database. This study was performed on the CIM-EARTH v0.1 prototype by varying 1600 unique expenditure values from a version of the GTAP 7 expenditure dataset aggregated to 16 regions and 16 sectors and 4 primary factors per region. A detailed explanation of the study is available in the paper, Propagation of data error and parametric sensitivity in computable general equilibrium model forecasts 2009-09-10T16:08:25+00:00 http://www.cimearth.org/cim-earth/software/ http://www.cimearth.org/cim-earth/software/#When:21:40:03Z The CIM-EARTH project will produce and release a variety of computational tools for building, running, and analyzing the results of models aimed at studying the human dimensions of climate change. These tools will allow researchers from around the world to build their own CIM-EARTH modules and to construct meta-applications for building integrated model variants. Other CIM-EARTH components will include data analysis tools, statistical model emulators, parallel optimization tools, full releases of the underlying CIM-EARTH code suite, and many more. These components will be made available here as they are developed, and/or on a regular biannual release schedule. Analysis Tools As of August 1 2009 we have run ~50,000 CPU hours of simulations with the CIM-EARTH v0.1 economic model prototype. This run focused on testing the model and scaling up the parallelization, measuring the propagation of data errors, and establishing baseline sensitivity estimations for ‘business-as-usual’ scenarios for a first policy study of carbon leakage and climate policy in the fall of 2009. In the interest of transparency, and as a tool to facilitate education on and discussion of economics and climate change, we have implemented some basic tools for data visualization. We will update and expand the range of tools and available data as the project progresses. Data from the initial prototype run can be plotted and explored here. We present this material purely to illustrate the sort of tools we are developing: the v0.1 prototype is not yet at a point where forecasts can be taken seriously. Motion chart Use the MotionChart tool to plot multiple variables against one another and see how they evolve over time, and to test correlations in the data set and explore the time dependence of many variables at once.   Time-series graphs Use the graphing tool to display time-series of variables along with sensitivity ranges from our initial prototype runs.   Mapping utility Visualize categorized data in pie charts on Google Maps/Google Earth.   2009-07-30T21:40:03+00:00 http://www.cimearth.org/cim-earth/participants/ http://www.cimearth.org/cim-earth/participants/#When:21:13:51Z University of Chicago Ian T. Foster Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor in Computer Science, Chan Soon-Shiong Scholar and Director, Computation Institute Lars Peter Hansen Homer J. Livingston Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Economics Samuel S. Kortum Professor of Economics Elisabeth J. Moyer Assistant Professor, Department of Geophysical Sciences Raymond T. Pierrehumbert Louis Block Professor in Geophysical Sciences Michael L. Stein Ralph and Mary Otis Isham Professor, Department of Statistics David A. Weisbach Walter J. Blum Professor of Law and Kearney Director of the Program in Law and Economics Argonne National Laboratory Todd Munson Computational Mathematician in the Mathematics and Computer Science Division Fellow, Computation Institute Rob Jacob Computational Climate Scientist in the Mathematics and Computer Science Division Fellow, Computation Institute Rao Kotamarthi Principal Investigator in the DOE Atmospheric Science Program Senior Fellow, Computation Institute Hoover Institution Kenneth L. Judd, Paul H. Bauer Senior Fellow 2009-07-30T21:13:51+00:00 http://www.cimearth.org/cim-earth/about/ http://www.cimearth.org/cim-earth/about/#When:19:48:10Z The challenge of modeling CIM-EARTH is an open model for studying the socio-economic dimensions of climate change and climate policies.  Yet, it is impossible to solve climate change alone in a vacuum.  The effects on economic growth and human prosperity must be assessed and considered in the solution.  And what we do know is that economic growth fundamentally depends on energy usage, and that usage must increase many times over if the developing world is to advance out of poverty. Furthermore, the problem of climate change is complicated by the fact that it is inherently a global one: governments, industries, and individuals worldwide are linked in a single energy system whose emissions then affect climate throughout the world. Addressing climate change while simultaneously satisfying future needs for energy is thus a three-part challenge: Economic challenge in developing the appropriate incentives and mandates to achieve an optimal pathway for climate and economy; Technological challenge in changing the means of energy capture/generation, usage, or carbon dioxide emissions management; and Political challenge in achieving action within countries, and also cooperation between, and joint action by, numerous sovereign bodies. CIM-EARTH is a framework in which to combine the best of modern computational and economic science to guide climate and energy policy, with an organizational structure based on the best practices of collaborative science. CIM-EARTH will also benefit from three key and complimentary technical advances that have taken place in the last five to ten years. Specifically, CIM-EARTH will leverage:  Many-thousand-fold increase in computing power (with complementary state-of-the-art numerical methods) that gives us latitude to make many improvements on current models; More realistic modeling of economic behavior, including planning and investment (necessary for representing the massive capital investments in power plants, transmission lines, and other energy infrastructure) and responses to climate change itself; and Open-source code and community-based organization, inspired by the 15-year success of the Community Climate System Model, which has become a bedrock tool in climate studies and has set a standard for transparency in the field. We decided to make CIM-EARTH an open model so that it invigorates and broadens discussion for both developers and users.  More broadly, because CIM-EARTH will be readily available and reproducible, it will be useable by decisions makers from a variety of organizations.  Examples of users and the types of questions that they will be able to answer include:  Electric sector executives planning power generation in the face of multiple federal and state emissions reduction and renewable portfolio standards, all affecting electricity generation and transmission costs. Budget offices attempting to forecast changes in tax revenue and outlay under emissions standards, and weighing the effect of differing assumptions about technological change in electricity generation. State legislators considering distributional effects of energy policy, and planning for subsidies for the poor whose heating bills rise. International negotiators faced with a developing country balking at joining an agreement. What would be the consequences on American industry of that non-participation? What would be the consequences of punitive border taxes? What subsidies or payments would compensate for the cost of participation, and how could reluctant delegates be persuaded that the offer was to their advantage. Manufacturing industries attempting to forecast the changing economic landscape (e.g., energy, material, and labor costs) for themselves and their competitors, to determine investment decisions Federal legislators attempting to craft emissions schedules that balance economic pain against ecosystem adaptations, and that take into account risks and nonlinearities in each. Farming groups and startup technology companies weighing the long-term potential of biofuels and investment decisions in biofuels production and research decisions dependent on projected prices for carbon emissions taxes or permits, fertilizer, fuel, and labor, as well as climate change, competition from international imports, and advances in processing technology. about 2009-07-30T19:48:10+00:00