Low-carbon technologies have been identified as a key element for mitigating climate change, but a clear picture about the role of individual mitigation technologies has yet to emerge. The relative importance of mitigation technologies depends not only on their techno-economic characteristics and how they develop in the future, but also on the competition with other energy technologies, the development of future energy demand and the climate policy architecture.
A paper recently published on Climatic Change (among the authors, the CMCC researcher M. Tavoni) presented the results from the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum Study 27, an inter-comparison of 18 energy-economy and integrated assessment models.
The aim of the study was to explore the role of various low-carbon technologies in ambitious mitigation scenarios, including different assumptions about technology availability, energy demand and climate policies. The results provide a robust picture of the importance of individual technologies and the determining factors, and constitute a useful resource for climate policy makers.

The abstract of the paper:
This article presents the synthesis of results from the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum Study 27, an inter-comparison of 18 energy-economy and integrated assessment models. The study investigated the importance of individual mitigation options such as energy intensity improvements, carbon capture and storage (CCS), nuclear power, solar and wind power and bioenergy for climate mitigation. Limiting the atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration to 450 or 550 ppm CO2 equivalent by 2100 would require a decarbonization of the global energy system in the 21st century. Robust characteristics of the energy transformation are increased energy intensity improvements and the electrification of energy end use coupled with a fast decarbonization of the electricity sector. Non-electric energy end use is hardest to decarbonize, particularly in the transport sector. Technology is a key element of climate mitigation. Versatile technologies such as CCS and bioenergy are found to be most important, due in part to their combined ability to produce negative emissions. The importance of individual low-carbon electricity technologies is more limited due to the many alternatives in the sector. The scale of the energy transformation is larger for the 450 ppm than for the 550 ppm CO2e target. As a result, the achievability and the costs of the 450 ppm target are more sensitive to variations in technology availability.

Read the full paper:
Kriegler E., Weyant J., Blanford G. J. , Clarke L. E. , Edmonds J. , Fawcett A., Krey V., Luderer G., Riahi K., Richels R. G. , Rose S., Tavoni M., van Vuuren  D. P. 
The Role of Technology for Achieving Climate Policy Objectives: Overview of the EMF 27 Study on global technology and climate policy strategies

2014, Climatic Change, in press, DOI: 10.1007/s10584‐013‐0953‐7