As part of the European Green Deal, the Commission will put forward a comprehensive plan to increase the EU’s 2030 climate target in September this year. The plan will propose to increase the EU’s current 2030 target of at least -40% greenhouse gas emission reductions to at least -50% and towards -55%, compared to 1990 emission levels.
The European Green Deal sets out how to make Europe the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. Alongside government policies and regulation, there is a role to play for citizens, communities and organisations in all sectors of our society and economy.
Researchers at IIASA have developed a new IAM scenario logic that improves the representation of Paris Agreement temperature targets and climate response uncertainties to make explicit the intergeneration bias of current IAM models, in most of which the burden is carried by future generations. Another study examines decarbonisation pathways and energy investment needs for developing Asia, and concludes that a radical transformation of the energy system is needed to meet the “well below” 2°C target.
Two recent studies from PBL Netherlands provide a 2019 update to greenhouse gas mitigation scenarios for major emitting countries and a meta-analysis on international shipping and aviation emissions projections from Integrated Assessment Models. The 2019 Global Energy and Climate Outlook from the Joint Research Centre examines the role of electrification in the low-carbon transition. An article in the Journal of Transport and Health evaluates the co-benefits of air quality and health improvement in China. And lastly, researchers in Australia are developing a new tool to help policymakers build net-zero emissions scenarios for Australian industries at the national and state/territory levels.
A new metamodel of the costs of climate policy from Utrecht University and PBL Netherlands disaggregates the uncertainties linked to physical and socio-economic factors; it finds that more ambitious climate targets are associated with higher uncertainty in socio-economic factors such as economic growth, population growth and changes in human behaviour. Research from the University of Waterloo in Canada shows the utility of the cross-impact balances (CIB) technique to construct global socio-technical scenarios for climate change research. A paper from the Inter-American Development Bank explores the labour impact of four scenarios of electricity generation in Chile, including three coal power phase-down scenarios.
A recent article estimates the macroeconomic impacts on the European Union’s economy of different EU decarbonisation pathways towards a below 2oC climate stabilisation. Researchers at COPPE/UFRJ have developed a new household income disaggregation method for the TEA model and will use it to assess the heterogeneous effects of introducing different schemes of carbon trading on income distribution in Brazil.
Using an hourly electricity dispatch and capacity investment model, EleMod, researchers in the U.S. investigate the potential role of nuclear power in the decarbonisation of the U.S. electricity sector. They find that, with low electricity generation costs of nuclear, advanced nuclear power can contribute, together with solar and wind, to achieving the 90% CO2 emission reduction target by reducing the carbon price. A study assessing Japan’s mid-century emission pathways is the first to integrate global and national models to show that additional mitigation action beyond the NDC is necessary to achieve the low-carbon budget scenario after 2030. The Center for International Forestry Research in Germany is developing a nature-based solutions framework to inform the Green Climate Fund’s strategic section.
In this section, dedicated to the links between climate and circular economy, a study shows how circular economy could create opportunities for the waste-to-energy sector in Norway to develop and expand into new value chains such as secondary raw materials production. Furthermore, an OECD working paper on the macroeconomics of the circular economy transition offers a critical review of the modelling approaches used in the field.
The first article presents one of the first studies to quantify the health-co benefits of climate mitigation for the Republic of Korea which faces air quality issues by integrating three different models. Researchers from Australia compare the differences between “transient climate” and “equilibrium climate” modelling techniques and stress the need to take into account these differences in modelling for climate change policies to be effective. NAVIGATE, a new project funded by Horizon 2020 to improve the capability of integrated assessment models to inform the design and evaluation of climate policies, is presented. The report concludes with a summary of methodological advances shared at the 12th IAMC meeting in December 2019.
A range of other recent climate modelling developments are reported on in the third section. At the University College Cork, researchers have for a first time used deep machine learning architectures to model transport service demands. And at Imperial College London, researcher have integrated energy systems and gas infrastructure optimisation models to assess the need for investment in regional gas infrastructure in Southern Brazil.
Various developments linked to the implementation of the NDCs are reported on in the second section. Two of the modelling developments make the process of modelling and analysing NDCs more streamlined and therefore easier – the FRAMES modelling framework for energy-economy policy analysis in developing countries and the TIMES-Starter Model Management Platform. The other research reported in the section enhances the NDCs analysis for specific countries – Brazil, China and Costa Rica.
The first section of the report is dedicated to modelling developments linked to the implementation of mid-century strategies. The majority of developments in this section are dedicated to enhancing existing models with new sectoral coverage and/or new data. The PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency has added a number of industrial manufacturing sectors in the Integrated Model to Assess the Global Environment (IMAGE) model. The Carbon Dioxide Removal Model Intercomparison Project has made available new data to support IPCC science and climate mitigation strategies. Researchers at COPPE/UFRJ have expanded the Brazilian Land Use and Energy System (BLUES) model with data on advanced biofuels conversion routes and land use aspects in Brazil. Another key development is the meta-analysis of how scenarios are used to improve models and long-term strategies. A paper by WRI a new report by The Shift Project are also presented.
Different modelling developments linked to the implementation of mid-century strategies occurring at EU, China and Mexican level were reported.
Various developments linked to the implementation of the NDCs were reported. These include publications on topics such as multilateral linking of emissions trading systems (ETSs) or the water-energy nexus in Portugal. It also introduces a new report by The Rhodium Group on their new models and datasets providing information on how policies may impact GHG emissions and the implications for meetings national climate goals.
Other recent climate modelling developments concern for example the improved integration of the Brazilian bottom-up Land Use and Energy System (BLUES) model into the global CGE model TEA and the publication of a new inter-model comparison on the role of Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage (DACCS) in achieving 1.5ºC and 2ºC scenarios.
