MERGE

Name and contact of the organization

EPRI

3420 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, California 94304, USA

Tel: ++01 800-313-3774

Description of model

MERGE was designed to estimate the regional and global economic impacts of greenhouse gas reductions. The model is sufficiently to flexible to explore alternative views on a wide range of issues, such as: costs of abatement, damages from climate change, valuation and discounting. MERGE is made up of four submodels:

1. domestic and international economy;

2. energy-related emissions of greenhouse gases;

3. non-energy emissions of GHG's;

4. global climate change – market and non-market damages.

Particular relevance

The MERGE model is relevant to analysing the socio-economic impacts of climate change mitigation policies,  for example through taxation measures.

Coverage

World, split into 9 regions

Model applications

Scenario of greenhouse gas emissions and atmospheric concentrations - As part of this project , MERGE was used to run different climate change policy scenarios. The scenarios  explore the implications of alternative stabilization levels of  greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and they explicitly consider the economic and technological foundations of such response options (http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap2-1/finalreport/default.htm).

MERGE publications -  including working papers and journal articles (http://www.stanford.edu/group/MERGE/biblio.htm)

Organization's main area of research

Generation, delivery and use of electricity for the benefit of the public.

Other projects / reseach

n/a