Energy-related economic modeling to support the environmental policy-making, case study of the province of Saskatchewan

Recently, global climate change has emerged as one of the most challenging environmental issues and has gained considerable attention worldwide. Canada targets to achieve an economy-wide emissions objective by 2030. Facing these challenges, the Province of Saskatchewan is actively seeking effective way in order to realize GHG emission reduction targets in the most economical efficient manner. The objective of this study is to develop a systematic approach to gain more insights into the energy-environment-economy system and support the related policy-making. The systematic approach is composed of two models. In detail, Environmentally-Extended Input-Output (EEIO) Model is developed to facilitate the analysis of direct and indirect GHG emissions, emission relationships of different industries, as well as the integrated emission performance of the system. A Saskatchewan Computable General Equilibrium (SK-CGE) Model is developed to simulate a series of direct and indirect socio-economic impacts of various environmental policies. This research provides direct support for the environmental policy-making in Saskatchewan. The Environment Minister held a press conference to announce the modeling results and how they were used for formulating provincial carbon mitigation policies. The systematic approach is expected to be applied in other areas in Canada.