IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/eneeco/v123y2023ics0140988323002487.html

Soft-linking a national computable general equilibrium model (ThreeME) with a detailed energy system model (IESA-Opt)

Author

Listed:
  • Fattahi, Amirhossein
  • Reynès, Frédéric
  • van der Zwaan, Bob
  • Sijm, Jos
  • Faaij, André

Abstract

Top-down CGE models are used to assess the economic impacts of climate change policies. However, these models do not represent the technologies and sources of greenhouse gas emissions as detailed as bottom-up energy system models. Linking a top-down CGE model with a bottom-up energy system model assures macroeconomic consistency while accounting for a detailed representation of energy and emission flows. While there is ample literature regarding the linking process, the corresponding details and underlying assumptions are barely described in detail. The present paper describes a step-by-step soft-linking process and its underlying assumptions, using the Netherlands as a case study. This soft-linking process increases the Dutch energy demand levels in 2050 by 19.5% on average compared to assumed exogenous levels. Moreover, the GDP in 2050 reduces by 5.5% compared to the baseline economic scenario. Furthermore, we identified high energy prices as the primary cause of this GDP reduction in the soft-linking process.

Suggested Citation

  • Fattahi, Amirhossein & Reynès, Frédéric & van der Zwaan, Bob & Sijm, Jos & Faaij, André, 2023. "Soft-linking a national computable general equilibrium model (ThreeME) with a detailed energy system model (IESA-Opt)," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 123(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:eneeco:v:123:y:2023:i:c:s0140988323002487
    DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2023.106750
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988323002487
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.eneco.2023.106750?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Garaffa, Rafael & Weitzel, Matthias & Vandyck, Toon & Keramidas, Kimon & Paul, Dowling & Tchung-Ming, Stéphane & Florian, Fosse & Ana, Diaz Vazquez & Jacques, Deprés & Peter, Russ & Schade, Burkhard &, 2022. "Energy-economy implications of the Glasgow pledges: a global stocktake of COP26," Conference papers 333425, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    2. Kenneth C. Hoffman & Dale W. Jorgenson, 1977. "Economic and Technological Models for Evaluation of Energy Policy," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 8(2), pages 444-466, Autumn.
    3. Krook-Riekkola, Anna & Berg, Charlotte & Ahlgren, Erik O. & Söderholm, Patrik, 2017. "Challenges in top-down and bottom-up soft-linking: Lessons from linking a Swedish energy system model with a CGE model," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 803-817.
    4. Patricia Fortes & Sofia Simões & Júlia Seixas & Denise Van Regemorter & Francisco Ferreira, 2013. "Top-down and bottom-up modelling to support low-carbon scenarios: climate policy implications," Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(3), pages 285-304, May.
    5. Wene, C.-O., 1996. "Energy-economy analysis: Linking the macroeconomic and systems engineering approaches," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 21(9), pages 809-824.
    6. van der Zwaan, B. C. C. & Gerlagh, R. & G. & Klaassen & Schrattenholzer, L., 2002. "Endogenous technological change in climate change modelling," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 1-19, January.
    7. repec:aen:journl:1992v13-01-a04 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Bulavskaya, Tatyana & Reynès, Frédéric, 2018. "Job creation and economic impact of renewable energy in the Netherlands," Renewable Energy, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 528-538.
    9. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/11505qn4ak95irt0cafaeim81j is not listed on IDEAS
    10. P. Capros & Denise Van Regemorter & Leonidas Paroussos & P. Karkatsoulis & C. Fragkiadakis & S. Tsani & I. Charalampidis & Tamas Revesz, 2013. "GEM-E3 Model Documentation," JRC Research Reports JRC83177, Joint Research Centre.
    11. Leonidas Mantzos & Tobias Wiesenthal & Frederik Neuwahl & Mate Rozsai, 2019. "The POTEnCIA Central scenario: An EU energy outlook to 2050," JRC Research Reports JRC118353, Joint Research Centre.
    12. KERAMIDAS Kimon & FOSSE Florian & DIAZ VAZQUEZ Ana & DOWLING Paul & GARAFFA Rafael & DESPRÉS Jacques & RUSS Hans Peter & SCHADE Burkhard & SCHMITZ Andreas & SORIA RAMIREZ Antonio & VANDYCK Toon & WEIT, 2021. "Global Energy and Climate Outlook 2021: Advancing towards climate neutrality," JRC Research Reports JRC126767, Joint Research Centre.
    13. Östblom, Göran & Berg, Charlotte, 2006. "The EMEC model: Version 2.0," Working Papers 96, National Institute of Economic Research.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Boonman, Hettie & Pisciella, Paolo & Reynès, Frédéric, 2024. "The macroeconomic impact of policy measures, technological progress and societal attitude in energy transition scenarios," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 297(C).
    2. Boonman, Hettie & Rodriguez, Mauricio, 2025. "Mitigating foreign fossil fuel shocks: The role of renewable energy and industrial electrification in The Netherlands," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    3. Fragkiadakis, Kostas & Paroussos, Leonidas & Di Stasi, Matteo & Tsiaras, Stelios & Uzagalieva, Ainura, 2025. "Soft linking the Italian energy and economic systems," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Xin Su & Frédéric Ghersi & Fei Teng & Gaëlle Treut & Meicong Liang, 2022. "The economic impact of a deep decarbonisation pathway for China: a hybrid model analysis through bottom-up and top-down linking," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 27(1), pages 1-37, January.
