En-ROADS Baseline Scenario🔗
The En-ROADS Baseline Scenario represents the state of the world if societal and technological changes were to continue at their current rate of progress, without additional policies or action. The Baseline Scenario is designed to be a reasonable starting point from which to test various changes in policies and assumptions to see the impacts on our global climate. It is not a forecast of what is most likely to happen.
What is included in the En-ROADS Baseline Scenario?🔗
En-ROADS does not explicitly represent local, national, international, and corporate policies, but instead estimates the overall effects of the conditions they create. The Baseline Scenario includes an approximate, aggregated implementation of current global technological, policy, and investment conditions. Climate policies in place around the world today, such as the United States’ Inflation Reduction Act and China’s “1+N” framework, are promoting renewables, continuing to subsidize oil and gas, and incentivizing energy efficiency and electrification. The Baseline Scenario assumes that such conditions will continue, but they do not strengthen or weaken.
To learn more about the drivers of emissions in the Baseline Scenario, explore the Kaya graphs.
What is not included in the En-ROADS Baseline Scenario?🔗
The En-ROADS Baseline Scenario is not intended to capture policy goals. It does not include national or corporate net-zero emissions pledges, for instance. It also does not include countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement or long-term continuation of other national policies. This is an important distinction from some other models’ baseline or “stated policies” scenarios.
We chose to construct the En-ROADS Baseline Scenario in this way because “pledged” or “announced” policies can be altered or never be implemented. Governments change and priorities shift. As a result, you can use En-ROADS yourself to compare the globally averaged effects of NDCs to your scenario and the Baseline Scenario in which those policy actions are not taken. Learn more here: Does the En-ROADS Baseline Scenario include countries' future policies or NDCs under the Paris Agreement?
What if I disagree with some of the assumptions in the En-ROADS Baseline Scenario?🔗
We picked one set of assumptions to be our default in the En-ROADS Baseline Scenario, but we encourage curious users to vary the assumptions in En-ROADS under the menu Simulation > Assumptions. There you can change factors tied to the climate, economy, land use, and energy system to explore how sensitive the model is to their changes or set up a different scenario for testing policies and engaging audiences.
FAQs🔗
Please visit support.climateinteractive.org for additional inquiries and support.