En-ROADS Technical Reference🔗

Last updated April 2024

Lori S. Siegel¹, Chris Campbell¹, Adem Delibas¹, Sibel Eker¹, Tom Fiddaman³, Travis Franck¹, Jack Homer², Andrew P. Jones¹, Charles Jones¹, Joshua Loughman¹, Stephanie McCauley¹, Elizabeth Sawin¹, Chris Soderquist⁵, John Sterman⁴

¹ Climate Interactive
² Homer Consulting
³ Ventana Systems
⁴ Massachusetts Institute of Technology
⁵ Pontifex Consulting

Introduction🔗

The En-ROADS Climate Solutions Simulator is a climate simulation tool for understanding how we can achieve our climate goals through changes in energy, land use, consumption, agriculture, and other policies. En-ROADS is a globally aggregated model of energy, economic, land use, and climate systems. The level of aggregation and several simplifying assumptions allow the model to return results in seconds and be accessible to policy makers and general audiences. En-ROADS is a simple climate model and complements the other, more disaggregated models addressing similar questions, such as integrated assessment models or general circulation climate models. Those larger disaggregated models are used for calibrating results in En-ROADS.

En-ROADS is being developed by Climate Interactive, Ventana Systems, UML Climate Change Initiative, and MIT Sloan.

This En-ROADS Technical Reference documents the En-ROADS model structure, equations, assumptions, and data sources. In addition, there is an En-ROADS User Guide more suited to general audiences. For a list of articles about the simulators see our Peer-reviewed Research page. Climate Interactive also provides extensive training materials for En-ROADS at learn.climateinteractive.org.

Please visit support.climateinteractive.org for additional inquiries and support.

Purpose and Intended Use🔗

En-ROADS is designed to be used interactively with groups as a basis for scientifically rigorous conversations about addressing climate change. It is not intended as a tool for prediction or projections, nor does it cover every impact of the economics, energy use, or land use decisions. It is suitable for decision-makers in government, business, and civil society; or for anyone who is curious about the choices of our world.

En-ROADS is also useful for learning about the dynamic behavior of systems in general by highlighting those impacting the climate:

• The differences between high and lower leverage actions
• The response to policies based on incentives, supply-side and demand-side interventions, mandates and technology
• Delays in the system, including capital turnover, momentum in the carbon cycle, social and technological transitions, and more
• Effective and conflicting combination of actions
• The scale of required action, and the unintended consequences of some actions
• The feedback between climate change and economic growth

En-ROADS allows users to adjust many of the assumptions underlying these dynamics.