Abstract:The energy challenges facing society are as varied as they are great, and for this reason energy has become a key area to address in the twenty-first century.  Central among these concerns is the specter of global climate change.  The impact of energy production and consumption on the earth’s climate system has been well documented, and scientific studies now suggest that annual greenhouse gas emissions must be cut 50 to 80 per cent worldwide by 2050 in order to stabilize the climate and avoid the most destructive impacts of climate change.  Yet, despite the growing consensus for the need to mitigate emissions, the strategies for meeting these ambitious targets have not been clearly defined, and the technology and policy options are not well enough understood.  Given this uncertainty, scenario analysis tools have emerged as a useful way to inform the policy debate by envisioning the potential evolution of energy systems over time.  This dissertation describes three separate scenario analysis projects, each of which looks at the potential for a dramatic transformation of the energy system over the long term at varying geographic and sectoral scales.  First, the 80in50 study analyzes the various pathways for making deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions across all subsectors of U.S. transport system.  The CA-TIMES project then takes this work to the next level by developing an energy-engineering-environmental-economic optimization model for the California energy system, in order to bring economics and dynamics into the analysis, as well as to study the interactions between transport and the various other energy producing and consuming sectors.  Finally, a collaborative project with scientists at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) is described, in which a global systems engineering optimization model (MESSAGE) and a global climate model (MAGICC) are jointly utilized to evaluate synergies and trade-offs between a variety of energy objectives (climate mitigation, air pollution, energy security, and affordability).  

Note:Ph.D. Dissertation