Europe
Cassetti, G., Boitier, B., Elia, A., Le Mouël, P., Gargiulo, M., Zagamé, P., Nikas, A., Koasidis, K., Doukas, H., & Chiodi, A. (2023). The interplay among COVID-19 economic recovery, behavioural changes, and the European Green Deal: An energy-economic modelling perspective. Energy, 263, 125798.
In the EU, COVID-19 and associated policy responses led to economy-wide disruptions and shifts in services demand, with considerable energy-system implications. The European Commission's response paved the way towards enhancing climate ambition through the European Green Deal. Understanding the interactions among environmental, social, and economic dimensions in climate action post-COVID thus emerged as a key challenge.
Koasidis, K., Nikas, A., Van de Ven, D.J., Xexakis, G., Forouli, A., Mittal, S., Gambhir, A., Koutsellis, T., & Doukas, H. (2022). Towards a green recovery in the EU: Aligning further emissions reductions with short- and long-term energy-sector employment gains. Energy Policy, 171, 113301.
To tackle the negative socioeconomic implications of the COVID-19 pandemic, the European Union (EU) introduced the Recovery and Resilience Facility, a financial instrument to help Member States recover, on the basis that minimum 37% of the recovery funds flow towards the green transition.
Perdana, S., & Vielle, M. (2022). Making the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism acceptable and climate friendly for least developed countries. Energy Policy, 170, 113245.
Implementation of CBAM to support EU climate neutrality by 2050 has raised several concerns. As the mechanism aims to minimise leakage through equal fairness in global mitigation, imposing carbon tariffs on the EU’s imports of energy-intensive goods could curtail the export of EU trading partners. This might be detrimental, especially to the LDCs, due to their high exposures and vulnerability risks. This paper assesses and quantifies the implication of EU-CBAM and analyses eight complementary measures to mitigate the impacts on LDCs.
Doukas, H., Arsenopoulos, A., Lazoglou, M., Nikas, A., & Flamos, A. (2022). Wind repowering: Unveiling a hidden asset. Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews, 162, 112457.
Given the abundant availability of resources, the market potential, and their cost competitiveness, onshore wind farms and photovoltaic units are expected to drive the overall growth of renewable energy sources in the next decade. However, Europe is a small and densely populated continent, which results in many countries experiencing a severe shortage of suitable land sites for installing new wind and photovoltaic facilities.
Breed, A. K., Speth, D., & Plötz, P. (2021). CO2 fleet regulation and the future market diffusion of zero-emission trucks in Europe. Energy Policy, 159, 112640.
Fuel economy regulation is a powerful instrument to reduce CO2 emissions of vehicles and has recently been extended to heavy-duty vehicles. In Europe, truck manufacturers are required to reduce the CO2 emissions of newly sold vehicles by 30% until 2030 compared to 2019/2020. Accordingly, several manufacturers have announced the introduction of zero emission vehicles (ZEVs) such as battery electric or fuel cell trucks. However, the sales shares of zero emission trucks to meet the targets have not been analyzed in the literature yet.
Li, R., Perdana, S., & Vielle, M. (2021). Potential integration of Chinese and European emissions trading market: welfare distribution analysis. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 26(22).
Central to the aims of the Paris Agreement, an integrated carbon market could potentially be a practical bottom-up option for effective and efficient mitigation. This paper quantifies the welfare effects of integration of Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) between the European Union (EU) and China. Using the European version of the computable general equilibrium model GEMINI-E3, our assessment reveals that integrating trading markets benefits both regions through the decrease welfare costs from abatements.
Nikas, A., Elia, A., Boitier, B., Koasidis, K., Doukas, H., Cassetti, G., Anger-Kraavi, A., Bui, H., Campagnolo, L., De Miglio, R., Delpiazzo, E., Fougeyrollas, A., Gambhir, A., Gargiulo, M., Giarola, S., Grant, N., Hawkes, A., Herbst, A., Köberle, A.C., Kolpakov, A., Le Mouël, P., McWilliams, B., Mittal, S., Moreno, J., Neuner, F., Perdana, S., Peter, G.P., Plötz, P., Rogelj, J., Sognnæs, I., Van de Ven, D.J., Vielle, M., Zachmann, G., Zagamé, P., & Chiodi, A. (2021). Where is the EU headed given its current climate policy? A stakeholder-driven model inter-comparison. Science of the Total Environment, 793, 148549.
Recent calls to do climate policy research with, rather than for, stakeholders have been answered in non-modelling science. Notwithstanding progress in modelling literature, however, very little of the scenario space traces back to what stakeholders are ultimately concerned about. With a suite of eleven integrated assessment, energy system and sectoral models, we carry out a model inter-comparison for the EU, the scenario logic and research questions of which have been formulated based on stakeholders' concerns.
Nikas A., Gambhir A., Trutnevyte E., Koasidis K., Lund H., Thellufsen J.Z., Mayer D., Zachmann G., Miguel L.J., Ferreras-Alonso N., Sognnaes I., Peters G.P., Colombo E., Howells M., Hawkes A., van den Broek M., Van de Ven D.J., Gonzalez-Eguino M., Flamos A., & Doukas H. (2021). Perspective of comprehensive and comprehensible multi-model energy and climate science in Europe. Energy, 215, 119153.
Europe’s capacity to explore the envisaged pathways that achieve its near- and long-term energy and climate objectives needs to be significantly enhanced. In this perspective, we discuss how this capacity is supported by energy and climate-economy models, and how international modelling teams are organised within structured communication channels and consortia as well as coordinate multi-model analyses to provide robust scientific evidence.