Tracing Macroeconomic Impacts of Individual Behavioral Changes through Model Integration

Abstract

The discourse on climate change stresses the importance of individual behavioral changes and shifts in social norms to assist both climate mitigation efforts worldwide. A design of an effective and efficient climate policy calls for decision support tools that are able to quantify cumulative impacts of individual behaviour and can integrate bottom-up processes into the traditional decision support tools. We propose an integrated system of models that combines strengths of macro and micro approaches to trace the cross-scale feedbacks in socio-economic processes in residential energy markets at provincial and national scales. This paper explores the feasibility of such hybrid models to study dynamic effects of climate change mitigation policy measures targeted at changes in residential energy use practices. We present an example of an agent-based energy model (BENCH) integrated with a EU-EMS computable general equilibrium model. We discusses methodological advancements and open challenges with respect to the integrated system of models.