Publications
Deliverables
Public reports produced by the consortium in the context of the project, as part of its mission.
To underpin climate policymaking with authoritative scientific processes and results for the post-2030 period and enhance the science-policy interface, the IAM COMPACT website will serve according to the DoA, as a constant node aiming to present information on the project and disseminate its results as well as a reference site with material and links related to climate action and sustainable development, relevant consortia, and projects. The website’s development is essential to the effective promotion of the project concept, progress, activities, results, and stakeholder engagement. The project’s progress and results will be published online. The visual identity of IAM COMPACT will convey the message on what the project is about and will communicate objectives, methods, and expected results to stakeholders.
The purpose of this document is to describe the visual identity and the website of the IAM COMPACT project, which is part of Task 1.2 ‘Creating the IAM COMPACT visual identity & website’ activities. Dissemination tools, including information and communication means such as the logo, flyer, leaflet, poster, roll-up, and presentation are presented.
The visual identity and the materials presented on the website will be updated as the project needs evolve.
The Quality Management Plan defines the quality policy and plan to be applied in the IAM COMPACT project. Its purpose is to establish the roles, procedures, metrics, and tools necessary to ensure that the IAM COMPACT project is implemented smoothly and that all project deliverables are of high quality and of scientific added value and that they are submitted to the EC services in time. Complying with the quality management procedures falls under the responsibility of the Project Coordinator, the Project Manager, the Quality Manager, the Work Package leaders and the Task leaders.
This report can be used for internally reviewing the project’s progress and as a reference point for project partners on their tasks’ completion regarding the agreed conditions by the consortium.
In accordance with the project’s Quality Management Plan, remote (online) and physical meetings (in hybrid format) are taking place so that consortium partners communicate and cooperate during the IAM COMPACT project’s lifetime. In this context, monthly Executive Board Meetings are arranged online through Microsoft Teams as well as biannual General Assembly Meetings, which are hosted either back-to-back with other physical events organised by the project or held online. The monthly meetings aim to update all consortium members on the progress of all Work Packages, maintain all actions within the agreed timelines, and ensure that corrective actions (if needed) are taken in due time. Thus, these monthly meetings contribute to achieving the project’s goals and vision. NTUA’s administration team is organising these meetings and proposes the agenda in advance, before finalising it with all partners.
In the second year of the project (September 2023 – August 2024), no physical meetings were organised for sustainability reasons and to align with the overall work programme. The third General Assembly of the project took place on the 26th and 27th of February 2024 (online), as well as 6 Executive Board Meetings, all through Microsoft Teams. All meetings were characterised by high levels of participation from all partners (European and international as well), with everyone demonstrating significant commitment to the project’s goals.
According to the IAM COMPACT project’s Quality Management Plan, physical (hybrid) and remote (online) meetings take place regularly so that project partners collaborate and communicate during the project’s lifetime. In this context, Executive Board Meetings are organised once every month online through MS Teams, while General Board Meetings are organised twice per year, organised back-to-back with other physical project-related events or held online if no other event is taking place during this period. The Executive Board Meetings’ main purpose is to brief all project partners on the development of all Work Packages and Tasks, maintain all efforts within the agreed timeline, and ensure that corrective actions (if necessary) are taken in a timely manner. Hence, these meetings help achieve the project vision and goals. The NTUA administration team is hosting these meetings and suggests the agenda, prior to finalising it with the consortium. In the third and last year of the project (September 2024 – August 2025), two physical meetings were organised: one at KTH, Stockholm, by KTH partners and one at Imperial College, London, by Imperial partners, to thoroughly discuss the objectives and actions for the last 12 months of the project. These meetings were the 4th and 5th General Assembly Meetings of the project and took place on the 30th of September and the 1st of October, 2024, and on the 31st of March and the 1st of April, 2025, respectively, supporting online participation as well. Moreover, 5 Executive Board Meetings were organised via MS Teams. Colleagues from all consortium partners participated in most meetings, showcasing their commitment to IAM COMPACT’s objectives.
