Research projects

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.

Energy, Health, Jobs & Growth.

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.

Energy, Global Policy, Jobs & Growth, Migrations & Inequalities.

ECEMF – European Climate and Energy Modelling Forum

ECEMF is a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme and carried out by a consortium of 15 European and International organizations. The aim of ECEMF is to provide the knowledge to inform the development of future energy and climate policies at national and European levels. In support of this aim, ECEMF proposes a range of activities to achieve five objectives and meet the four challenges set out in the call text. ECEMF’s programme of events and novel IT-based communications channel will enable researchers to identify and codevelop the most pressing policy-relevant research questions with a range of stakeholders to meet ambitious European energy and climate policy goals, in particular the European Green Deal and the transformation to a climate neutral society. Answers will be provided by the first inclusive and open full-scale model comparison exercise on achieving climate neutrality in Europe, including from the outset over 20 models and 15 top research groups, to produce a coherent and relevant evidence-base for energy and climate policy impact assessment. ECEMF’s evidence-base will support the development of policy-relevant insights which will be communicated to and discussed with the key decision makers via a range of novel methods, including interactive embeddable visualization blocks, policy briefs, workshops and high-profile events. This loop of knowledge co-production stands on two pillars. First, ECEMF will advance the state-of-the-art of energy and climate modelling by enabling sharing of: input data using open standards, methods for model comparison building on the vast experience of the consortium, scientific

ENGAGE – Exploring National and Global Actions to reduce Greenhouse gas Emissions

ENGAGE is a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme and carried out by a consortium of 25 European and International organizations. As the world faces the risks of dangerous climate change, policy-makers, industry and civil society leaders are counting on Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) to inform and guide strategies to deliver on the objectives of the Paris Agreement (PA). ENGAGE rises to this challenge by engaging these stakeholders in co-producing a new generation of global and national decarbonisation pathways. These new pathways will supplement natural science, engineering and economics, traditionally represented in IAMs, with cutting-edge insights from social science in order to reflect multidimensional feasibility of decarbonisation and identify opportunities to strengthen climate policies. The pathways will be designed to minimise overshoot of the temperature target and analyse the timing of net-zero emissions to meet the Paris temperature target and reduce the reliance on controversial negative emissions technologies. In addition, they will link national mitigation strategies of major emitters with the PA’s objectives, integrate potential game-changing innovations, and advance conceptually novel approaches to architectures of international climate agreements. ENGAGE will also quantify avoided impacts of climate change, co-benefits and trade-offs of climate policy, and identify the biggest sectoral opportunities for climate change mitigation. In ENGAGE, we will set new standards of transparency for global and national IAMs. The new pathways will be developed in an iterative global and national stakeholder process and a consortium of leading global and national IAMs and social scientists. This co-production process ensures

Energy, Global Policy, Health, Jobs & Growth.

GEOCEP – Global Excellence in Modeling Climate and Energy Policies

GEOCEP is a project on climate and energy policy modelling and an international network for knowledge transfers. GEOCEP identifies institutional and political obstacles to implementing the first-best solutions to control for the global carbon externality and, consequently, investigates an array of second-best energy and climate mitigation policies focused on increasing energy efficiency, on reducing emissions and related environmental and health externalities and on promoting renewable energy. GEOCEP has is funded from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

Future Earth, Cities & Coasts, Energy, Global Policy, Health, Jobs & Growth, Migrations & Inequalities, Ocean, Water, Food and Land Use.

INHALE – Impact on humaN Health of Agriculture and Livestock Emissions

Air pollution remains Europe’s top environmental threat to health, as recently reminded by the European Environmental Agency. Italy is the second EU country for premature deaths from air pollution, with the highest concentration in the affluent and highly populated Po valley. The COVID-19 pandemic has made air pollution more salient, by raising awareness of its devastating effects and amplification of concurrent diseases, including viral ones. However, it has also made clear the extent to which agriculture and livestock are part of the problem, and should likewise be part of the solution. Agriculture is the main source of ammonia, due to animal husbandry and its associated livestock events processing, and to a lesser extent from fertilizer use. The contribution of ammonia emissions to PM levels can be very significant.

Cities & Coasts, Health, Water, Food and Land Use.

LOCALISED – Localised decarbonisation pathways for citizens, local administrations and businesses to inform for mitigation and adaptation action

LOCALISED is a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme and carried out by a consortium of 12 European organisations.  The LOCALISED project pulls together a multidisciplinary consortium that includes experienced research institutions, local city authorities – that will inform the development and testing of the LOCALISED tools, as well as associated partners like Assolombarda, which will provide insights regarding the business sector.

Cities & Coasts, Energy, Global Policy, Jobs & Growth.

NAVIGATE – Next generation of AdVanced InteGrated Assessment modelling to support climaTE policy making

NAVIGATE is a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme and carried out by a consortium of 15 European organisations and two others BRIC countries organizations (Brazil and China). It aims to develop the Next generation of AdVanced InteGrated Assessment modelling to support climaTE policy making. It will critically improve the capability of Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) to inform the design and evaluation of climate policies by targeting major advancements in two areas: describing transformative change in the economy, in technology and in consumer goods and services, and describing distributional impacts of climate change and climate policy.

Future Earth, Jobs & Growth.

SMOOTH – Sustainable Finance for a Smooth Low-Carbon Transition

The threat of climate change calls for a rapid transition to a low-carbon society. Aligning the financial system with climate stability is a crucial prerequisite for achieving decarbonization while preserving economic prosperity and societal welfare. However, we currently lack a comprehensive understanding of how the institutional and behavioural features of financial systems may affect the speed and shape of the low-carbon transition. Additionally, the coevolving socioeconomic, financial and environmental repercussions of such a large-scale societal transformation have not yet been systematically analyzed. The SMOOTH project will lay the foundations of an innovative macro-financial analytical framework to provide essential insights on the links between financial systems and decarbonization dynamics.

Energy, Future Earth, Jobs & Growth.

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