The Joint Global Change Research Institute (JGCRI) of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is the home and primary development institution for GCAM, a multisector model for exploring consequences of and responses to global to local changes and stressors. Regional energy, water, land, and economic systems are connected to the rest of the globe through trade and interactions with environmental systems. These systems are also connected with each other. Multisector models such as GCAM capture these interconnected impacts in an economic framework in order to explore these dynamic interactions and feedbacks between regions and sectors.
GCAM has been developed at PNNL-JGCRI for over 20 years and is a freely available community model and documented online (See below). The team at JGCRI is comprised of physical scientists, engineers, economists, energy experts, forest ecologists, agricultural scientists, and environmental system scientists who develop the model and apply it to a range of research questions. The JGCRI team works closely with the developers of other Earth system and ecosystem models to integrate the effects of human actions modeled in GCAM into their research.
GCAM is a dynamic-recursive model with technology-rich representations of the economy, energy sector, land use, and water linked to a reduced complexity Earth system model that can be used to explore many science and decision-relevant questions including the effects of changes in trade patterns, critical minerals & materials availability, and deployment of energy technologies on human and Earth systems. Regional population and labor productivity growth assumptions drive the energy and land-use systems, employing numerous technology options to produce, transform, and provide energy services, as well as to produce agriculture and forest products, and to determine land use and land cover. Using a run period extending from 1990 – 2100 (historical years through 2021) with annual results computed at 1-5 year intervals, GCAM has been used to explore the potential role of emerging energy supply technologies and the consequences of specific measures or energy technology adoption, including bioenergy; critical minerals & materials; hydrogen systems; nuclear energy; renewable energy technologies; carbon capture, storage, and utilization and energy use technology in buildings, industry, and the transportation sectors. GCAM outputs include projections of future energy and critical mineral supply, trade, and demand and the resulting radiative forcing and other effects of 16 greenhouse gases, aerosols, and short-lived species at 0.5×0.5 degree resolution, contingent on assumptions about future population, economy, technology, trade and other polices.
This section outlines some suggested language which the GCAM user community can employ to describe GCAM in papers in peer-reviewed journal articles, reports, or other public documents using GCAM or versions of GCAM. GCAM is under continuous development. The suggested language for the opening paragraphs of a methodology or introduction section of a paper describing GCAM is as follows:
"The Global Change Analysis Model (GCAM) is a multisector model developed and maintained at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Joint Global Change Research Institute (JGCRI, 2023) <include additional citations to previous GCAM studies as relevant>. GCAM is an open-source community model. In this study, we use GCAM v NN. The documentation of the model is available at the GCAM documentation page (http://jgcri.github.io/gcam-doc) and the description below is a summary. GCAM includes representations of: economy, energy, agriculture, and water supply in 32 geopolitical regions across the globe; their GHG and air pollutant emissions and global GHG concentrations, radiative forcing, and temperature change; and the associated land allocation, water use, and agriculture production across 396 land sub-regions and 235 water basins. <If using GCAM-USA, include without quotes: "This study uses a U.S.-focused version of GCAM called GCAM-USA that includes representation of energy, economy, and water systems for the fifty states and the District of Columbia in addition to 31 regions outside of the United States.”>. The version of GCAM used in this study is available – along with full source code and instructions for use – in a public repository <include citation including link to the GCAM repository with doi used in paper>.
Subsequent paragraphs of the description might expound on particular capabilities, systems, or sectors of focus in the paper. Details in the GCAM documentation page can be used as a reference to develop these paragraphs.
Community users of GCAM might also undertake their own model developments and/or assumptions for papers. It is recommended that these departures from the publicly available version of the model be clearly described. In addition, if these developments are substantial, we suggest making this clear by including an additional phrase (e.g. region name or name of institution) in the name of the model and explicitly calling it out in place of or immediately following the italicized portion in the above paragraphs. For example: "This study uses a modified version of GCAM/GCAM-USA called GCAM-<institution name>/GCAM-USA-<institution name>. GCAM-<institution name>/GCAM-USA-<institution name> incorporates additional details and modified assumptions from GCAM v NN as described subsequently".
- GCAM Documentation
- Getting Started with GCAM
- GCAM Community
- GCAM Videos and Tutorial Slides
- GCAM Citation and Co-authorship Guidelines
Calvin, K., Patel, P., Clarke, L., Asrar, G., Bond-Lamberty, B., Cui, R. Y., Di Vittorio, A., Dorheim, K., Edmonds, J., Hartin, C., Hejazi, M., Horowitz, R., Iyer, G., Kyle, P., Kim, S., Link, R., McJeon, H., Smith, S. J., Snyder, A., Waldhoff, S., and Wise, M.: GCAM v5.1: representing the linkages between energy, water, land, climate, and economic systems, Geosci. Model Dev., 12, 677–698, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-12-677-2019, 2019.
Edmonds, J., and J. Reilly (1985)Global Energy: Assessing the Future (Oxford University Press, New York) pp.317.
Edmonds, J., M. Wise, H. Pitcher, R. Richels, T. Wigley, and C. MacCracken. (1997) “An Integrated Assessment of Climate Change and the Accelerated Introduction of Advanced Energy Technologies”, Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, 1, pp. 311-39
Kim, S.H., J. Edmonds, J. Lurz, S. J. Smith, and M. Wise (2006) “The ObjECTS Framework for Integrated Assessment: Hybrid Modeling of Transportation ” Energy Journal (Special Issue #2) pp 51-80.
