The Global Calculator The Global Calculator The Global Calculator

The Global Calculator


The Global Calculatorwww.globalcalculator.org

The Global CalculatorHow to use this pack

This slide pack is designed so that you can select slides to build your own presentation that will suit your interests, your audience and the time you have available.

The Global Calculator team recommend demonstrating the tool live as part of your presentation, so that you can show how it works, show the key messages from our report, and get the audience debating different options. You can download example speaking notes from www.globalcalculator.org to help you do this.

However, we have included slides that summarise how the tool works and the key messages in case you are unable to demonstrate the tool live.

The Global CalculatorContents

This slide pack is split into different sections to help you build your presentation. The sections are:

•Context (slide 4)

•Introducing the Global Calculator (slide 8)

•Demonstrating the Global Calculator tool (if you do not have access to the online version) (slide 14)

•Key messages from the report “Prosperous living for the world in 2050” (if you do not have access to the online version) (slide 25)

•Project background (slide 44)

•How the model works (slide 52)

•Follow-up activities (slide 68)


Context

The Global CalculatorWhat will the future look like?

By 2050:

•the global population could rise from 7 billion to 10 billion

•the global economy is expected to triple in size

•energy demand could increase by around 70%

•food demand could rise by around 45%

This will significantly increase greenhouse gas emissions if we do not take action.

The Global CalculatorWhat will our climate be like?

If global emissions continue to rise rapidly this century: •the global mean temperature could increase by 6°C in the long term.•sea levels could rise, changing coastlines worldwide •precipitation patterns are likely to change so that dry parts of the world will get drier and the rainy parts will get wetter•fragile ecosystems will be put at risk•some extreme weather events will be more common•oceans will become more acidic, damaging marine life

These changes will put human lives and livelihoods at risk. The cost of adapting and responding to climate change could be huge.

The Global CalculatorWhat can we do?

• The world’s governments have agreed that we should limit climate change so that the world average temperature increase is kept below 2°C

• Is this possible? What actions do we need to take?

To find out, a group of experts from around the world built the Global Calculator.


Introducing the Global Calculator

The Global CalculatorThe Global Calculator

A free and interactive tool that helps you to understand the link between our lifestyles, the energy we use, and the consequences for our climate.

Available at www.globalcalculator.org

The Global CalculatorWhat is it?

• The Global Calculator puts you in charge of the world’s energy, land and food systems to 2050

• It includes the full range of possible scenarios for the future, as determined by international experts

• It instantly works out the implications of your choices so you can see the impact on people’s lifestyles, the energy system and the climate

The Global CalculatorThree principles behind the tool

1. Openness – an Excel-based tool which is fully published and available free online

2. Collaboration – built by a global team with input from hundreds of experts

1. Simplicity – modelling the world as simply as possible, while still including all energy, emissions and a full range of future scenarios

The Global CalculatorDeveloping “pathways”

• Build your own pathway to 2050 that reaches the 2°C target by making choices using 40 “levers” that vary the way we live in the future.

• Alternatively, explore pathways from businesses, NGOs and research institutes, including:


Who can use the Global Calculator?

• Businesses – for long-term planning (e.g. the future of their sector and which technologies to invest in) and to see the impact they can have on emissions (e.g. improving efficiency)

• NGOs – informing long-term strategies and campaigns (e.g. lobbying for technologies/changes that have the most impact)

• Governments – understanding what the 2°C target means, and using benchmarks from the tool to align themselves with it

• Universities/schools – students can discover the impact of mitigation options themselves.


Demonstrating the Global Calculator tool

The Global CalculatorHow does it work?

Interactive web interface


40 “levers” to let you vary the way we live in the future



Graphs let you explore the impacts of your choices




Graph shows cumulative emissions and thermometer shows temperature change




Graph shows cumulative emissions and thermometer shows temperature change

You can build your own pathway using the levers or select from a list of examples here

The Global CalculatorThe 2°C goal

• The grey cumulative emissions graph shows the total emissions out to 2100 based on your choices

• The red line shows what cumulative emissions need to be for a 50% chance of limiting climate change to 2°C and below.

