Integrated top-down and bottom-up model for energy and CO2 emissions analysis from Thailand’s long-term low carbon energy efficiency and renewable energy plan

This paper builds the energy demand and supply model from the bottom-up LEAP software and focus on evaluating and providing insights to the long-term energy and greenhouse gas impact from the national energy efficiency plan and alternative energy plan focus from 2015 to 2036 under the 2010 base year. From the results, we found that the energy demand would increase from 84.77 Mtoe in 2015 to 172.29 Mtoe, or 103.24% in 2036, mainly from the energy efficiency plan by applying the three main programmes with full successive ratio. The co-benefit result from greenhouse gas emission mitigation would decrease from 503.34 MtCO2 in 2036,161 and 116 Mt-CO2 from energy efficiency and alternative energy development plan in 2036, respectively. We also found that this mitigation also impacts to the decrease of grid emission factor from 506 in the BAU to 339 and 140 kgCO2-eq per MWh due to the higher renewable energy sources and imported hydro energy. From the LEAP results, the energy oriented input-output model with flexible production functions have been analyzed for the GDP and sectoral output, employment and trade balance impact from those integrated plans. We found that compared with the BAU, the integrated energy plans will have marginally negative impact on employment from 0.5% fewer jobs but higher energy efficiency targets would improve the trade balance as all non-energy sectors increase their outputs for international markets and also less dependent on energy imports of the country. Policy recommendations to deploy both energy plans are also raised