Components

An emission scenario in GAINS is created through a combination of region-specific activity data, emission vectors, and control strategies. Each combination determines the level of actual emissions. While an emission scenario is generally specific to each GAINS region, some components, such as emission vectors, can be common across a few of them. In addition to region-specific parameters, there are also general (global) parameters that need to be defined, known as scenario metadata. The latter encompass for instance the scenario ID, which is unique to each created scenario and is valid for one or several years.

Activity data

The activity data represent the magnitude of a specific activity-sector-combination in GAINS. They are organized into activity pathways, which describe the time‐dependent evolution of economic activities causing emissions, such as energy production & consumption, passenger & freight transport, industrial and agricultural activities, waste, etc. By creating/assigning a pathway for your scenario, you design the way your activities will evolve in the future.

Control strategy

The implementation of emission mitigation technologies for each activity is specified in control strategies. More precisely, a control strategy is a dataset that contains assumptions on the penetration of emission control technologies for each GAINS source category (e.g. coal use in the power sector) and in a given emission scenario. The complete control strategy includes information on controls applied in all sectors for all pollutants. Control strategies are independent of country and activity projections. They can be seen as legislative packages for emission controls that specify, for each type of emission source, the type and percentage of implementation of control technologies required to comply with a given pollution control legislation (emission standards, sectoral emission ceilings, etc.), regardless of the extent to which such emission sources exist in a particular country at a given time. This approach facilitates the analysis of the implications of different activity projections under a constant set of emission control requirements.

Emission vector

The sets of emission factors and unit costs of control technologies, along with all background information, form the so-called emission vectors.