GCAM Europe 7.2.0: Enhancing Policy Relevant Climate Modelling Through Spatial and Sectoral Detail
van de Ven, Dirk-Jan; Sampedro, Jon; Rodés-Bachs, Clàudia; Horowitz, Russell; Koasidis, Konstantinos
- Publisher
- Zenodo
- Language
- en
Abstract
Abstract:GCAM-Europe is an enhanced version of the Global Change Analysis Model (GCAM) that provides detailed, country-level modelling of Europe’s energy, economic, land use, and climate systems. Unlike the core GCAM model, which aggregates Europe into five regions, GCAM-Europe disaggregates all European countries to support more precise analysis of national climate and energy policies. It incorporates high-quality, country-specific data from Eurostat and other sources to improve accuracy, especially in the residential and electricity sectors. The model introduces several innovations, including detailed representations of electricity grid regions aligned with ENTSO-E’s TYNDP scenarios, a refined trade structure for the European Economic Area, and the integration of consumer heterogeneity based on real-world survey data. Also, the model maintains the integration of energy, land, water and climate systems as in the global version, but without a higher resolution of land regions. These features enable realistic simulations of cross-border electricity flows, energy and climate policy impacts, and distributional effects of policy measures. By significantly improving spatial, sectoral, and socio-economic detail, GCAM-Europe offers a powerful tool for assessing climate mitigation strategies across Europe. It enables policymakers and researchers to explore scenarios for efficient decarbonization while considering economic integration, social equity and sustainability challenges.This poster will be presented at the IAMC Annual Meeting 2025, Onsite Poster Festival Session 1. The session takes place on Tuesday, 11th November, 2025.
Full text
Jon Sampedro1 Russell Horowitz1 Clàudia Rodés Bachs1 Konstantinos Koasidis2 Dirk-Jan Van de Ven1 1Basque Center for Climate Change (BC3) 2National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) •Building upon previously developed structures that deep dive into a single country (e.g., GCAM-USA and GCAM-China), GCAMEurope includes higher geographic and sectoral granularity. •Making use of Europe-specific data sources, the model increases technological richness and data accuracy for European countries (at different levels depending on country data), while also adding structural improvements, in electricity, buildings, trade, and for country-basin combinations for land and water sectors. •The resulting fully open-source model is highly applicable for assessing detailed European energy, land and climate policy (Frilingou et al, 2025), and the multiscale implications thereof (Rodés-Bachs et al, 2025). CONTACT [email protected] [email protected] GCAM-Europe 7.2.0: Enhancing Policy-Relevant Climate Modelling Through Spatial and Sectoral Detail This research is funded by the European Union’s Horizon research program DIAMOND under grant agreement 101081179 Major structural changes Eurostat Energy Balances Adapting data source of all energy flows from IEA to Eurostat (where applicable) and extending granularity of residential building services. Heat pump integration Using country -specific data, a variety of heat pump technologies (air -to-air, air-to-water, geo-to-water and solar thermal) have been included and calibrated for residential and commercial heating and hot water. Electricity load segments Electricity demand in all regions has been split up in 4 segments (peak, sub -peak, intermediate and off-peak) based on hourly net load (after subtracting intermittent supply), with hourly demand and technology contribution to each segment defined by an openTEPES simulation (Ramos et al, 2022) of the “National trends” scenario of the ENTSO -E “Ten-Year Network Development Plans”. Electricity storage is added which transfers load between segments with differentiated generation costs. European Economic Area (EEA) trade block The EEA (EU -27, Norway and Iceland) is modelled as a single trade entity for global trade of all commodities (energy, agricultural, industrial), while internal trade is represented with lower trade friction and costs. 18th IAMC Annual Meeting 11 –13 November, 2025 GCAM-core representation of Europe GCAM-Europe: Full country-level disaggregating with different levels of data depth Grid region structure Land-water region structure www.climate-diamond.eu Expansion from 32 to 66 separate regions, of which - 39 instead of 5 in Europe - Interconnected electricity grid between 36 countries/regions - 119 separate European land regions (basincountry combinations) Spain – Douro basin Portugal – Douro basin Open-source model repository: Documentation paper: •Frilingou, N. et al. Cost-optimal vs. policy-driven scenarios for a decarbonised European energy system . Preprint at https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-7847096/v1 (2025). •Rodés-Bachs, C. et al. A Socioeconomic Assessment of Projected Health Impacts from Outdoor Air Pollution under Current European Climate Policy . Preprint at https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5597772 (2025). •Ramos, A., Alvarez, E. F., and Lumbreras, S.: OpenTEPES: Opensource Transmission and Generation Expansion Planning , SoftwareX, 18, 101070, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.softx.2022.101070 (2022).
