Transcript Agenda - IIasa

Agenda
• Research planning process (15’)
• Introduction to the Energy& Climate area (10’)
• Initial project ideas of C&E programs (10’ each)
– ENE
– APD
– RAV
• Project ideas of other areas (25’)
• Next steps (10’)
IIASA Research Planning Process 2010
Contents
• Overall process
• Organization of scientific work at IIASA
• Format of research plan
• Project proposals
Overall process
• Implementation Plan presented to Council in Nov 2009
• IPSC developed guidelines for research plan (Dec 24, 2009)
• Programs provide draft research plans on projects (Feb 28)
• Comments by SAC (March 25-26)
• Revised research plans to Council (end of April)
• Council feedback and comments (before June meeting)
• Council approves research plan (June 14-15)
Organization of scientific work at IIASA
• 3 areas,
3 cross-cutting themes
• 1-2 Programs per theme
• 5-7 projects per program
(incl. 2 collaborative)
Allocation of programs to themes
•
Energy and Climate Change
– ENE & GEA
– APD
•
Food and Water
– FOR & LUC
– EEP
•
Poverty and Equity
– RAV & HGC
– Other IIASA Researchers (POP, others)
•
Drivers of Global Transformations
– TNT
– POP
•
Advanced Systems Analysis Forum
– DYN & IME
– Other IIASA Researchers (EEP, others)
•
Policy, Decision, and Negotiation Analysis Forum
– Selected IIASA Researchers (RAV, others)
Project proposals
• 2.5 pages per project
(0.5 page summary + 2 pages description to go in Annex)
• To be developed by proponents of involved programs
• (Co?)headed by non-program leaders
• Need adoption by involved program (leaders)
• Need “harmonization” across all proposed projects
Envisaged format of research plan
Draft research plan (by Feb 28)
Contents:
1. Integrative overview of research planned for the six
thematic problem and cross-cutting areas
(drafted by RPCC & IPSC)
2. Linkages between IIASA’s expertise and its programs to
the six thematic problem and crosscutting areas
(drafted by programs)
3. Project proposals (drafted by the participating programs)
Approach for today’s meeting
Brief outlines of ideas for possible projects
– Programs in Energy and Climate area
– Interest from other programs
• Brainstorming for new ideas and how they are related
– Not a review of proposed ideas
• Stimulate collaboration between IIASA scientists
– Identify partnerships that could deliver (incl. outside IIASA)
– Cooperative rather than confrontational style
• We will not(!) decide on specific project ideas today
Energy and Climate Change
Directions given in the Implementation Plan
Key policy challenges
• Identifying policy options, portfolios and associated
investments that have lower life-cycle costs and lower or
even zero emissions on all scales,
• Developing local, national and regional scale solutions that
manage the transition in the mid-term without
compromising economic development goals, and
• Creating mechanisms to overcome institutional obstacles to
implementing these options.
Research question 1
What are short-to-medium term mitigation and adaptation
needs in order to achieve long-term climate objectives?
To bridge the different time scales, research will distill near-term
characteristics of the transition necessary for the achievement of global
long-term climate change mitigation targets, identifying transformations,
which are robust against a wide range of development and emission
paths. The analyses will also identify inadequate short-term measures
that may prevent the achievement of long-term climate objectives. Critical
issues are, for example, to improve the understanding of potential lock-in
effects in the human systems given long-lived infrastructure and socioeconomic inertia, deep uncertainties, understanding barriers to rapid
technology diffusion, R&D and deployment, institutional and governance
changes. Understanding the long-term dynamics will require also
integrating climate feedbacks into the analysis through fully coupled
integrated assessment models with explicit representations of the earth
systems.
Research question 2
How do these global transformation paths translate into
national and local mitigation and adaptation strategies?
To bridge the spatial scales across human and natural systems, IIASA’s
research will develop tools for the analysis of mitigation and adaptation
options, avoided impacts and their costs at the regional, national and local
scales that are consistent with the required global transformation. This
will include development aspects, economic consequences, technology
penetration as well as co-benefits and trade-offs with other policy
objectives. Together with collaborators from IIASA NMO countries the
tools will be implemented for a wide range of industrialized and
developing countries that are critical for the global transition path, to
establish international comparability of mitigation and adaptation efforts
and their local consequences.
