| TERM | DEFINITION |
| Behavioural parameters | Parameters in CIMS used to more realistically represent consumer preferences for technologies. They include discount rate, representing time-value preferences; heterogeneity, representing the extent to which different consumers have different preferences for technologies and thus perceive costs and benefits differently; and intangible costs, representing non-financial costs associated with specific technologies, such as the greater risk associated with new technologies or technologies with longer payback periods. |
| Behavioural Realism | A criteria for assessing model usefulness; the extent to which consumer choices--and their response to price signals--is incorporated into a model and supported through empirical means. |
| Bottom-up models | Techno-economic models that have extensive technological detail, but provide overly optimistic emissions forecasts, since they assume new technologies are perfect substitutes for older ones, and that consumers always will choose the least-cost technology option. Bottom-up models also typically do not include feedbacks with the economy as a whole. |
| CIMS | A technology vintage model that forecasts emissions via the turnover of energy-using and energy-supplying technology stocks. CIMS models consumers’ choices of new technologies. |
| Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) Models | A specific type of top-down model that models multiple markets in equilibrium with each other in an economy. |
| E3MC | The Energy-Economy-Environment Model for Canada, which is Environment Canada’s emission forecasting model. Essentially the model consists of the Energy 2020 and TIM models linked together. |
| Energy 2020 | A technology vintage model that forecasts emissions via the turnover of energy-using and energy-supplying technology stocks. Energy 2020 models consumers’ choices of new technologies. |
| Hybrid Models | Models that combine the strengths of top-down and bottom-up models. CIMS and Energy 2020 are examples of hybrid energy-economy models. |
| Macroeconomic completeness | A criterion for assessing model usefulness; the extent to which interactions between the energy sector and the economy as a whole are represented in a model. This criterion particularly affects how useful the model is in assessing the costs of policy options to the economy. |
| Technological Explicitness | One criterion for assessing model usefulness; the extent of detail in which a model includes specific energy-using and supplying technologies. |
| TIM | The Informetrica Model--a macroeconomic model that examines the economy as a whole. TIM would be useful for examining issues such as trade and economic impact of policies. TIM can be linked to microeconomic models focusing specifically on the Canadian energy system. |
| Top-down models | Models that represent the energy-use, technological change, and the economy as whole at an aggregate level. These models typically do include macroeconomic effects and realistically represent consumer behaviour. They usually lack any detailed representation of technologies.
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