International climate policy architectures: Overview of the EMF 22 International Scenarios

This paper presents an overview of the study design for, and the results of, the EMF 22 International Scenarios. The EMF 22 International Scenarios engaged ten of the world's leading integrated assessment (IA) models to focus on the combined implications of three factors integral to international climate negotiations: (1) the long-term climate-related target, expressed in this study in terms of the CO2-equivalent (CO2-e) concentration associated with the GHGs regulated under the Kyoto Protocol, (2) whether or not this target can be temporarily exceeded prior to 2100 ("overshoot") allowing for greater near-term flexibility, and (3) the nature of international participation in emissions mitigation. The EMF 22 International Scenarios are based on combinations of these dimensions, embodied in ten specific climate-action cases that all modeling groups in the study attempted to represent. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.