As the signals of an ecological and climate crisis are intensifying. The surface temperature of our planet is already around 1.2°C above pre industrial levels and is warming at an alarming rate. Against this, researchers at the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), share with us their assessments that meeting the 1.5°C target is possible, and yet it will require "deep emissions reductions” and "rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society." The International Energy Agency calls to double the pace of energy efficiency progress towards green transition and notes that “large scale financing mechanisms ought to be enacted”. Often alluded as a “Tragedy of Horizon”, climate change related risks had been regarded as the problems of long durée, to be tackled by future generations, leaving little motivation for the current cohorts. But this is no longer the case. As the urgency of the anthropogenic climate crisis becomes more explicit, greening of the global financial system steps ahead in our agenda, central banks being no exception. In fact, pathways to a net zero emissions global economy are relatively well-studied and understood. Yet, many of these studies focused mostly on green transition of the power sector and decarbonization of the industry, while financing of this transition and, particularly the potential role of the central banks, is a relatively neglected area in the design of the green policy infrastructure. Thus, there is clearly an unavoidable need to deepen our knowledge on the design of a “green central bank”, that is, in the words of Dikau & Volz, 2018, a central bank that takes environmental risks including climate change into consideration in its actions. It is the purpose of this research consortium to study the potential of greening of the monetary policy instruments, and set the stage for a new policy environment conducive to the struggle against climate change.

Geoengineering technologies, such as solar radiation management (SRM), and negative emissions technologies, such as greenhouse gas removal (GGR), are emerging options to address climate change. This project will investigate the environmental, technical, social, legal, and policy dimensions of GGR and SRM. We provide an urgently needed interdisciplinary and holistic perspective of these technologies in order to understand conditions under which they might be deployed at scale. Our meta-analytical framework integrates insights from social science, engineering and physical science disciplines to provide a comprehensive view of GGR and SRM in the transition to climate neutrality in Europe and the world. The project will conduct excellent research and generate a robust, scientific assessment for evidence-based policymaking. Our research framework consists of three pillars—techno-economic systems, socio-technical systems, and systems of political action—within which we place six work packages (WPs). These are: (1) Understanding the current state and future potential of GGR and SRM technologies in terms of their technical and economic features; (2) Analysing bottlenecks in transitions to climate neutrality and their implications for deployment; (3) Identifying social acceptance and legitimacy constraints, (4) Learning, diffusion, and adoption; (5) Implications for Sustainable Development Goals of archetypical mitigation pathways; and 6) Policy options and governance. A crosscutting WP7 synthesizes research along three salient, but under-researched themes: A) Socio-technical change; B) Managing transition risks; and C) Political economy and feasibility of deployment. WP8 focuses on stakeholder engagement, entailing scenario co-design, science-policy dialogue formats, and specific outreach formats for target groups.

The CircEUlar project aims to understand the dynamics and levers for societal transformation towards a net-zero emission circular economy. CircEUlar will develop new modelling approaches for analysing circularity from a systems perspective accounting for: 1) dematerialisation and the transition to a service-based economy to limit material stock growth; 2) lifetime extension of material stocks through repair, maintenance, reuse; 3) waste treatment and material recycling. CircEUlar’s approach will be comprehensive, combining new data and modelling of economy-wide material stocks and flows, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and industrial value chains across interlinked sectors, with deep-dive analysis of mobility and buildings as material-intensive demand sectors. These two focus areas have large material stocks, potential for circular transformation, and strong dependence on both circular consumption and production practices. CircEUlar will also focus on digitalisation as a potential enabler of dematerialisation and supply chain circularity. CircEUlar integrates multiple fields of data, knowledge and expertise including: 1) empirical analysis of firm and consumer propensities towards circular economy measures; 2) industry input on process-level innovations and circular economy business models; 3) modelling analysis of economy-wide material stocks and flows, and policy levers of change towards societal transformation. CircEUlar will integrate new insights on circular economy potentials and impacts into EU and global modelling frameworks for: 1) analysing alternative pathways to net-zero GHG emissions; 2) testing effective policy levers for both circular production and consumption. 3) assessing outcomes for climate, environment, economy and society, in line with European Green Deal objectives.

AdJUST is a transdisciplinary European consortium whose objective is to achieve a step change in societal understanding of the distributive repercussions of the transition to climate neutrality, and to identify effective and actively-supported policy interventions to accompany climate action so that no-one is left behind. AdJUST combines research approaches from complementary disciplines with a continuous social dialogue, ensuring that the project practices open science, models procedural justice, and builds understanding, trust and capacity among citizens and other stakeholders concerning the transition to climate neutrality. AdJUST engages European public bodies, industry, civil society and researchers—i.e. the quadruple helix—to design and promote a shared vision, inspiring them towards the common goal of achieving climate neutrality. It relies on state-of-the-art economic assessment tools, statistical analysis, and research approaches from other Social Sciences & Humanities disciplines—including political science, business management, public administration, political theory, philosophy and ethics—to generate methodologically-sound research results on the full range of challenges of the just transition. These comprise technical, economic, and social/equity dimensions for firms, workers, households and public bodies, and the potential distributional impacts of the EU Green Deal, NextGenerationEU and Fit for 55. AdJUST produces a set of actionable and context-specific policy recommendations—complementing the Just Transition Fund and the Social Climate Fund—to effectively manage competitiveness and distributional trade-offs associated with the transition across Europe, and in specific countries and sectors. Moving well beyond standard public opinion analysis of preferences for climate action, AdJUST probes the conditions under which households, firms, and unions will actively support these initiatives to transition Europe to carbon neutrality.