• This can act as an indicative goal when building a pathway – how would you reduce emissions until the grey column hits the red line?

The Global CalculatorThe “levers”

• Each lever relates to a type of action to reduce emissions, e.g. building nuclear power stations or using more public transport

• Each lever has four options – levels 1 to level 4 – which the user selects. This represents the full range of what is possible for this action up to 2050:

Level 1:minimum abatement

effort

Level 2: ambitious but

achievable

Level 3: very ambitious but

achievable

Level 4: extraordinarily ambitious and

extreme

Increasing abatement effort

The Global CalculatorExample: nuclear power

Level 1:0 GW by 2050

Level 2: 685 GW by 2050

Level 3: 1030 GW by 2050

Level 4: 1870 GW by 2050

Inc

rea

sin

g a

ba

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en

t e

ffo

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Example: travel mode (switch to public transport)

Level 4:29% of journeys by

car

Level 3: 43% of journeys by

car


car


car

Inc

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g a

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The Global CalculatorOutputs

The Global Calculator lets you explore the impact of your choices in detail:

•Overview – summary of energy and emissions

•Lifestyle – our homes, travel and diet

•Technology and fuels – how we power the world, and how much fossil fuel resources we have left

•Land and food – how much land is used for forests and food production

•Climate – maps showing temperature and precipitation change, and ocean acidification

•Costs – the cost of the total energy system


Key messages

The Global CalculatorA positive vision of the future

This report uses evidence from the Global Calculator to show that:

1.The world could eat well, travel more and live in more comfortable homes and prevent dangerous climate change

2.But to do so, we need to transform the technologies and fuels we use

3.We also need to make smarter use of our limited land resources and expand forests by around 5-15% by 2050

The Global CalculatorA positive vision of the future

Where did these findings come from?


1. Take a business as usual pathway

The International Energy Agency’s 6DS is a version of “business as usual” (BAU) for the world. It shows that by 2100, temperatures could rise between 2 and 6°C.



This is because energy demand is expected to increase significantly in the future, particularly from manufacturing.

80% of this demand will be met by burning fossil fuels.



For example, electricity supply comes mostly from coal (red), oil (blue) and gas (green):


2. Keep BAU improvements in people’s lifestyles

BAU predictions include significant improvements in world average lifestyles, concentrated in the developing world.



For example, people will live in bigger homes and own more appliances.



They will travel more, and more of this travel will be by car.



People will eat more food on average per day, including more meat (UN FAO projection).


3. Change the technologies and fuels we use

To keep BAU improvements in world average lifestyle and still meet the 2°C target, we must use more efficient technologies and low-carbon sources of energy.

This require a massive and urgent effort across all sectors – electricity, buildings, transport and manufacturing.



The electricity sector must phase out unabated coal oil and gas by 2050. For example:



Vehicles will need to become much more efficient. And up to 35% of cars will need to be electric- or hydrogen-powered by 2050.



25 to 50% of homes will need to heat their homes using electric or zero-carbon sources by 2050.

Buildings will also need to become much more efficient, with significantly more insulation.

The Global Calculator4. Make smarter use of our land

We must protect and expand our forests globally by around 5 to 15% by 2050 because forests act as a valuable carbon sink.

However, the world’s population is growing so will need more food in the future, and we may use bioenergy crops as well. This will put pressure on our limited land resources.


To remove this pressure and allow forests to grow, crop yields would need to increase by 40 to 60% by 2050.

Livestock yields will also need to increase, for example by feeding more cows with grain in enclosed systems.


Eating less meat on average would also reduce pressure on forests. For example, if everyone switched to the healthy diet as recommended by the World Health Organisation, with only 160 g of meat per day, this could save up to 15 GtCO2e per year by 2050. That’s the same as 1/3 of total global CO2 emissions in 2011.

