Economy‐Energy‐Environment Simulation
本书介绍COMPASS模型，一个用于模拟全球能源和温室气体政策中期影响（2010-2020年）的投入产出+计量经济模型，涵盖60个国家或地区，特别关注东南亚经济。适合对构建或使用此类模型感兴趣的读者。
Kimio Uno (ed.). Economy-EnergyEnvironment Simulation. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002, 348 pp., $115.00. Accepting the commonly used characterization of the dependence of industrialized economies on fossil fuels as an addiction might lead one to label recent U.S. actions “a relapse.” By retreating from a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to a commitment to simply fund research on the relationship between these emissions and climatic change, the United States seems to have fallen from the third stage of recovery to the second. In truth, addiction does imply a sort of irrationality and U.S. backpedaling may appear irrational given recent estimates suggesting that substantial emissions reductions could occur with little or no net direct costs (direct costs of reductions less the value of energy savings). However, labeling these actions as irrational may trivialize the importance of the “additional implementation costs” and “other barriers” that must be overcome in order to realize these reductions. While additional implementation costs and other barriers are facts of life for all public policies, they pose particularly difficult challenges for efforts to reduce GHG emissions. Although there are a handful of reasons for this increased difficulty, perhaps the two most important involve the global nature of the causes and effects of climate change and the great degree of uncertainty associated with these causes and effects. Certainly, many environmental and social problems involve more than a single jurisdiction and, as a result, efforts to address these problems suffer from institutional shortcomings. However, few, if any, involve all of the world's jurisdictions the way climate change does. Additionally, the inherent difficulties associated with consensus building among so many disparately situated nations or regions are exacerbated by the degree of uncertainty surrounding GHG emissions reduction policies. This uncertainty, not only in the sense of how little is known about the phenomenon of climate change and the effects of our actions on it, but also in the sense how little is known about the economic and social effects of these policies, make them these policies difficult sell on both global and national levels. Given this environment, the U.S. government's decision to abandon the Kyoto Protocol is probably much less remarkable than the decisions of so many other governments not only to commit to Kyoto, but also to adhere to its terms in the face of defections. Ultimately, while nations and individuals may disagree over the urgency of, or even the need for, such policies, there is little disagreement over the desirability of reducing the uncertainty surrounding these policies. The book Economy-Energy-Environment Simulation describes a computer model designed for just such a purpose. COMPASS, or the Comprehensive Model for Policy Assess-ment, is an input-output + econometric model, designed to simulate the effects of global energy and GHG policies over the medium term (2010–2020). In general, input-output + econometric models attempt to overcome limitations of standard input-output models by endogenizing the linkages between factor inputs and final demand using econometrically derived equations. Since COMPASS is designed to capture interaction among the spheres of economy, energy, and the environment, its additions to the more standard input-output framework include a macroeconomic-financial model designed to capture the effects of changes in prices and income on final demand, an international trade model designed to capture interdependencies between countries, and an energy balance model designed to capture the interaction between CO2 emissions and the global economy. As a result of these additions, COMPASS is capable of generating energy balances and CO2 emissions for individual countries, and of providing multisector, multicountry economic information on production, trade, balance of payments, and saving and investment flows. While designed to produce a global picture (COMPASS covers 60 countries or regions which together account for 99.5% of global GDP), COMPASS places special emphasis on the economies of southeast Asia. The book itself is comprised of 12 chapters and a short appendix authored by a variety of individuals. The chapters are grouped by theme into four different sections. The first section, comprised entirely of the first chapter, serves to introduce readers to the sustainability issues in the overlapping spheres of energy, environment, and economics and to the COMPASS approach. The second section introduces the tools of analysis employed in the model, highlighting certain characteristics of the approach and describing the underlying framework of the model. Individual chapters describe the database system used by the model and the input-output, macrofinancial, international trade, and energy balance models that comprise the individual components of the COMPASS model. The third section covers the economic and energy prospects for the global community and several specific applications of the model. Individual chapters provide an overview of the environment in which GHG emissions policy will be formulated, proffer the results of a baseline simulation to validate the energy balance model, simulate the effects of a carbon tax on G7 countries, and analyze the interactions among energy production and use and the economies of southeast Asia, China, and Russia. The final section, like the first, is composed of a single chapter. This final chapter is perhaps the most generally useful of all as it examines comparable efforts by other researchers, providing an overview of a wide variety of other models and facilitating direct comparisons between COMPASS and these other models. Finally, there is a short appendix that discusses appending longer-term projections of the COMPASS model onto historical economic trends. The scope and complexity of factors involved in climate change policies exceed the capabilities of any single existing model or approach and, as a result, a combination of different approaches will be required. The stated goal of the COMPASS project is to provide an analytical tool capable of producing a global picture of the interaction between the energy, environmental, and economic spheres over the next few decades, but with detailed country resolution to allow decision-makers to evaluate the effects of global policies on individual countries. Perhaps the real value of this book is that it provides a means for evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the COMPASS approach for this specific task. More generally, the book should not be considered to be an introduction to either input-output + econometric modeling or the simulation of climate change policies. However, the volume is likely to appeal to those interested in constructing or using this type of model for climate or other multinational modeling, as it is quite illustrative of the many difficulties that will need to be overcome. Certainly, after reading the book one cannot fail to appreciate the great volume of data needed to support this type of model, the deficiencies in currently available data, and the ingenuity required to reconcile the two. However, by communicating both the strengths and weaknesses of COMPASS, this book allows us to have greater confidence in the use of this and similar models.