En-ROADS June 2023: Summary of New Features

June 1, 2023 by Climate Interactive

The June 2023 update to the En-ROADS Climate Solutions Simulator incorporates major improvements and additions, including a new Baseline Scenario that accounts for the economic impact of climate change; many new sliders and graphs; and model improvements to the land, forests, food, and electrification sectors. Read further or check out the video below for more:

A new Baseline Scenario

The En-ROADS Baseline Scenario now results in a temperature increase by 2100 of 3.3°C rather than 3.6°C. The Baseline Scenario represents the state of the world if societal and technological changes were to continue at their current rate of progress, without additional policies or action. Most of the change in the Baseline temperature is due to the addition of the economic impact of climate change. However, other modeling changes led to updates across other variables, for example, there are more renewables and electrification, and less coal and oil.

Economic damage from climate change in the Baseline Scenario

Impacts of climate change—such as sea level rise, droughts, flooding, migration, and others—slow global economic growth and result in less energy demand, leading to fewer greenhouse gas emissions. The estimated effect of temperature change on global economic growth is known as the economic “damage function” and was previously optional in En-ROADS but is now default in the June 2023 version. Due to the damage function, the Baseline Scenario now has a lower temperature in 2100. The impact of temperature on economic growth slightly diminishes the effectiveness of climate policies through a compensating feedback mechanism.

Improvements to land, forest, and agriculture sectors

The largest structural addition to En-ROADS is the detailed modeling of land types such as forests and farmland, tracking the conversion between types, and the integration with the energy sector and the carbon cycle. The main implication of these improvements is that protecting forests from deforestation and degradation avoids increases in emissions and preserves forests’ carbon removal capacity. These changes also introduce new policy options for food and agriculture and a more accurate assessment of bioenergy.

Deforestation, forest degradation, and land protection

En-ROADS now includes the dynamics of forest aging, degradation, and loss, along with policies and actions that cause forest land changes. As a result, the main Deforestation slider now simulates both deforestation (the permanent clearing of forest land for farmland or other use) and mature forest degradation (harvesting an older forest and replacing it with a new forest).

Both deforestation and mature forest degradation release carbon emissions from biomass and soil disturbance into the atmosphere. On the other hand, actions that preserve forests, such as reducing the use of wood for bioenergy or enforcing forest protection policies, prevent the release of stored carbon and enhance the land’s carbon sequestration capacity. Users can explore these insights using new graphs such as “CO₂ Removals from Land” and “Carbon in Forests.”

New food and agriculture sliders

The new “Food from animals” and “Food waste” sliders in the advanced view for Deforestation enable users to test the impact of more plant-based diets and less food waste. These actions directly affect the deforestation rate and greenhouse gas emissions (in particular, CO₂ emissions and removals from forests, and N₂O and CH₄ emissions from agriculture). The “Adoption of agricultural best practices” slider in the Methane & Other Gases advanced view provides another option to further reduce emissions of N₂O and CH₄.

Bioenergy from wood and other feedstocks

The June 2023 model improvements to the land-use sector account for the full effect of bioenergy on the climate by incorporating emissions and removals from land into the carbon cycle. Furthermore, En-ROADS now captures the effect wood bioenergy has on both mature forest degradation and the carbon removal capacity of forests.

As a result, three feedstocks (wood, crops, and waste/other) can be separately subsidized or taxed in the Bioenergy advanced view. A set of new graphs, such as “CO₂ Net Emissions from Forest Bioenergy” and “CO₂ Removals from Land,” can be used to explore their impact.

Electrification improvements

The electrification sectors for transportation, buildings, and industry were improved by tying the adoption of electric vehicles and electric equipment in buildings and industry to market, financial, and policy drivers, as opposed to mandating electrification success, as in previous versions of En-ROADS. The main sliders for electrification now add a subsidy to the purchase cost of either electric vehicles (for the Transport Electrification slider) or electric equipment (for the Buildings and Industry Electrification slider). Additionally, increasing the main Transport Electrification slider also scales up charging infrastructure to support electrification.

In the advanced view for the Electrification sliders, there are additional controls to build charging infrastructure and restrict fuel-based alternatives. Users can compare the results in new graphs such as the “Electric Share of Transport Sales” and “Cost Ratio of Electric to Fuel-Powered Equipment.”

Carbon Price update

The En-ROADS Baseline Scenario now includes a default carbon price set at $5/ton CO₂. The value reflects the current global average, based on the 26% of the world’s carbon emissions covered by a carbon tax or emissions trading system as of 2021¹.

By default in En-ROADS, a carbon price does not price the emissions from bioenergy, reflecting the current reality of carbon pricing around the world. Given that bioenergy does release CO₂, users can decide to change this setting by using the new “Carbon price applies to bioenergy emissions” switch in the advanced view of the Carbon Price slider.

The Carbon Price slider encourages the development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies, since most carbon price policies only tax the energy sources when they emit CO₂. Because the deployment of CCS technologies at large scales is not guaranteed, users can prevent a carbon price from encouraging CCS by turning off the new “Carbon price encourages carbon capture and storage (CCS)” switch located in the advanced view.

Previous versions of En-ROADS allowed users to subsidize CCS technology. Direct subsidies of CCS in En-ROADS have been removed, and improvements to CCS modeling are planned for future releases.

Other Improvements

Aside from the many changes and improvements mentioned above, the June 2023 release of En-ROADS includes a range of smaller improvements. Some of the notable ones include:

• A redesigned En-ROADS Technical Reference with improved navigation and documentation features
• Under the Graphs menu, the Impacts graphs now top the list for easy navigation.
• In various areas, graphs have been organized by subcategories.
• The previous switch “Stop building new coal infrastructure” is now the “Reduce new coal infrastructure” slider representing varying degrees of societal resistance.
• A user can now hover over the temperature on the main screen to reveal the estimated temperature with expanded significant digits.