Research question 3
How would such transition strategies affect different sectors
and economic actors, and which policy instruments could
help implementation?
To bridge inequities across economic sectors and actors, IIASA’s research will
identify solutions that integrate the main greenhouse gas emitting
sectors, such as energy, households, industry, transport, agriculture and
forestry. This requires an integrated assessment of critical interactions
and feedbacks between these sectors, including competition over land for
food, fiber, and bio-energy, and studies identifying appropriate
governance structures and incentive mechanisms. Special attention will be
paid to how to overcome institutional obstacles because of a lack of
political will, misaligned economic incentives, and other barriers to
innovation, and to prevent lock-in situations, e.g., due to long-lived
infrastructure and other factors.
Some ideas on possible projects
“The Energy Challenge Triangle”
Energy Poverty/Access
P1: Energy Access
Focus: clean cooking fuels (LPG, kerosene) and
electricity for the poor
New Methods:
•Explicit representation of heterogeneity and
income distributions (equity)
•behavioral aspects (convenience, fuel choice)
•capital scarcity
Sustainable
Aim:
DevelopmentAssessment of policy leverages (fuel subsidies,
micro-financing), financial needs, barriers
Environment
(Climate Change
and Pollution)
Energy Security
“The Energy Challenge Triangle”
P2: Integrated assessment of climate change
Energy Poverty/Access
Focus: holistic climate mitigation strategies,
considering synergies between poverty and
development and feedbacks between energy, food,
fiber, water
Method: Next generation of IAM modeling – move
from GGI soft-linkages to full integration
Aim:
Assessment of feasibility, impacts and benefits of
climate mitigation
Sustainable
More robust assessment of the possible contribution
Development
of developing countries with dominant agricultural
sector emissions.
Environment
(Climate Change
and Pollution)
Energy Security
“The Energy Challenge Triangle”
P3: Life-styles, behavioral changes, consumption patterns,
Energy Poverty/Access
social heterogeneity
Do we need them? How much can they contribute compared to
techno-economic solutions?
P4: Spatial heterogeneity
Mismatch between energy supply and demand densities
(urbanization, industrialization). Apply downscaling and spatial
modeling methods to understand energy system implications (eg for
renewables)
P5: Energy technology diffusion
Empirical analysis and modeling to understand dynamics of technology
development, diffusion andSustainable
constraints as well as policies to overcome
the constraints and to accelerate
technological change.
Development
P6: Investments and R&D
Assessment of investment requirements and financial mechanism for
the transformation (access, security, climate, etc..)
P7: Policy trade-offs and synergies (integration)
Environment
Energy Security
The nature of the transformation will depend on competing policy
(Climate Change
priorities. Apply multi-criteria optimization methods to identify robust
and Pollution)
policy portfolios (strongly linked to the IAM project).
Some APD project ideas (1)
• Modelling national transition paths to 2050
– Based on existing GAINS data and policy networks
– Include dynamic features (lifetime of infrastructure, lock-in,
sequential decision making, back-casting?, etc)
– National scale
– Linked to global long-term analysis
– Reflect increasing uncertainties to 2050
– Difficulty to define reference baseline
– Systems perspective (multi-sectoral, population and
technology drivers, macro-economic feedbacks,
co-benefits, health)
– Non-technical measures (life style changes, etc.)
– Implementation focus on OECD and BRICS countries
Some APD project ideas (2)
• Role of aerosols in controlling near-term climate
(co-benefits, etc.)
– to supplement, not substitute mitigation of long-lived species
• Role of life style changes for mid-term transition
• Economic instruments for making transition happen
• Methodological issues (sequential decision making,
back-casting, identification of limiting constraints, etc.)
• Energy access in BRICS
Some RAV project ideas
• International climate change governance
– Policy systems modeling to identify feasible regulatory
pathways at overlapping scales
• Distributional aspects of climatic extreme events
– Econometric analysis and economic modeling to identify cross
sectoral impacts of climate hazards
• Fairness and resilience in adapting to climate change
– Participatory systems modeling to improve natural resource
management and access.
• Catastrophic climate related risk and social protection
– Econometric analysis and economic modeling to identify the
role of institutions in climate vulnerability reduction