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2D4D – Disruptive Digitalization for Decarbonization

Digitalization will fundamentally change all sectors of the European economy in the next decades. At the same time, the EU is committed to reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. These two transformation will undoubtedly affect each other, but the extent to which they will be mutually supporting is currently unknown. Most importantly, there is a danger that the digital transformation will delay the progress towards a net-zero carbon economy. The EU-funded 2D4D project aims at ensuring that the digital transformation is not a barrier to decarbonisation, rather an enabler. The project will identify and measure the decarbonisation consequences of three disruptive digitalisation technologies in hard-to-decarbonise sectors: additive manufacturing in industry, mobility-as-a-service in transportation, and AI in buildings. The project will produce a distinctive data collection to examine the technical and socioeconomic potential of these technologies, enhance decarbonisation narratives and ensure that digital technology supports energy transition.

ACCREU: Assessing Climate Change Risk in EUrope

ACCREU is a project funded by HORIZON Europe RIA (Research and Innovation Action) investigating, in a fully integrated framework, climate change impacts, mitigation, adaptation and prospects for a sustainable social and economic development in the EU. ACCREU will identify challenges, highlight opportunities and deliver practical solutions to policy making and societal actors at the EU, EU Member State, region and community level to accelerate a just societal transformation towards climate resilience in the short, medium and long term.

AdJUST – ADVANCING THE UNDERSTANDING OF CHALLENGES, POLICY OPTIONS AND MEASURES TO ACHIEVE A JUST EU ENERGY TRANSITION

AdJUST is a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme. and carried out by a transdisciplinary European consortium consisting of 9 EU partners, 2 UK associated partners and other 11 EU associated partners. The objectives of AdJUST are to achieve a step change in societal understanding of the distributive repercussions of the transition to climate neutrality, and to identify effective and actively-supported policy interventions to accompany climate action so that no-one is left behind.

BELIEFS: Climate-related Beliefs and Low-Carbon Transition Dynamics

The transitioning to a low-carbon society, as mandated by the Paris Agreement and net-zero targets, requires substantial investments. These decisions rely heavily on firms’ expectations, yet significant knowledge gaps exist: current models can’t fully assess their impact, empirical data is limited, and there’s little understanding of what drives their evolution and how to align them with climate goals. Misaligned expectations risk failure or disorderly decarbonisation. The BELIEFS project will lay the foundations of a novel analytical framework capable of shedding light on the complex interaction between firms’ beliefs, investment decision-making and climate policy strategies, so as to identify credible paths to a netzero society. The project will deliver a methodological breakthrough by developing a dynamic transition model with a realistic representation of expectations as heterogeneous, evolving and interdependent. A large survey will provide the first comprehensive empirical assessment of transition expectations and their influence on decisions. The results of the project will be pivotal in identifying effective policy and institutional strategies to ensure alignment of beliefs, thereby enabling a swift and orderly decarbonisation process. Over the course of five years, BELIEFS aims to offer pioneering interdisciplinary contributions to advance our understanding of the macro-behavioural dimensions of low-carbon transitions, integrating elements from climate economics, transition theory, behavioural sciences and political economy.

CO-CREATE: Conditions for Responsible Research of SRM – Analysis, Co-Creation, and Ethos

Experimental research on solar radiation modification (SRM) is controversial and feared to distract from climate change mitigation or lead to dangerous SRM use. Co-CREATE seeks to help structure this decision problem through co-creative scoping, analysis, and engagement to develop principles and guidelines. Starting with a series of scoping notes that outline key dimensions of experimental SRM research, the project will analyze and develop decision-support tools by asking what we can learn from governance analogues, and how various (risk) evaluation frameworks may help identify key characteristics of research proposals. Furthermore, CO-CREATE itself will enter an extensive stakeholder and rightsholder dialogue that validates preliminary analytical work, ensures stakeholders’ diverse dimensions of concern are included, and strengthens deliberative capacity. Co-CREATE proposes guidelines and principles to facilitate decision-making by the relevant authorities on broader categories of experimental research of SRM and case-by-case decisions.

