Minimising the welfare cost of climate change requires effective adaptation policies. Consequently, the EU strategy on climate change adaptation prioritises the creation of ‘frameworks, models and tools to support decision-making and to assess [the effectiveness of] various adaptation measures’. Accurate measurement of welfare cost is a prerequisite for effective policy prioritisation. The current state of the art quantifies welfare costs using aggregated methodologies. This has been shown to bias cost estimation and does not capture the socioeconomic distribution of welfare impacts. This bias may therefore affect the effectiveness of adaptation measures. Integrating climate impact models (with which Prof Lotze-Campen and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research [PIK] are experts) with Spatial Microsimulation (SM) modelling (with which the experienced researcher, Dr. Farrell, is an expert) provides a framework to estimate micro-level welfare impacts and thus overcome these deficiencies. Furthermore, this project integrates these estimates into decision-making models to aid policy. This project provides: (1) a timely contribution; (2) a strong multidisciplinary focus; (3) a transfer of SM knowledge to PIK, improving their ability to quantify the welfare impacts of climate change; (4) strong training in climate science and decision-making tools for Dr. Farrell; (5) strong communication/dissemination strategy drawing on resources of Dr. Farrell and PIK. The value of this project is in the collaborative opportunities provided by the research fellowship. PIK provides the best possible opportunities for mentorship and training/professional development for Dr. Farrell. This establishes Dr. Farrell as the leading expert in an emerging field of micro-based welfare estimation of climate change impacts and, coupled with the integration of the research networks of Dr. Farrell and PIK, provides a platform through which many further career developments are possible.

The main objective of the DEEDS project is to create a broad dialogue on the vision for a carbon-free Europe by 2050 and associated decarbonisation pathways. DEEDS will do this through 1) developing a solid knowledge base and synthesizing six Decarbonisation Pathways documents for important sectors of the European economy: energy production, industry, mobility, agriculture, cities, and an integrated pathways document, 2) organizing a stakeholder dialogue for knowledge assessment, and co-creation of policies and strategies with policy makers (on different levels), business representatives, NGO’s and other stakeholders, and 3) producing six policy briefs with policy recommendations and a Business Guide for decarbonisation in Europe (by WBCSD). DEEDS has designed a specific interface for supporting the EDPI and its High-level Panel in their tasks and has built in some flexibility to be able to accommodate questions and requests for ‘deep dives’ of the HLP and DG R&I. The project will support further alignment and coordination of European and Member State research and innovation through targeted Research & Policy Workshops that will result in a Research Agenda for Decarbonisation Pathways in Europe. We have secured cooperation with networks in Europe on several topics and levels relevant for the project that will assist DEEDS to invite stakeholders to the dialogue sessions and to disseminate the DEEDS outcomes to their constituency. The project is supported by a targeted communication and dissemination approach that will create outreach through traditional media, like a website, factsheets, brochures, and through social media, like twitter, short video clips, blog articles, etc. In this way DEEDS will strengthen the information flow, enhance the exchange of experiences on R&I activities, and creates an evidence based dialogue between science, business, policy and civil society on the decarbonization of Europe’s economy.

There is rising concern that several subsystems of the Earth may respond highly nonlinearly at critical future levels of anthropogenic forcing; these levels have recently been associated with tipping points (TPs). It is paramount to identify safe operating spaces for humanity and the planet in terms of these critical forcing levels, in order to prevent harmful transitions to alternative, undesirable states of the Earth system. The mechanisms leading to such abrupt transitions are only partly understood, and further research in this regard is urgently needed. State-of-art Earth System Models appear to respond too smoothly at TPs and have difficulties in simulating abrupt transitions that occurred in the planet’s history. TiPES will address these problems from several angles: 1. The project will identify subsystems that may exhibit abrupt transitions, and couplings between them, by focussing on paleoclimatic records and abrupt transitions therein. Novel methods to detect Early Warning Signals of forthcoming TPs, and to make skilful predictions on their basis, will be developed. 2. The potential shortcomings of models in representing TPs will be evaluated; in particular, TiPES will investigate how Bayesian calibration techniques can help enable these models to simulate past abrupt transitions. 3. TiPES will develop a generalized theory of climate sensitivity that accounts for the presence of TPs and feedbacks across various time scales. 4. To define safe operating spaces. TiPES will focus on dynamical system theory and on global stability notions for non-autonomous systems in order to estimate the stability of desirable states. 5. The results obtained by the project will be communicated to policy makers in a manner that facilitates decisions and their implementation. TiPES will develop formal approaches to define the socioeconomic risks of crossing TPs, and to derive decision strategies to keep anthropogenic forcing below levels where abrupt transitions may occur.

The What Works Climate Solutions Summit is a transdisciplinary, inclusive, high-level conference to promote and catalyze synthetic evidence on climate solutions for upcoming climate change assessments – particularly the IPCC’s 7th Assessment Report ─ as well as other forms of scientific policy advice. It brings together leading experts on climate solutions, key institutions curating scientific policy advice on climate change such as science assessment bodies (IPCC, UNEP Emissions Gap etc.) and science academies, evidence synthesis communities (Campbell Collaboration, Cochrane, Collaboration for Environmental Evidence, Evidence Synthesis International, Evidence-based Research Network) as well as policymakers, research funders and other users of evidence to make progress towards major goals: 1. Initiate an ambitious work program on climate solutions and advance evidence synthesis methods for evidence-based policy 2. Building evidence synthesis capacity across the climate community: 3. Establishing a dialogue and forming new collaborations for evidence-based climate solution 4. Mainstream the topic of health in the wider discourse on climate solutions in science, policy and practice

The need to approach climate action, resource efficiency, and circularity performance as integrated, economy-wide, cross-cutting issues is growingly gaining attention in the policy world, stimulating the development of new industrial policies in Europe and worldwide. Currently, however, there is little progress in conceptualising the circular economy and understanding its interactions with climate action. State-of-the-art modelling capacity to capture the interplay of the two agendas and their implications for energy-intensive sectors as well as to represent the European industrys transformation in line with the regions vision for climate neutrality is not yet fully developed. TRANSIENCE will undertake a comprehensive characterisation and assessment of circularity principles and measures vis--vis decarbonisation, by looking at the twin transition of European industries through the lenses of global competitiveness, innovation, and holistic sustainability. It will then produce MIC3, a consistent, fully open-source model ecosystem to assess industrial circularity, decarbonisation, and sustainability. A series of interoperable modules on the socioeconomic, service and product, material, industrial, energy-system, and environmental perspectives of the transformation of European industry will be developed and integrated, building on and opening the code of leading modelling tools. MIC3 will finally be used in extensive scenario modelling to produce diverse pathways toward a material-efficient, circular, climate-neutral, sustainable European industry. Transparency, openness, and knowledge sharing will be promoted, and technical capacities will be developed in four industrial agglomerations in the EU, moving beyond stakeholder consultation, onto model co-development, continuous validation of assumptions, co-creation of scenario modelling, evaluation of the desirability and usability of the developed model and insights, and eventually co-production of science and action.