GSI Seminar - Frederic Ghersi: Economics of the Energy Transition

Economists explore the macroeconomics of energy transitions through models that standardly assume markets perfectly cleared by prices, and investments determined by the addition of constrained domestic and imported savings. We apply to France a compact Capital-Labour-Energy-Materials (KLEM) computable general equilibrium model to explore the costs of the French transition under these standard options versus under a variety of alternatives, i.e. imperfect factor markets and macroeconomic closures on investment or the trade deficit. Further, we modify our model’s capital accumulation rule and introduce autonomous energy efficiency gains to assess the consequences of such assumptions on modelling results. The range of obtained results testifies for the need to, first, systematically clarify, and, second, carefully adapt to the modelled economies and the exploration timeframe, the specifications of any economic model applied to energy transition assessment.

Frédéric Ghersi, HEC (1997), PhD, HDR, is a French CNRS Research Director assigned to the Centre International de Recherche sur l’environnement et le Développement (CIRED), Paris. Since 1997, he has been working on hybrid bottom-up and top-down modelling of economy-energy-environment (3E) interactions, which he applies to develop outlooks on the efficiency and equity consequences of climate policies and energy transitions.

His current research focuses on the macroeconomics of climate finance, on the macroeconomic and distributional impacts of the French National Low Carbon Strategy (SNBC) and on the transfer of the IMACLIM method (model and data hybridization) to international academic partners in the framework of the IMACLIM Network, which he coordinates, now extending to fourteen countries including France and the BRICS.