DemoEPR: Demonstrating Innovative Extended Producer Responsibility Solutions for Circular Economy

The transition from linear to circular product value chains stands as one of the EU’s most pressing sustainability ambitions. Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) has emerged as a central policy instrument in this transition, yet existing EPR schemes have largely remained confined to recycling, falling short of unlocking higher-order circular strategies such as reuse, repair, and redesign. DemoEPR responds to this gap by bringing together a transdisciplinary consortium of industry practitioners, consumer organisations, and world-class researchers to co-create next-generation EPR solutions for ICT products — a sector at the heart of digital transformation and circular economy challenges alike.

EarthGenerator a foundation model for Earth system modelling

EarthGenerator will deliver a foundation model of the Earth system, extending the WeatherGenerator model by integrating atmosphere, ocean, and land in a single, physically consistent model. By adopting a generative AI approach, EarthGenerator will provide a general-purpose capability adaptable to multiple downstream tasks from seasonal forecasting to multi-annual climate projections with minimal additional training.

ECONATURES: ECOnomic impacts of NATUre REStoration

ECONATURES is a Horizon Europe research project coordinated by CMCC and involving 8 additional partner institutions across Europe. The project aims to develop Europe’s most comprehensive modeling framework for assessing the socio-economic impacts of nature restoration over short, medium, and long terms. It integrates economic, ecological, environmental, and social methodologies into a unified assessment system that captures restoration benefits, costs, and distributional impacts from EU to local scales, directly supporting the EU Nature Restoration Regulation and the Biodiversity Strategy for 2030.

EDITS7: Energy Demand changes Induced by Technological and Social innovations

The EDITS (Energy Demand changes Induced by Technological and Social innovations) project is operated by RITE as a commissioned project of METI, with the aim of conducting a comprehensive analysis and evaluation of CO2 emission reductions and changes in energy demand brought about by technological innovation.

ENTICE: ENhanced understanding of Trade Impacts on Climate, industries, and the Environment

Despite the wide recognition of the complex interactions between trade (policy) and climate (policy), the state-of-the-art capabilities in macroeconomic models face substantial limitations, such as lack of granular data, dependence on conventional trade theories, limited empirical evidence on trade-climate interactions, limited representation of the value and material chain in key (existing and emerging) sectors, heavy reliance on frameworks not accounting for endogenous technical change, limited understanding of the role of developing countries in trade, etc.

EUCRA-2: European Climate Risk Assessment 2

This contract will aim at carrying out the European Climate Risk Assessment 2 (EUCRA-2). EUCRA-2 will ensure that Europe’s climate risk knowledge stays up-to-date and actionable throughout high-level risk assessments and recommendations tailored to EU policy contexts.

EUNICE – Debiasing the uncertainties of climate stabilization ensembles

Mathematical models have become central tools in global environmental assessments. To serve society well, climate change stabilization assessments need to capture the uncertainties of the deep future, be statistically sound and track near-term disruptions. Up to now, conceptual, computational and data constraints have limited the quantification of uncertainties of climate stabilization pathways to a narrow set, focused on the current century. The statistical interpretation of scenarios generated by multi-model ensembles is problematic due to availability biases and model dependencies. Scenario plausibility assessments are scant. Simplified, single-objective decision criteria frameworks are used to translate decarbonization uncertainties into decision rules whose understanding is not validated.

FIND: Finance and Innovation to couple Negative emissions and sustainable Development

Current global climate action is deeply insufficient to deliver the objectives of the Paris Agreement and containing global warming to 1.5 °C will likely require the deployment of carbon dioxide removals. However, the technologies to sequestrate and store carbon from the atmosphere are currently immature, risky, and highly questioned. Understanding the effective diffusion potential of carbon removal methods and their socioeconomic and environmental impacts is pivotal to design future climate action. FIND will help to develop an innovative framework to assess the feasibility and social desirability of limiting global warming through the diffusion of negative emission technologies. It aims to ensure that negative emission technologies act as an enabler, not a barrier, of long-run sustainable development. The project will evaluate climate and non-climate policies to create robust, no-regret policy portfolios supporting a rapid and sustainable path to a net-zero society. FIND will be of high relevance for public policy and civil society, especially considering Europe’s commitment to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 while spurring green and inclusive growth.

