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Value Proposition
Gas-CAP is a tool to evaluate the global emissions impact of national or sectoral emissions decisions. The user can set a global CO2 emission target and then develop trajectories consistent with that emissions limit. The analysis can be conducted at the national level or based on industrial sectors.
Gas-CAP and the Climate Bottom Line Gas-CAP is the simplest and one of the few publicly available tools that focuses solely on the climate bottom line: CO2 emissions and atmospheric concentration.Gas-CAP addresses the Impact (“I”) of the oft-referenced I=PAT equation: Impact (Emissions) = Population * Affluence (GDP per capita) * Technology (Emissions/GDP) Many existing climate & energy tools address the Technology (emissions/GDP) component of IPAT, and Gas-CAP does not attempt to replicate this work. Gas-CAP assumes that users have a familiarity with the population growth, GDP growth, and Technology dimensions of the climate challenge. The tool allows the user to summarize their knowledge into country- & sector-level emissions trajectories, thus focusing discussion on the focus of international target-setting: the climate bottom line of emissions & atmospheric concentration.Gas-CAP versus Other Emissions Models Only a handful of publicly available tools focus on the climate bottom line of emissions & atmospheric concentration. These existing tools are in some cases more sophisticated, but offer a limited set of scenarios and involve more complicated user interfaces. Existing tools include the FAIR model by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and the Contraction & Convergence model by the Global Commons Institute.Gas-CAP is designed to be a non-prescriptive, flexible sandbox with an immediately understandable interface. It offers experts and non-experts alike the opportunity to create emissions trajectories to fit any political perspective, and focuses discussion clearly on the climate bottom line. Last Updated: June 12, 2008 - 7:47pm |