GRACE model and applications

Abstract

This report is a documentation of the GRACE model. GRACE is a computable general equilibrium model aimed at supporting studies of the global consequences of human activities that affect the drivers of climate change. The model is comprehensive, in the sense that is comprises all economic activities in the world, as expressed by national accounts data, and links greenhouse gas emissions and impacts of climate change to these economic activities. It explains human responses to changes in socioeconomic drivers, policies and impacts of climate change by means of economic theories of production and consumption, and derive the socioeconomic consequences from the impacts on prices in market equilibrium. The comprehensiveness combined with the modelling of individual behaviour makes GRACE a tool for integrating knowledge from research with different perspectives and help derive dependencies between countries, sectors and scales. The report gives examples on how important these dependencies are for evaluations of climate policies and challenges related to the future impacts of climate change.