Integrated Territorial Economic Approach for the Climate: The economics of local climate action plans.

This research project is being conducted in partnership with LEPII, CSTB, PACTE, Veolia and ENERDATA.

The Local Climate Action Plans set energy objectives and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction targets at territory level. Nevertheless, the question of what means must be implemented in order to meet these objectives remains to be resolved. The aim of this project is to develop a methodology for defining and prioritising the actions to be launched based on technical-economic criteria.

In line with the “think globally, act locally” approach, the need to take measures required at the national and international levels to the local level via specific initiatives is becoming more urgent. The project falls within this context, which updates needs for radical changes in infrastructure, technology and patterns of behaviour. It first aims to develop a rigorous methodological framework for identifying, quantifying and economically analysing all options for reducing GHG emissions in urban areas, and then organising the different actions required in order to build a cost-effective programme. But it also aims to reveal the specific data and implementation problems for the method proposed, by applying it to the case of the Communauté d’Agglomération de Grenoble (French metropolitan government structure for Grenoble).

Until now, the issue of cost-effectiveness has been successfully applied to international negotiations (European Emissions Trading Scheme – EU-ETS) and to national policies. Energy-economy or sectoral energy models have made it possible to simulate different policies and especially to build sets of marginal abatement cost curves (MACCs). These mechanisms are highly efficient tools for analysing different aspects of climate policies, particularly seeking to reduce the global cost through a certain levelling of the marginal costs of sectoral initiatives.

The “Integrated Territorial Economic Approach for the Climate” (AETIC) project aims to reproduce this approach based on a high level of micro-economic consistency at another scale, that of local authorities’ climate policies.

Our strategy is to consider the city as a complex system for producing and consuming energy that requires an integrated approach to the study of emissions reduction policies. We have singled out three areas that all interact closely, making us all the more determined to tackle them together. They are: the transport sector in connection with land use, which must constitute a systemic dimension that structures other policies (use of the TRANUS model); the building sector and improvements in energy efficiency, especially in existing buildings stock; and finally the production and distribution of renewable and local energies.

Contact: Benoit Lefèvre