Background 
Space cooling needs will be an increasingly important driver of future energy demand, but most energy and climate policy scenarios do explicitly represent how the demand for this energy service will respond to climate change. As a consequence, we have a limited knowledge regarding the potential implications growing space cooling could have on the environment, the economy as represented by different sectors and different groups of households, especially in the context of a deeper and accelerating energy transition.

This workshop seeks to identify knowledge gaps and delineate directions for further research within a field of research that lies at the intersection between applied and empirical economics and economic modelling or Integrated Assessment Modelling (IAM).

The workshop will be articulated in three virtual sessions distributed over two days. In each session, two short presentations from the ENERGYA team will kick-off the discussion. The discussion will focus on approaches and data requirements for representing cooling and heating needs and dynamics in energy- environment-economic models. Our main hypothesis is that climate change impacts can significantly alter the understanding of the mitigation challenge, but we still do not know precisely how.

Research questions:

1. How energy-environment-economic models incorporate decisions regarding the adoption and use of cooling appliances?
2. How can we improve the empirical evidence on the joint decision of adopting and using AC?
3. To what extent the massive use of AC that is projected by several studies could hinder progress towards the reduction of GHG emissions? To what extent the massive use of AC that is projected byseveral studies could create a new type of energy poor?
4. How can we model collective strategies (e.g. urban planning) related thermal comfort decisions?

Read and download the AGENDA

Format
Each session will be kicked off by two short presentations by the ENERGYA team that will be challenged by discussants who can present a few slides and start a discussion on some of the issues illustrated within each session. Presentations should introduce the main idea, explain the methodology and illustrate results and remaining gaps in about 15 minutes.

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 756194.