Sensitivity of Future Regional and Global Macroeconomic Activity to an International Energy Market Disruption
The scale of human activity is one of the most important forces shaping human and physical Earth system interactions. Feedback effects from a perturbation in one part of the economy can reverberate through both the economy and physical Earth systems. We employ the Global Change Analysis Model’s (GCAM) new two-way feedback interactions between global and regional energy systems and regional and global macroeconomic systems and CO2 emissions. We track the consequences of a hypothetical disruption to global energy markets, cession of Russian fossil fuel exports, for energy markets, regional and global economic activity (GDP), labor and capital markets, and CO2 emissions. Our jumping off point is global energy markets’ reaction to the shock. With Russian fossil-fuel supplies locked into domestic markets Russian fossil-fuel prices collapse while prices elsewhere in the world rise. Russian GDP falls by roughly one-half-trillion dollars/year in 2050, largely through adverse energy balance-of-trade effects, but with important induced effects on Russian labor productivity, domestic energy productivity, and capital accumulation. We explicitly disaggregate the contributions of those four effects. Russia’s GDP loss is effectively transferred as GDP gain to the rest of the world, but disproportionately to other fossil fuel exporters, e.g., the Middle East, initially through enhanced energy balance of trade, but with important indirect effects through energy productivity, labor productivity and capital accumulation. We find that unless otherwise constrained, changes in anthropogenic CO2 emissions track induced changes to economic activity.