Consultancy Support for Energy and Greenhouse Gas Analyses for the Danish Energy Agency

Higher energy efficiency and increased deployment and integration of renewable energy are key mitigation strategies for reducing anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and thus combating climate change. Developing economies constitute a particular challenge in this regard, often lacking the technological development or the financial resources to invest in a greater share of renewable energy within the context of sustainable development. Within the last decade, industrial greenhouse gas emission from the non-Annex B Kyoto countries surpassed those of the Annex B (Boden et al., 2013). In light of this, developed counties, such as Denmark, have the opportunity to lend their expertise to developing regions of the world in order to promote sustainable development through energy efficiency and renewable energy development. Part of this process involves identification of opportunities for renewable energy expansion and energy efficiency improvements, under the framework of integrated assessment of mitigation instruments. Herein, we describe a model-based approach for integrated assessment that takes into account both developed and developing regions of the world within the global context. Integrated Assessment models were designed to identify the least expensive mitigation options. The linkage between energy, economics, and the environment within the integrated assessment framework provides a tool that leads to better understanding of how to most optimally meet specific energy, environmental, or climate constraints. Included in integrated assessment models are mitigation potentials for each global region and sector, costs, different technology penetration levels and efficiency improvements and their effect on climate mitigation, and comparison of different policy and regulatory instruments.