The Global CalculatorHow did we get our results?

The report is based on four pathways built using the Global Calculator. These are the common features of these pathways:

•Lifestyle levers are set at the same level as the IEA 6DS business as usual scenario (with the exception of the “consumer activism” pathway, in which the levers “mode”, “occupancy & load”, “car own or hire”, “quantity of meat”, “type of meat” and “product lifespan & demand” are altered).

•All four pathways can be considered consistent with projected patterns of economic development.

•Population and urbanisation are set at the central UN projections (level 2).

•Emissions after 2050 are set at around level 2.8 to allow continued reductions toward zero.

•No level 1 or 4s selected in order to avoid extremely ambitious or pessimistic scenarios.

•No use of speculative greenhouse gas removal (GGR) technologies as these are unproven.

The Global CalculatorWhat is a “good lifestyle”

We have defined a “good lifestyle” as:

•World average lifestyle indicators around transport (e.g. how far people travel) and homes (e.g. how comfortably heated/cooled they are and how many appliances they have) continue to improve along a business as usual pathway.

•For diet, the world average food intake continues to increase as projected by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN, which by 2050 would exceed the levels recommended by the WHO for a healthy, active lifestyle (2,330 kcal/person/day, including 220 kcal from meat).

•In general, lifestyle indicators move towards the current levels seen in developed countries such as Europe.

Note that as the Global Calculator looks at world averages only.


Project background

The Global CalculatorOrigins

The Global Calculator is a spin-off of the UK’s 2050 Calculator, launched by the Department of Energy and Climate Change in 2010.

Available at: http://2050-calculator-tool.decc.gov.uk

The Global CalculatorThe 2050 Calculator family

Since then, around 20 countries, regions and territories have also built 2050 Calculators to help inform policy and increase public understanding of energy issues, including:

BelgiumChina

South Korea

South Africa

Brazil

Bangladesh

India

Indonesia

Hungary

Japan Mexico

Thailand VietnamColombiaNigeria New Zealand

Australia

Austria

The Global CalculatorMy2050

Some 2050 Calculators have “My2050” game versions, which can be used by the general public to help understand and debate the future of energy and the climate.

South Africa

Taiwan

The Global CalculatorPrinciples of the 2050 Calculator

• Relatively simple, engineering-based models designed for scenario testing

• Contain all energy and all emissions

• Completely open source - the underlying Excel model and documentation are published

• User friendly web-based interface means that non-experts can use them

• Shows the full range of potential ambition across sectors using a level 1 to 4 approach

• Involves external experts in the build of the tool and a public consultation

For more information, see www.2050.org.uk

The Global CalculatorThe Global Calculator team

• The project is funded by the UK Government’s International Climate Fund and Climate-KIC.

• The model was developed by the following organisations:

The Global CalculatorTeam structure

Sophie HartfieldTeam leader

Tom Bain

Lead modeller

Erica Thompson

Climate science and

impacts

Julien Pestiaux,

Benoit Lefevre &

Erin Cooper

Transport

Jeremy Woods,

Alexandre Strapasson

& Nicole Kalas

Land/bio/food

Anindya BhattacharyaElectricity and

fossil fuels

Markus WrobelVisuals

Zhang Bo

Buildings

Davide D’Ambrosio IEA support on data, peer review and stakeholder engagement

Michel Cornet

Materials

Support from Climate-KIC partners: Utrecht University, Netherlands; Potsdam Institute, Germany; Walker Institute, UK; Rothamsted Research, UK; University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France; Met Office, UK; and Tyndall Centre, UK.

Laura Aylett

Engagement

The Global CalculatorOpen consultation

• Hundreds of experts were consulted

• Workshops and meetings were held during the development phase in Washington DC, London, New Delhi, Beijing and Brussels

• A draft version was published in July 2014 with an open call for feedback

• The full version was launched on 28th January 2015 with events in London and Beijing


How the model works

The Global CalculatorAn Excel-based model

The basis of the Calculator model is an Excel spreadsheet, which has a more user-friendly, web-based interface.