Frontier: Frontier Research in Energy & Industrial Decarbonization

Industrial decarbonization is a critical frontier in global climate mitigation, yet significant uncertainty remains regarding the optimal technologies, policies, and viable strategies for achieving deep reductions in industrial greenhouse gas emissions. Macro-energy systems modeling can offer valuable insight, but current tools are limited by computational constraints that prevent them from capturing the technological detail, spatial/temporal resolution, and inter-sectoral coupling required for effective decision support. This project develops next-generation methods for high-fidelity, computationally efficient modeling of industrial decarbonization pathways, combining detailed process-level engineering with algorithmic advances in optimization-based systems modeling. Initial work focuses on the U.S. chemicals and fuels sector, with planned extensions to India and China.

I servizi ecosistemici marini: studio e analisi delle metodologie di valutazione biofisica ed economica, predisposizione di un tool per l’automazione del processo di valutazione

Il progetto è realizzato nell’ambito del quadro istituzionale della Direttiva europea sulla Strategia Marina e del suo recepimento normativo (D.lgs. n. 190 del 13 ottobre 2010), con il MASE (Ministero dell’Ambiente e della Sicurezza Energetica) quale autorità di riferimento e l’ISPRA (Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e la Ricerca Ambientale) come partner. L’iniziativa è finalizzata allo sviluppo e alla validazione di una metodologia integrata per la valutazione biofisica ed economica dei servizi ecosistemici marino-costieri e alla realizzazione di un tool informatizzato in ambiente GIS in grado di automatizzarne il calcolo e la restituzione cartografica. Il sistema consentirà di valutare in modo quantitativo servizi quali sequestro di carbonio, produzione di ossigeno, produzione di cibo, protezione dall’erosione e bioremediation, con applicazione in aree pilota e potenziale estensione a scala nazionale. Il progetto contribuisce a rafforzare le basi scientifiche a supporto delle attività di tutela, monitoraggio e ripristino degli ecosistemi marino-costieri.

NEWPATHWAYS: New pathways for equitable climate action in line with the paris agreement and sustainable development

NEWPATHWAYS is a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme and the consortium consists of 13 partners, and brings together leading research groups to support climate policymaking within and outside the EU. These research groups are involved in modelling international climate policy, national policies, social science, policy analysis, environmental assessment, and stakeholder engagement.

OAeSIS – OCEAN Alkalinity Enhancement: Sustainability and Impacts across Scales

Global warming has exceeded 1.5°C as a result of anthropogenic fossil fuel emissions, making it clear that deep emission reductions will need to be complemented by large-scale Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) to meet the Paris Agreement targets. The ocean plays a central role in the global carbon cycle, storing more than 97% of the world’s dissolved inorganic carbon and having absorbed approximately 20–30% of anthropogenic CO₂ emissions over recent decades. Despite the importance of these processes, marine (m)CDR techniques remain less developed than terrestrial approaches. Among technology-based marine CDR options, Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE) has attracted particular attention in scientific, technological, and policy debates. However, significant uncertainties remain regarding its effectiveness, techno-economic feasibility, environmental impacts, and governance implications. OAeSIS aims to address these key gaps by advancing understanding of the socio-economic, governance, and impact dimensions of OAE, thereby supporting informed decision-making and future climate policy development. OAeSIS has been developed within the framework of the “Land, ocean and water for climate action” work programme and will be implemented in close alignment with related funded activities, in particular with its sister topic “Monitoring the global ocean for safe, verifiable, and sustainable marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR)”.

PRISMA – Net zero Pathway Research through Integrated Assessment Model Advancements

Introduction The ambition to achieve the Paris Agreement goals has led to the realization that a rapid and full decarbonization of the economy is required, involving a structural transition of the current economy and society. With the rise of quantified policy targets, policy packages, and consideration of multiple dimensions and sectors, Integrated Assessment Models with their ability to consider complex relationships and provide calibrated numerical results have become ever more important in the last decade. The PRISMA project aims to bring these models to the next level by focusing on four key areas of improvement, namely the representation of distributional justice and efficiency, innovation and finance, climate impacts and land-use implications, and lifestyle change and circularity. In these four key areas we will improve existing large-scale IAMs and sectorial models, and consider the linking of different models where applicable. Two cross-cutting shared themes across these areas are the improvement of the temporal and spatial resolution of the analysis, and the representation of disruptive and structural change in the economy. Notably we will increase the spatial granularity with a focus on Europe, and look at the yearly and in particular near term detailed modeling of rapid decarbonization pathways. The extensive model development will be co-designed through an interactive stakeholder engagement process from the beginning, and focus on model openness and usability to ensure the stakeholder and policy relevance. Moreover, PRISMA will focus in its application on the analysis of the spectrum of Fit for 55 package policies of the EU developing

