We investigate the impact of climate policies on Canada’s oil sands industry, the largest of its kind in the world. Deriving petroleum products such as gasoline and diesel from oils sands involves significant amounts of energy, and that contributes to a high level of CO2 emissions. We apply...

A well-known challenge in computable general equilibrium (CGE) models is to maintain correspondence between the forecasted economic and physical quantities over time. Maintaining such a correspondence is necessary to understand how economic forecasts reflect, and are constrained by,...

The plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) may offer a potential near term, low-carbon alternative to today's gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles. A representative vehicle technology that runs on electricity in addition to conventional fuels was introduced into the MIT Emissions Prediction and...

The United States has adopted fuel economy standards that require increases in the on-road efficiency of new passenger vehicles, with the goal of reducing petroleum use and (more recently) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Understanding the cost and effectiveness of fuel economy standards, alone...

We estimate the potential synergy between pollution and climate control in the U.S. and China, summarizing the results as emissions cross-elasticities of control. In both countries, ancillary carbon reductions resulting from SO2 and NOx control tend to rise with the increased stringency of...

Hydrogen transportation has been proposed as a low-carbon alternative to the current gasoline-powered fleet. Using a computable general equilibrium model of the world economy, we explore the economic viability of hydrogen transportation in several different tax and carbon stabilisation policy...

Two computable general equilibrium models, one global and the other providing U.S. regional detail, are applied to analysis of the future of U.S. natural gas. The focus is on uncertainties including the scale and cost of gas resources, the costs of competing technologies, the pattern of...

We consider the cost of meeting emissions reduction targets consistent with a G8 proposal of a 50 percent global reduction in emissions by 2050, and an Obama Administration proposal of an 80 percent reduction over this period. We apply the MIT Emissions Prediction and Policy Analysis (EPPA),...

In 2007 the US Congress began considering a set of bills to implement a cap-and-trade system to limit the nation's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The MIT Integrated Global System Model (IGSM)-and its economic component, the Emissions Prediction and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model-were used to...