From Energy System Scenarios to Sectoral Cost Impacts: Multi-Criteria Prioritization of Mitigation Measures in Costa Rica

Governments must choose among mitigation policies whose costs fall unevenly across the economy. We link long-term energy system scenarios to sectoral cost impacts and rank mitigation measures with a transparent multi-criteria method. Outputs from OSeMOSYS-CR, Costa Rica’s energy system model (2018–2050), are passed through the national 2017 input–output matrix to estimate cost effects on prioritized industries. Each measure group is scored on four normalized metrics: emission reductions, economic benefits, investment costs, and cost reductions for prioritized firms. Under equal weights, the top measures are road freight electrification, passenger mode shift with rail, and freight electrification with hydrogen. Across 10,000 sampled weightings, these measures rank in the top three in 100%, 81%, and 80% of cases, respectively. No other measure exceeds 19%. The ranking is robust to power-system integration cost increases of up to 50% and to externality values ranging from 50% to 130% of their central estimates.