Myanmar is in a critical time in its energy transition. To be able to attract investors in the renewable energy sector and re-investigate the governments RE targets, enhancing access to energy and electrification, as well as reducing CO2 emissions and environmental pollution from fossil fuels there is a dire need for nationally grounded energy expertise. In the quest of developing energy self-sufficiency to detach from fossil fuel based energy infrastructure while improving energy access and security requires skilled experts, cross-sectoral cooperation and understanding of the multifaceted implications in long-term. The project aims to contribute to the Myanmar energy sector development via capacity enhancement in partner institutions by providing future oriented environment and sustainable energy planning and energy entrepreneurship, participative teaching methods, innovation and business development, sustainable energy engineering tools and approaches, environmental impacts of energy, research skills, and quality project management through training of trainers approach. Further, MEEE will establish and strengthen cooperation with critical actors in the sector for more integrated and holistic impacts. The project also engages stakeholders from ministries, civil society and the private sector for modernizing and enhancing relevance in energy education and meeting the needs of the sector as a whole.The overall objective of MEEE is to ensure that the Myanmar partner HEIs are better able to provide quality education on environment and sustainable energy for growing societal needs through 1) Improved Knowledge and skills of partner HEIs to provide up-to-date teaching and research on sustainable energy and environment by 2022 2) Improved institutional capacities of partner HEIs through up-to-date curricula, methods, tools and equipment to provide expertise needed in the energy sector in Myanmar by 2022 and 3 ) Internationalisation of partner HEIs

The overall aim of sEEnergies is to quantify and operationalise the potentials for energy efficiency (EE) in buildings, transport and industry, combining this bottom-up knowledge with temporal and spatial analyses to develop an innovative, holistic and research-based EE-modelling approach going beyond current state-of-the-art science based knowledge and methodologies. Because the changes in one energy sector can contribute to impacts in another sector, it is only possible to have a comprehensive assessment and quantification of the EEFP policies impacts if we look at the energy systems from a holistic point of view and take into consideration the synergies between sectors. Therefore bottom-up sectorial approach and grid assessment, together with energy system modelling and spatial analytics is combined in the novel EE modelling approach. To achieve its aim, sEEnergies comprises a combination of in-depth knowledge on the consumption side and in-depth analyses of the energy systems that enables a detailed scientifically based pool of knowledge needed to make EE potentials concrete and operational, and as a resource on its own. Embedded in the applied project methodology is the identification of synergies across the supply chain and towards additional impacts not directly linked to the energy system. This nonenergy impacts can be very important benefits that are often invisible but which sEEnergies aims to operationalise to a larger extent on a sectoral, system and member state level. For each sector we will take as starting point the state-of-the-art including best practices, policies in place and energy and nonenergy impacts of EE, for the EU and for the 28 Member States. In order to maximise the outreach of sEEnergies’ results and the understanding of their importance, an online and user friendly GIS platform will be developed where EE impacts can be geographically visualised.

To facilitate the necessary energy transition, there is an urgent need for highly trained professionals with the scientific knowledge and professional skills to analyse, understand and design relevant (new) energy systems and governance in different sectors and administration. The proposed project Energy Systems in Transition (ENSYSTRA) aims to train 15 ESRs in this field. The objectives of ENSYSTRA are 1) to develop state-of-the-art science of energy systems transition, scenario analysis and energy modelling tools with emphasis on interdisciplinary model collaboration, 2) to provide ESRs with interdisciplinary, inter-sectoral and applied perspectives on the energy transition, 3) to provide new skills and competences for interdisciplinary analysis, 3) to establish collaboration between key universities and their networks, 4) to create and increase linkages between different academic disciplines, applied research, industry and the public sector, 5) develop links and synergies between relevant scientific arenas, and 6) to contribute to accessible energy science based on open source work environments. By focussing on a prominent ‘’living lab’’ of the energy transition, the North Sea region, the project will bring together a strong network and analytical capacity to understand energy system & scenario modeling; new energy technologies & infrastructures; actor behavior & interactions; and policy & market design, linking the regional to the international scale. Through a carefully designed training programme, ESRs are trained in both scientific and transferable skills with ample opportunity to collaborate between different projects and partners. The total effort will result in major progress in the field of energy system analysis and transition modelling. By the combined use and improvement of a range of modelling tools and methods, the project will deliver integral insights in energy transition pathways, policy implications and options for the North Sea region.

Open ENTRANCE addresses the development, use and dissemination of an open, transparent and integrated modelling platform for assessing low-carbon transition pathways. The platform will be populated with a suite of state-of-the-art modelling tools and data for covering the multiple dimensions of the energy transition. This will facilitate and improve the dialogue between researchers, policy makers and industry when investigating central questions in the transition. Open ENTRANCE will improve the adequacy of the energy modelling approaches in different ways: i) the quality of the models that will be included in the suit ii) the linking of models which makes it possible to run analyses faster and to conduct a number of sensitivity analyses iii) by integrating large-scale empirical data about human behaviour into energy modelling tools iv) by combining detailed bottom-up and top-down approaches. Open ENTRANCE will demonstrate the functionality of the platform by conducting scenario building exercises, in-depth (case) studies and macro-economic analyses of the transition. Energy transition pathways will provide strategic recommendations to policy-makers. The platform allows 3rd party users to link own tools to the database and to conduct comparative studies to the results from Open ENTRANCE. IIASA guaranties that the database will be open accessible at least 10 years after the end of the project. If new projects will use the platform, it is possible to develop it further. Open ENTRANCE is built on a number of national and European energy modelling projects. The Consortium includes 13 energy modelling groups in addition to World Future Council which is responsible for dissemination and communication. Open ENTRANCE will arrange 12 workshops for stakeholder discussions, 4 annual conferences and 1 workshop in the European Parliament. 45 stakeholders have signed for their interest in the project so far. Open ENTRANCE is a 4-year project with a budget of 4.9 mill Euro.

In order to meet the climate change mitigation objectives of the European Union as well as the objectives of the Paris Agreement, it is inevitable that the European Union phases out fossil fuel consumption in the power sector and decarbonizes fossil-fuel dependent industries. These industries are not spread evenly across the EU but concentrated in a number of carbon-intensive regions. Decarbonization will lead to deep structural changes with implications for regional economies, labour markets, as well as for the regions’ social, political, cultural and demographic composition. If not managed well, these structural changes may cause serious economic impacts, societal upheaval, aggravated social inequalities and hardship. To minimize such consequences it is necessary to better understand the patterns and dynamics of structural change in response to decarbonization at the regional level, to understand which parameters determine the pace of transformation as well as the capacity of regional actors to adapt and pro-actively create alternative structures. This project aims to enable these activities through highly integrated, inter- and transdisciplinary research working in close collaboration with regional stakeholders. It combines quantitative model-based research with qualitative in-depth analysis. The qualitative research will focus on four highly fossil-fuel dependent regions: Western Macedonia (Greece), Silesia (Poland), Ida-Virumaa (Estonia) and the Rhenish mining area (Germany). The regions were selected to cover a diverse set of different fuels, state of economic development, diversification of the regional economy, political economy, and spatial composition. This diversity will enable the project to derive generalizable insights about the patterns and dynamics of decarbonization and the corresponding structural adjustments that hold relevance for all carbon-intensive regions in the EU and its neighbouring countries.