PRUDENT: Promoting Green Nudging for Sustainable Agriculture and Forestry

PRUDENT aspires to revolutionize agriculture and forestry by promoting sustainable practices and innovative farming technologies. The project will explore the use of “nudges”, small changes in how farmers and foresters make decisions, to encourage them to adopt more sustainable approaches. These nudges will be tested in real-life situations alongside policy changes to see their combined effect on sustainability. Innovative tools, like web or mobile apps, will be developed to help farmers and foresters regulate their actions and make lasting changes, supporting these behaviour changes. Different types of farming and forestry systems across Europe will be studied to understand their unique challenges. The insights gained from this research will create new ways of thinking about agriculture and forestry, including social innovations, business models, and policy recommendations.

SPARCCLE – Socioeconomic Pathways, Adaptation and Resilience to Changing CLimate in Europe

The SPARCCLE is a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe program, and it is focused on delivering adaptation and mitigation strategies for a just and climate-resilient Europe. The project aims to support policymaking for action on the socioeconomic risks of climate change, establishing new methodological frameworks to link knowledge across disciplines from research communities working on climate impacts and risks in Europe. Bottom-up assessments of multidimensional climate vulnerabilities, risks, damages, and adaptation will be combined with top-down integrated assessment frameworks (IAFs) and leading multi-sectoral macroeconomic models.

UNITES: Uncertainty Integration for a Transition in Energy and Sustainability

Geopolitical and socio-economic uncertainties are putting the European and Global energy transitions at stake. These deep uncertainties affect the analytical assessments underpinning energy and climate policies. For example, the models used to inform energy planning rely on uncertain forecasts and assumptions for future energy demands, macroeconomic indicators, social acceptance, fuel prices, technology costs, and climate scenarios. Due to fundamental methodological, computational, and data challenges, this uncertainty is at best rarely considered in energy planning, which increases the risk of failing to meet our urgent climate targets. This makes accounting for uncertainty one of the major unsolved problems in energy planning. UNITES addresses these limitations to enable a new paradigm for long-term energy planning. In contrast to current approaches, which try to accurately predict the future, UNITES’ ambition is a systematic integration of uncertainty in energy-climate models.

UPTAKE: Bridging current knowledge gaps to enable the UPTAKE of carbon dioxide removal methods

UPTAKE aims to facilitate the sustainable upscaling of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) methods by developing a set of robust strategies through technical, theoretical, and practical analysis accompanied by interactive dialogue within a CDR stakeholder forum. As a result, UPTAKE will develop a harmonised, comprehensive, inclusive, integrated, and transparent CDR knowledge inventory to evaluate a wide range of CDR technologies and methods, quantifying their national, European, and global costs, effectiveness, and removal potential as well as risks, constraints, and side-effects at different scales, and their prospects of technological progress. The UPTAKE approach will allow the assessment of geographical, sectoral, socioeconomic, demographic, and temporal trade-offs, co-benefits, and opportunities emerging from portfolios of different CDR methods. The enhanced socio-technical understanding of CDR methods will feed into an ensemble of state-of-the-art integrated assessment models (IAMs), which will help improve the integration of CDR methods given the EU policy objectives set for 2030, 2050, and beyond climate neutrality. UPTAKE will assess CDR governance and policy frameworks considering social acceptance, accountability, monitoring, and regulations for sustainable CDR rollout at scale. As a result, UPTAKE will generate an open and interactive CDR roadmap explorer to investigate strategies that are resilient to risks of failure and disruption, and minimise adverse impacts on society, economy, and the environment, aiming for a just, inclusive, and sustainable transition.

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