Periodic Reporting for period 2 - COP21 RIPPLES (COP21: Results and Implications for Pathways and Policies for Low Emissions European Societies)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2018-06-01 al 2020-01-31
In light of this context, COP21 RIPPLES had four objectives:
1) Assessing the adequacy of the NDCs in light of the global temperature target of limiting warming to well below 2°C and 1.5°C.
2) Assessing the implications of NDCs and deeper mitigation pathways on other European socio-economic objectives.
3) Assessing the adequacy of the outcomes of COP21 from a governance-perspective, and the implications and opportunities emerging from ongoing UNFCCC negotiations.
4) Delivering policy recommendations for EU climate policy and climate diplomacy.
The project, which ended on 31/01/2020, contributed to clarify required actions and available pathways to meet the Paris Agreement mitigation goals, as well as strategies that can drive higher ambition – at national, EU and global levels, including from a governance perspective. In brief, the project has provided scientific input to better understand the nature of the current ambition gap and to feed political discussions at all relevant levels and across different dimensions on how to address it.
Specifically, for the EU, a key result is the scientific-based deliberation that increasing 2030 EU emissions commitment contributes to ensuring politically resilient decarbonisation pathways for Europe, in addition to the technical and economic arguments. Increasing pre-2030 ambition leads to a smoother, more realistic transition, avoiding asking comparatively more of a specific sector, which may increase acceptability problems. For this Member States need to be equipped to define their own role in the EU long-term transformation towards neutrality to inform coherent EU-level investments, cooperation strategies and solidarity mechanisms. Adopting sectoral lenses, additional efforts are required to tackle the financial system to support its transformation and to make industrial & innovation policy central to the decarbonisation challenge.
Besides interdisciplinarity, COP21 RIPPLES adopted a multilevel approach to the research to respond to the need to better understand national circumstances, policy strategies and transition pathways of individual EU Member States and key non-EU countries. Therefore, individual countries are to greatly benefit from the project too. First as a result of enhanced capacities at country-level. COP21 RIPPLES has invested in national scenario model-based development under a flexible framework where local researchers have been able to characterise their scenarios according to local priorities as opposite to respond to harmonised scenario inputs parametrisation. This should allow for local scientific community to be better equipped to timely respond to the national policy discussions in the context of the revision of the NDC and the development of national Long-Term Strategies. National policy-makers are also provided with a combination of qualitative and quantitative information about the implications of the EU transition on their energy security position or industrial competitiveness. They will also find the rationale for early investment to foster learning that reduces decarbonisation costs in the long term and offers economic opportunities associated to the development of new low carbon technologies and sectors. Country representatives can explore promising technologies across different regions and the assessment of past experiences to inform their national discussions on opportunities and constraints of the innovation system. A number of recommendations are also available to inform priority areas for NDC revisions and areas of work to support short term choices that are coherent with the long term climate and development objectives, including for instance, all-important inequalities considerations.