Integrated Assessment of Climate Change - Einzelansicht

The course will be held in a sequence of 15 lectures in a (pre-dominantly) classroom setting using Moodle to provide classroom material. Lectures that fall on a national holiday (Labour day on 1st of May; Pentecost on 29th of May) will be offered as recording on Moodle.

6 credit points can be obtained. 

• IPCC 6th Assessment Report, Working Group III contribution "Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change" (2022): Summary for Policymakers (48 pp), Chapter 3: Mitigation Pathways Compatible with Long-Term Goals (114 pp), Annex III: Scenarios and Modelling Methods (68 pp). Available at https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/

• Weyant, J., et. al. (1996): Integrated Assessment of Climate Change: An Overview and Comparison of Approaches and Results,” pp. 368-396 (Chapter 10) in J. P. Bruce, et. al. (eds), Climate Change 1995: Economic and Social Dimensions of Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Available at https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar2/wg3/

• Weyant, J. (2017): Some Contributions of Integrated Assessment Models of Global Climate Change. Review of Environmental Economics and Policy (2017). Available at https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1093/reep/rew018

• Nordhaus, W. (2013): Integrated Economic and Climate Modeling, pp. 1069-1131 (Chapter 16). In: Handbook of CGE Modeling - Vol. 1, Elsevier. Restricted access. Abstract, introduction and references available here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B978044459568300016X

• The SENSES project (2019): A primer on climate change scenarios. https://climatescenarios.org/primer/

During the course, around 8-9 exercise sheets will be provided to help students get familiar with the introduced learning material. Working through the exercise sheets will be voluntary, i.e. there is no requirement to return completed exercise sheets, and they will not be graded. However, it is highly recommended to work through the exercises in small self-organized groups of students throughout the course in order to deepen acquired knowledge and prepare for the written exam. There will be no in-classroom exercises accompanying this course.

Successful completion requires passing a written exam at the end of the course.

In this course students will learn about the integrated assessment of climate change conducted with so-called integrated assessment models (IAMs). IAMs are trans-disciplinary models connecting economics with the natural and engineering sciences. In a nutshell, they are coupling economic growth models with climate, energy, and land use models to investigate economic policy instruments to combat climate change.

After introducing the concept of IAMs and how they evolved in the context of international climate policy advice, the course will take an in-depth look at each of the four core components of IAMs: climate modelling, climate economics with a focus on economic growth and optimal climate policy, energy modelling, and land use modelling.

Once students have gained an understanding of the individual components, we will explore how they connect to the integrated assessment of climate change, and how integrated assessment is used to provide information for climate change policy making. In this context, we will also take a look at scenario approaches to explore the range of climate change futures and response strategies.  

The course aims to provide students with knowledge on quantitative methods for economic analysis of co-evolving nature-society systems. Key methods explored in this course are related to economic policy analysis in dynamical systems, including elements of dynamical systems, optimal growth, and optimal control theory, with a focus on environmental pollution control. A second goal of the course is to provide students with knowledge on the current state of climate change, international climate policy and long-term global strategies to stop global warming.