Decarbonization Pathways

Understanding the transition to a net-zero economy in the U.S. requires a holistic approach that considers the global economy, the interdependencies between economic sectors, and provides transparency on assumptions for transitions across sectors.

The Global Change Analysis Model (GCAM), PNNL's flagship human-Earth systems model, links economic, energy, land-use, water, and climate systems in a technology-rich model. GCAM is one of the models chosen to create scenarios for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth and Sixth assessment reports (IPCC AR5 and AR6). GCAM is an open-source community model publicly available on GitHub. GCAM-USA is a version of GCAM with state-level details in the United States.

More specifically, GCAM provides insight on the co-evolution of key sectors of economies, resulting in coordinated insight for maintaining reliable infrastructure and associated financial support. Sectors include agriculture, industry, transportation, and electricity. The model is used to understand the impacts of climate, climate policy, socioeconomic change, and technology change on global and national-scale energy technology deployment, greenhouse gas emissions, land use change, and water use.

GCAM is used extensively by the Department of Energy, other national and international agencies, and research institutes.

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Data & Results

GCAM-USA Scenarios for GODEEEP U.S. State-level Projections of the Spatial Distribution of Population U.S. Climate Simulations - Thermodynamic Global Warming (TGW) U.S. County Projections of Hourly Meteorology under Climate Change U.S. Balancing Authority Projections of Hourly Meteorology under Climate Change Updated Projections of Residential Energy Consumption across Multiple Income Groups under Decarbonization Scenarios using GCAM-USA