Green Investment Barrier Model (GIBM)

The Green Investment Barrier Model (GIBM) is a system dynamics model designed to evaluate the macroeconomic (e.g. GDP) and socio-economic (e.g. unemployment) implications of different policy scenarios to close the green finance gap in the context of a green energy transition in the UK. A key feature of GIBM lies in its representation of a green finance gap that constraints a low-carbon energy transition (unless it is closed through a policy).

The model has been applied in two publications:

Hafner, S., Jones, A. & Anger-Kraavi, A. (forthcoming). Economic impacts of achieving a zero emissions target in the UK power sector. Journal of Cleaner Production.

In this publication, GIBM explores the long-term macroeconomic effects, and changes in the power system costs of different low-carbon electricity transition scenarios. The main purpose of this paper is to provide a holistic and reliable decision-support tool for policy decisions with respect to the speed of decarbonisation of the electricity supply sector.

Hafner, S., Jones, A., Anger-Kraavi, A. & Monasterolo, I. (under review). Closing the green finance gap within a green electricity transition: policy recommendations and economic consequences. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions.

In the second publication, GIBM is applied to demonstrate how policies contribute to scale up the green investment necessary to finance the low-carbon electricity infrastructure and to show what the related macroeconomic (e.g. GDP) and socioeconomic (e.g. unemployment) implications.

Available attachments

The developed model (GIBM) is freely downable from this URL (item entitled ‘Green Investment Barrier Model). In addition the time series data applied in this model is downloadable with the VDF-document ‘Timeseries 2016’. A full model documentation (and description) is available in the first publication, including as well as a more detailed description of the used data.

Moreover, all the tested policy scenarios as well as sensitivity analysis presented in the publications indicated above are available. Thereby, all vdfx documents starting with a ‘1’ (‘2’) refer to policies/scenarios presented in the first (second) publication.

Software

GIBM was built in Vensim 7 (https://vensim.com/vensim-7-release/) which should be used to run this model to reproduce the same output as presented in the two articles indicated above. Vensim 7 can be installed by using the following link (a free version is available): https://vensim.com/free-download/.