The full Excel model is available to download online.


Principles behind the Global Calculator model

The abiding principle when building the Calculator is that the model should be:

“As simple as possible, but no simpler."

The Global CalculatorA global, long-term view

• The Global Calculator allows you to decide how global lifestyles, technologies, land use and demographics will change from now to 2050.

• In order to make the tool easy to use and understand the Global Calculator does not divide the world into separate countries.

• Instead you change world averages and totals only (for example, average diet, average car efficiency and total solar power capacity).

• You then choose the overall emissions trend from 2050 to 2100.


Principles behind the Global Calculator model

The Global Calculator is an engineering-based scenario model, which means that:

•it models the world’s energy supply and demand by modelling physical units such cars and power plants

•the user chooses the characteristics, deployment and use of these different technologies

•it makes no economics-based assumptions about the way behaviour is affected by supply and demand

•it doesn't automatically optimise the energy system based on price or any other factor

•it makes no assumption about geographical distribution

All scenarios are consistent with GDP growth projections.

The Global CalculatorModelling each sector

The Global Calculator separates the world into the following sectors:

•Transport

•Buildings

•Manufacturing

•Electricity

•Fossil fuels

•Land, bioenergy and food

All sectors work independently as much as possible, with no feedback loops.

Climate impacts and cost implications of the choices in these sectors are shown.

The Global CalculatorThe transport sector

• Covers all relevant transportation modes, including walking, cycling and international aviation

• Covers all technical options like electric and hydrogen vehicles, as well as increases in efficiency

• Rural areas and three different city types are modelled separately because they will have different opportunities to build public transport systems in the future

• Personal and freight transport demand can be varied.

The Global CalculatorBuildings

The calculator allows the user to choose:

•the warmth of our buildings in cold months and the heat in cool months

•the ownership of appliances and lighting

•the size of our buildings

•the "envelope" of our buildings (i.e. how well insulated they are)

•the technology we use for temperature control, cooking and lighting

•the efficiency of our appliances.

The Global CalculatorManufacturing

• The model splits manufacturing into:

– Iron, steel and aluminium

– Chemicals

– Cement

– Paper and other

• Users can explore the impact of changing product lifespans, recycling and smarter design in reducing product demand

• Process optimization, fuel switches, energy efficiency and carbon capture and storage (CCS) can be used to reduce the emissions associated with manufacturing

The Global CalculatorElectricity

• Electricity demand is set based on the user’s choices in other sectors

• The model ensures there is never insufficient electricity supply to meet demand

• If the user does not supply enough electricity from renewables, nuclear and CCS, the Calculator automatically gets it from unabated power stations (either fuelled by fossil fuels or bioenergy depending on the user’s choices)

• Electricity storage and demand shifting are included

The Global CalculatorFossil fuels and bioenergy

• Demand for solid, liquid and gas hydrocarbons is set in the other sectors

• The model first meets this demand with solid, liquid and gas bioenergy, the supply of which is set in the land, food and bioenergy sector

• If there is not enough bioenergy, the Calculator extracts, refines and burns fossil fuels

• The model can show you the fossil fuel reserves left in the ground, based on current estimates.

The Global CalculatorLand and food and bioenergy

• The model first allocates land needed to grow the world’s food based on the user’s choices around population, diet and land-use practices.

• If there is not enough existing farmland to feed the world, then the model will cut down forests to meet demand.

• If we need less farmland in the future because food demand has decreased or crop and livestock yields have increased, then the user can use this “surplus land” to regrow forests and/or grow bioenergy crops.

• The user also chooses whether to reduce the amount of food that people waste, and whether to use food and farm waste as bioenergy and animal feed.

The Global CalculatorBioenergy

• If the user is growing bioenergy crops, they can choose whether to produce solid or liquid biofuels. The model then uses this bioenergy as a replacement for fossil fuels (e.g. liquid in car engines or solid in power stations).

