Scientific publications

Massive deployment of renewables is considered as a decisive step in most countries’ climate efforts. However, at the local scale, it is also perceived by many as a threat to their rich and diverse natural environment. With this perspective, we argue that this green versus green pseudo-dilemma highlights how crucial a broad societal buy-in is. New, transparent, participatory processes and mechanisms that are oriented toward social licensing can now be employed.

Multi-criteria decision making is a daily process in everyday life, in which different alternatives are evaluated over a set of conflicting criteria. Decision making is becoming increasingly complex, and the apparition of uncertainty and vagueness is inevitable, especially when related to sustainability issues. To model such lack of information, decision makers often use linguistic information to express their opinions, closer to their way of thinking, giving place to linguistic decision making.

Industrial processes are associated with high amounts of energy consumed and greenhouse gases emitted, stressing the urgent need for low-carbon sectoral transitions. This research reviews the energy-intensive iron and steel, cement and chemicals industries of Germany and the United Kingdom, two major emitting countries with significant activity, yet with different recent orientation.

Quantitative systems modelling in support of climate policy has tended to focus more on the supply side in assessing interactions among technology, economy, environment, policy and society. By contrast, the demand side is usually underrepresented, often emphasising technological options for energy efficiency improvements. In this perspective, we argue that scientific support to climate action is not only about exploring capacity of “what”, in terms of policy and outcome, but also about assessing feasibility and desirability, in terms of “when”, “where” and especially for “whom”.

The 1.5°C target will require removing at least some of the carbon dioxide (CO₂) previously emitted. Knowledge on how this can be done has been increasing, though barriers remain concerning governance, policy, and acceptability. For the 26^th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP26) to move beyond an academic debate on CO₂ removal (CDR), a broader alliance of research and policy communities, industry, and the public is needed.

This research introduces a two-level integration of climate-economy modelling and portfolio analysis, to simulate technological subsidisation with implications for multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), across socioeconomic trajectories and considering different levels of uncertainties. We use integrated assessment modelling outputs relevant for progress across three SDGs—namely air pollution-related mortality (SDG3), access to clean energy (SDG7) and greenhouse gas emissions (SDG13)—calculated with the Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM) for different subsidy levels for six sustainable technologies, across three Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), feeding them into a portfolio analysis model. Optimal portfolios that are robust in the individual socioeconomic scenarios as well as across the socioeconomic scenarios are identified, by means of an SSP-robustness score. A second link between the two models is established, by feeding portfolio analysis results back into GCAM. Application in a case study for Eastern Africa confirms that most SSP-robust portfolios show smaller output ranges among scenarios.

Transport is associated with high amounts of energy consumed and greenhouse gases emitted. Most transport means operate using fossil fuels, creating the urgent need for a rapid transformation of the sector. In this research, we examine the transport systems of Norway and Canada, two countries with similar shares of greenhouse gas emissions from transport and powerful oil industries operating within their boundaries. Our socio-technical analysis, based on the Sectoral Innovation Systems approach, attempts to identify the elements enabling Norway to become one of the leaders in the diffusion of electric vehicles, as well as the differences pacing down progress in Canada. By utilising the System Failure framework to compare the two systems, bottlenecks hindering the decarbonisation of the two transport systems are identified. Results indicate that the effectiveness of Norway’s policy is exaggerated and has led to recent spillover effects towards green shipping. The activity of oil companies, regional and federal legislative disputes in Canada and the lack of sincere efforts from system actors to address challenges lead to non-drastic greenhouse gas emission reductions, despite significant policy efforts from both countries. Insights into the effectiveness of previously implemented policies and the evolution of the two sectoral systems can help draw lessons towards sustainable transport.

With climate change mainly originating from the extensive use of fossil fuels and having impacts on many aspects of life, changing the way energy is utilised constitutes a challenge that the world collectively must tackle. In this respect, all countries should implement a variety of measures focusing on energy efficiency and use of sustainable energy sources towards decarbonising their economies and achieving effective greenhouse gas emission reductions and sustainable development. Technological innovations, economic growth, societal compliance, and the regulatory and institutional frameworks constitute prominent factors that could promote, hinder or shape energy transitions as well as indicate the capacity of energy systems to be transformed. Therefore, investigating energy transitions and the extent to which countries are prepared to carry out such transitions requires the consideration of insights into multiple dimensions. This study outlines a multicriteria analysis framework to assess a country's sustainable energy transition readiness level, drawing from four pillars—social, political/regulatory, economic and technological—comprising a consistent set of eight evaluation criteria. The proposed decision analysis framework builds on the PROMETHEE II and AHP methods. Fourteen countries of different profile and level of progress towards sustainable development are evaluated and ranked, in an effort to highlight areas for improvement, and to support policymakers in designing appropriate pathways towards a greener economy.

Measures to mitigate the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂) can vary substantially in terms of the energy required. Some proposed CO₂ mitigation options involve energy-intensive processes that compromise their viability as routes to mitigation, especially if deployed at a global scale. Here we provide an assessment of different mitigation options in terms of their energy usage. We assess the relative effectiveness of several CO₂ mitigation routes by calculating the energy cost of carbon abatement (kilowatt-hour spent per kilogram CO₂-equivalent, or kWh kgCO₂e^–1) mitigated. We consider energy efficiency measures, decarbonizing electricity, heat, chemicals and fuels, and also capturing CO2 from air. Among the routes considered, switching to renewable energy technologies (0.05–0.53 kWh kgCO₂e^–1 mitigated) offer more energy-effective mitigation than carbon embedding or carbon removal approaches, which are more energy intensive (0.99–10.03 kWh kgCO₂e^–1 and 0.78–2.93 kWh kgCO₂e^–1 mitigated, respectively), whereas energy efficiency measures, such as improving building lighting, can offer the most energy-effective mitigation.