    2. Lekavičius, Vidas & Galinis, Arvydas & Miškinis, Vaclovas, 2019. "Long-term economic impacts of energy development scenarios: The role of domestic electricity generation," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 253(C), pages 1-1.
    3. Krook-Riekkola, Anna & Berg, Charlotte & Ahlgren, Erik O. & Söderholm, Patrik, 2017. "Challenges in top-down and bottom-up soft-linking: Lessons from linking a Swedish energy system model with a CGE model," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 803-817.
    4. Pisciella, Paolo & van Beesten, E. Ruben & Tomasgard, Asgeir, 2023. "Efficient coordination of top-down and bottom-up models for energy system design: An algorithmic approach," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 284(C).
    5. Helgesen, Per Ivar & Tomasgard, Asgeir, 2018. "From linking to integration of energy system models and computational general equilibrium models – Effects on equilibria and convergence," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 1218-1233.
    6. Chang, Miguel & Lund, Henrik & Thellufsen, Jakob Zinck & Østergaard, Poul Alberg, 2023. "Perspectives on purpose-driven coupling of energy system models," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 265(C).
    7. Durand-Lasserve, Olivier & Almutairi, Hossa & Aljarboua, Abdullah & Pierru, Axel & Pradhan, Shreekar & Murphy, Frederic, 2023. "Hard-linking a top-down economic model with a bottom-up energy system for an oil-exporting country with price controls," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 266(C).
    8. Willenbockel, Dirk, 2017. "Macroeconomic Effects of a Low-Carbon Electricity Transition in Kenya and Ghana: An Exploratory Dynamic General Equilibrium Analysis," MPRA Paper 78070, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Shahriyar Nasirov & Raúl O’Ryan & Héctor Osorio, 2020. "Decarbonization Tradeoffs: A Dynamic General Equilibrium Modeling Analysis for the Chilean Power Sector," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(19), pages 1-19, October.
    10. Javanmardi, Komar & van der Hilst, Floor & Fattahi, Amir & Camargo, Luis Ramirez & Faaij, André, 2025. "Unraveling the spatial complexity of national energy system models: A systematic review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 213(C).
    11. Fragkiadakis, Kostas & Paroussos, Leonidas & Di Stasi, Matteo & Tsiaras, Stelios & Uzagalieva, Ainura, 2025. "Soft linking the Italian energy and economic systems," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    12. Sophie Maire & Philippe Thalmann & Frank Vöhringer, 2019. "Welfare effects of technology-based climate policies in liberalized electricity markets: seeing beyond total system cost," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 155(1), pages 1-12, December.
    13. Gjorgiev, Blazhe & Garrison, Jared B. & Han, Xuejiao & Landis, Florian & van Nieuwkoop, Renger & Raycheva, Elena & Schwarz, Marius & Yan, Xuqian & Demiray, Turhan & Hug, Gabriela & Sansavini, Giovanni, 2022. "Nexus-e: A platform of interfaced high-resolution models for energy-economic assessments of future electricity systems," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 307(C).
    14. Jonas Zetterholm & Elina Bryngemark & Johan Ahlström & Patrik Söderholm & Simon Harvey & Elisabeth Wetterlund, 2020. "Economic Evaluation of Large-Scale Biorefinery Deployment: A Framework Integrating Dynamic Biomass Market and Techno-Economic Models," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(17), pages 1-28, September.
    15. Andersen, Kristoffer S. & Termansen, Lars B. & Gargiulo, Maurizio & Ó Gallachóirc, Brian P., 2019. "Bridging the gap using energy services: Demonstrating a novel framework for soft linking top-down and bottom-up models," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 277-293.
    16. Lee, Hwarang & Kang, Sung Won & Koo, Yoonmo, 2020. "A hybrid energy system model to evaluate the impact of climate policy on the manufacturing sector: Adoption of energy-efficient technologies and rebound effects," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 212(C).
    17. Le Treut, Gaëlle & Lefèvre, Julien & Lallana, Francisco & Bravo, Gonzalo, 2021. "The multi-level economic impacts of deep decarbonization strategies for the energy system," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).
    18. Coppens, Léo & Dietz, Simon & Venmans, Frank, 2025. "Optimal climate policy under exogenous and endogenous technical change: Making sense of the different approaches," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    19. Golombek, Rolf & Lind, Arne & Ringkjøb, Hans-Kristian & Seljom, Pernille, 2022. "The role of transmission and energy storage in European decarbonization towards 2050," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 239(PC).
    20. García-Gusano, Diego & Garraín, Daniel & Dufour, Javier, 2017. "Prospective life cycle assessment of the Spanish electricity production," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 21-34.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:eneeco:v:123:y:2023:i:c:s0140988323002487. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/eneco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.