• Bioenergy is in principle carbon neutral, as it captures CO2 when the plants grow which is then released when it is used. However, the model allocates several indirect emissions to produce bioenergy, such as those attributed from agriculture (e.g. fertilisers, farm machines) and land use change (e.g. changes in soil carbon).

• The model can allow you to use bioenergy in CCS, which produces “negative emissions”, as the CO2 captured by the plants is stored underground.

The Global Calculator“Speculative” technologies

The Global Calculator allows you to use some technologies that are not available or are not used at a large scale at the moment:

•Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is included for both power generation (using gas, coal and possibly bioenergy) and manufacturing (e.g. steel and cement production).

•Greenhouse gas removal (GGR) technologies (that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere) are included in the “technology and fuels” tab.

•Nuclear fusion is not modelled as a separate technology because many experts do not believe that it could be significantly deployed by 2050. If you believe that nuclear fusion will be deployed, you could roughly simulate this by choosing a high nuclear scenario or by amending the data in the underlying spreadsheet.

The Global CalculatorClimate science

• The tool converts the total emissions released by 2100 into a range of plausible global average temperature change, using the latest evidence from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

• State-of-the-art climate models are used to visualise the possible regional impacts consistent with this range of temperature change, shown on maps in the climate tab.

• In the “basic physics” section you can also see results based on much simpler physical relationships. This shows how scientists' confidence in the global warming effect is derived not just from the results of complex climate models.

The Global CalculatorCosts

• The tool estimates the cost of the global energy system out to 2050, based on the user’s choices.

• This includes capital, operating and fuel costs, so it covers things like the cost of power stations, wind turbines, boilers, cars, trains, roads, fossil fuels and clean technology used in manufacturing.

• In the costs tab you can compare the cost in your pathway to many example pathways.

• Costs are uncertain looking this far into the future, so the model shows a range of possible cost totals.

• Since the Calculator does not have regional detail, we use US costs, taken mostly from the TIAM-UCL model.


Follow-up activities

The Global CalculatorTesting out ideas (quick activity)

• Start with the IEA’s 2DS pathway (a future where we keep climate change below 2°C)

• Ask audience: “What action or technology do you think could have a big impact on emissions?”

• Test out each suggestion using the Global Calculator by clicking on level 1 and then on 4. Does it have a big impact on emissions and temperature? Are any findings surprising?

• Try and identify the levers that have the biggest impact and discuss why this might be.

Remember: there is no one action that will make the world reach the 2°C target – action needs to be taken in all sectors.


Exploring the role of lifestyle (at least 20 minutes)

• The lifestyle section of the tool covers people’s average travel, homes and diet. Ask the audience for suggestions of how we can reduce the emissions associated with our lifestyles.

• Test out the suggestions using the tool. What changes have the biggest impact?

• Which actions do you think would be easier for people to take? Which actions would be harder to implement?

• What infrastructure, policies or education programmes would you implement to build a low-carbon future?


Start building a pathway 2°C together (at least 30 minutes)

• This activity works if you have access to only one screen, and can be used with a large group.

• The aim is to start with the IEA’s 6DS pathway and build a pathway that hits the 2°C line on the cumulative emissions graph.

• The speaker should explain each lever and what the choices are. The audience can then vote for levels 1, 2, 3 or 4. A suggested order for the levers is:– Nuclear, renewables and CCS– Travel, homes and diet– Transport, buildings and manufacturing– Food and land use– Demographics


Build a pathway 2°C pathway (at least 1 hour/homework assignment)

• If your audience have access to individual computers, split them into small groups. Ask them to start with the IEA’s 6DS business as usual pathway and see if they can design a 2°C pathway.

• Call the groups back together and ask each group to explain their choices and whether they learnt anything surprising.

• This can also work as a homework assignment – ask students to write a report on the choices they made and why they would recommend this pathway for the world. They can include a link to their pathway (click the “share” button to generate a unique URL).

Documents

The Global Calculator The Global Calculator The Global Calculator