This fifth webinar of the JVI webinar series on climate change economics will discuss modelling climate change. The webinar looks at the challenges of modelling the impact of climate change mitigation and adaptation policies and provides an overview of the available techniques together with some specific examples. 

Climate change and climate policy have the common feature of implying an asymmetric impact on different economic activities, sectors and countries. As a result, climate policy’s impact, while appearing relatively modest on average, may hide large disproportionate effects for specific sectors. This, combined with uneven distribution of natural resources and differing sectoral structures across countries, may result in large differences in the impact of climate policies on the economy as well as international trade patterns. Given this complexity, Jean Chateau and Benjamin Carton will justify the use of large-scale economic models for climate policy analysis in their presentation and will provide some examples. 

Different empirical and economic modeling techniques exist for the assessment of climate-related extreme event risk and of adaptation measures to tackle those risks. Thomas Schinko will give an introduction to the concept and relevance of climate-related risk and provide an overview of relevant economic assessment approaches. This will be followed by a presentation of one such technique, that is of particular relevance for mainstreaming climate extreme risk into fiscal and budgetary planning. 

The JVI focus on climate change 

If greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated, global temperatures will keep on rising at an unprecedented pace, with catastrophic implications for lives and livelihoods worldwide. Economic policy has a pivotal role to play in changing the ways we produce and consume in order to slow climate change. 

Countries in the JVI region will not be spared the economic costs of rising temperatures nor the difficult task of transforming their economies within the next thirty years to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, this transformation also holds opportunities for countries in the region, such as public investment-triggered growth, good quality green jobs, and better health from reduced air pollution. 

In this context, the JVI will offer two new courses on the economics of climate change. The first one, “Climate Change and Green Finance”, coordinated by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Finance and the Austrian National Bank, took place for the first time June 14-18, 2021. The second one, “Climate Change Economics”, coordinated by the JVI faculty, will take place September 13-17, 2021. We encourage you to visit the course page and apply. 

To accompany these two courses, the JVI is running a webinar series on selected issues in climate change economics. In discussion with experts from the JVI partner organizations, academia, central banks, and other institutions, we are shedding light on topics such as the political economy of climate change, carbon taxation, the role of financial sector oversight, and macroeconomic modelling – with a special focus on the JVI region.