4 December 2017: Launched at the 3rd session of the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA-3), the Integrated Benefits Calculator (IBC) will expand the capabilities of the Long-Range Energy Alternatives Planning (LEAP) tool enabling governments and other organizations to assess pollutant emissions, build mitigation scenarios, and understand the benefits of emission reductions.

LEAP, developed by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), is an easy-to-use, integrated, scenario-based modeling tool used by government agencies, academics, non-profits, consultants and energy utilities to track energy consumption, production and resource extraction in all sectors of an economy. The IBC expands LEAP’s capabilities by allowing it to predict the impact of emissions scenarios on human health on a national level. IBC can also estimate the impact of mitigation scenarios on global temperature rise. The tool accomplishes this task by combining LEAP emissions scenarios with output from a global atmospheric chemistry transport model and using various exposure-response functions. IBC-LEAP produces national-scale estimates of avoided premature deaths and crop losses, and estimates the climate benefits of mitigating emissions of short-lived climate pollutants, air pollution, and greenhouse gases.

Several other upgrades were also included in the 2018 version of LEAP. The tool can now account for the effects of land use change, including deforestation, reforestation, and agricultural expansion. It can also assess biomass energy strategies and includes a new mapping engine to provide better results visualization.

LEAP-IBC was created by SEI in partnership with the US Environmental Protection Agency and the University of Colorado, and with the support of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC). The tool does not require the help of experienced modelers, and is thus used by 35,000 users in 195 countries. [CCAC Press Release] [LEAP-IBC Factsheet] [LEAP website]