Scientific publications
Liu, Z., Deng, Z., Zhu, B., Ciais, P., Davis, S. J., Tan, J., ... & Schellnhuber, H. J. (2022). Global patterns of daily CO2 emissions reductions in the first year of COVID-19. Nature Geoscience, 15, 615-620.
Day-to-day changes in CO2 emissions from human activities, in particular fossil-fuel combustion and cement production, reflect a complex balance of influences from seasonality, working days, weather and, most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we provide a daily CO2 emissions dataset for the whole year of 2020, calculated from inventory and near-real-time activity data. We find a global reduction of 6.3% (2,232 MtCO2) in CO2 emissions compared with 2019.
Koutsellis, T., Xexakis, G., Koasidis, K., Nikas, A., & Doukas, H. (2022). Parameter analysis for sigmoid and hyperbolic transfer functions of fuzzy cognitive maps. Operational Research, 22, 5733-5763.
Fuzzy cognitive maps (FCM) have recently gained ground in many climate policy studies, mainly because they allow stakeholder engagement in reduced-form complex systems representation and modelling. They provide a pictorial form of systems, consisting of nodes (concepts) and node interconnections (weights), and perform system simulations for various input combinations. Due to their simplicity and quasi-quantitative nature, they can be easily used with and by non-experts.
Koasidis, K., Nikas, A., Karamaneas, A., Saulo, M., Tsipouridis, I., Campagnolo, L., Gambhir, A., Van de Ven, D.-J., McWilliams, B., & Doukas, H. (2022). Climate and sustainability co-governance in Kenya: A multi-criteria analysis of stakeholders' perceptions and consensus. Energy for Sustainable Development, 68, 457-471.
The Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development embody highly intertwined targets to act for climate in conjunction with sustainable development. This, however, entails different meanings and challenges across the world. Kenya, in particular, needs to address serious sustainability threats, like poverty and lack of modern and affordable energy access.
Song, S., Lin, H., Sherman, P., Yang, X., Chen, S., Lu, X., ... & McElroy, M. B. (2022). Deep Decarbonization of the Indian Economy: 2050 Prospects for Wind, Solar, and Green Hydrogen. iScience, 104399.
The paper explores options for a 2050 carbon free energy future for India. Onshore wind and solar sources are projected as the dominant primary contributions to this objective. The analysis envisages an important role for so-called green hydrogen produced by electrolysis fueled by these carbon free energy sources. This hydrogen source can be used to accommodate for the intrinsic variability of wind and solar complementing opportunities for storage of power by batteries and pumped hydro.
Burke, J., & Gambhir, A. (2022). Policy incentives for Greenhouse Gas Removal Techniques: the risks of premature inclusion in carbon markets and the need for a multi-pronged policy framework. Energy and Climate Change, 3, 100074.
Almost all modelled emissions scenarios consistent with the Paris Agreement's target of limiting global temperature increase to well below two degrees include the use of greenhouse gas removal (GGR) techniques. Despite the prevalence of GGR in Paris-consistent scenarios, and indeed the UK's own net-zero target, there is a paucity of regulatory support for emerging GGR techniques..
Babonneau, F., & Vielle, M. (2022). A post-COVID-19 economic assessment of the Chilean NDC revision. Climate Change Economics, in press.
Last year, Chile updated its Nationally Determined Contributions, moving from intensity-based emissions reductions to an effective emissions target. This paper aims to assess the economic and environmental impacts of this change in the current context of high uncertainty Chile faces with social protests and the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the computable general equilibrium model GEMINI-E3, we performed a sensitivity analysis assuming different levels of economic growth through 2030.
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.
Speth, D., Plötz, P., Funke, S., & Vallarella, E. (2022). Public fast charging infrastructure for battery electric trucks – a model-based network for Germany. Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability, 2, 025004.
Globally, road freight accounts for 40% of the CO2 emissions in the transport sector, mainly from heavy-duty vehicles (HDV). All the major truck markets have introduced fuel efficiency regulations for HDV, and the more ambitious regulations require the introduction of zero-emission HDV, for which battery electric trucks (BEV) are a promising candidate. However, frequent long-distance trips require a dense public high-power charging network if BEV are to meet today's operating schedules in logistics.
Edelenbosch, O. Y., Miu, L., Sachs, J., Hawkes, A., & Tavoni, M. (2022). Translating observed household energy behavior to agent-based technology choices in an integrated modeling framework. Iscience, 25(3), 103905.
Decarbonizing the building sector depends on choices made at the household level, which are heterogeneous. Agent-based models are tools used to describe heterogeneous choices but require data-intensive calibration. This study analyzes a novel, cross-country European household-level survey, including sociodemographic characteristics, energy-saving habits, energy-saving investments, and metered household electricity consumption, to enhance the empirical grounding of an agent-based residential energy choice model.
Koasidis, K., Nikas, A., Daniil, V., Kanellou, E., & Doukas, H. (2022). A multi-criteria decision support framework for assessing seaport sustainability planning: the case of Piraeus. Maritime Policy & Management, in press.
Seaports will play a pivotal role in the low-carbon transition of maritime shipping, the policy landscape in which is currently being shaped. In this context, we introduce a multi-criteria decision support framework for seaport sustainability planning, to identify the competitiveness of interventions under uncertainty and evaluate the direction of the sector’s policy context in terms of required actions.