Ensuring the policy-relevant output is a fundamental aim of IAM COMPACT. This document outlines a stakeholder engagement plan that can facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration between modellers and stakeholders to achieve these aims. The key objectives of stakeholder engagement in the project are to ensure policy relevance, share knowledge and enhance trust between modellers and stakeholders, and provide direct inputs from stakeholders to make modelling socially and politically realistic.
The core of the stakeholder engagement plan will revolve around the policy response mechanism, a structured format for engagement between project partners and stakeholders. The stakeholders for IAM COMPACT will be selected from a stakeholder pool, managed by project partner Bruegel, building upon Bruegel’s contacts from previous similar projects. A variety of engagement techniques will be employed, including but not limited to bilateral interviews, workshops, and public events.
Bruegel will lead the operation of the policy response mechanism, in collaboration with all project partners. The process will involve two co-creative cycles, each comprising: selection of stakeholders from the project database, co-creation with stakeholders of a policy-relevant research agenda for two modelling iterations, refinement and updating of the research questions after the first iteration, discussion and feedback on modelling results, and finally the dissemination of the policy recommendations based on the research outputs.
Engagement and the exchange of knowledge between researchers and stakeholders is a fundamental part of IAM COMPACT. This deliverable summarises the results of the initial meetings with policy steering groups for the first iteration within the first modelling cycle, providing details of who attended, what topics were discussed, and the initial research questions that arose from the engagements. Background information on the Policy Response Mechanism, the central instrument of the IAM COMPACT stakeholder engagement strategy, is also provided, as well as the next steps for the project.
IAM COMPACT incorporates the views of stakeholders in its modelling work throughout the project via a structured stakeholder engagement strategy. The discussions and outcomes of a series of meetings with high-level policymakers are summarised in this deliverable. The goal of the meetings was to get feedback from stakeholders on the first round of modelling carried out in the project, as well as discuss the policy priorities and associated policy-relevant research questions that IAM COMPACT should explore in the second cycle of the policy response mechanism.
Stakeholders were engaged in a series of structured, sequential steps to provide feedback and co-create modelling scenarios in collaboration with IAM COMPACT modelling teams, following the Policy Response Mechanism process. Stakeholders were grouped by research theme within the EU, and by region outside of the EU.
The first phase of stakeholder engagement was to meet with Policy Steering Groups, consisting primarily of high-level policymakers, and understand the policy priorities for each research theme and region. Research questions from these meetings were used to create a number model-feasible research studies.
The second phase of stakeholder engagement involved the Core Working Groups, consisting of technical policymakers, industry analysts, and civil society policy experts, to discuss research studies in detail and seek feedback from stakeholders.
The four research themes for categorising the stakeholder engagement within the EU are Optimal Transition’; ‘Industry and Innovation’; ‘Global Effects’; and ‘Behavioural Change’. The seven non-EU regions include the United States of America, China, India, Sri Lanka, Ukraine, Kenya, and Ethiopia.
Lessons learned from the stakeholder engagement process to date in IAM COMPACT included taking a more structured strategy to reach out to high-level stakeholders, refining online workshop approaches, and clearly defining the expected inputs from stakeholders. The next steps in stakeholder engagement will be to share initial modelling results with stakeholders for feedback before a second iteration of modelling, with final results then published in a policy brief for each theme and region.
Stakeholders were engaged in a series of structured, sequential steps to provide feedback and co-create modelling scenarios in collaboration with IAM COMPACT modelling teams, following the Policy Response Mechanism process. Stakeholders were grouped by research theme within the EU, and by region outside of the EU.
This second cycle of the PRM included two phases similar to those of the first cycle. The first phase of stakeholder engagement was to meet with Policy Steering Groups, consisting primarily of high-level policymakers, and understand the policy priorities for each research theme and region. Research questions from these meetings were used to create a number of model-feasible research studies. The second phase of stakeholder engagement involved the Core Working Groups, consisting of technical policymakers, industry analysts, and civil society policy experts, to discuss research studies in detail and seek feedback from stakeholders.
The four research themes for categorising the stakeholder engagement within the EU, in this second cycle, were ''Global Decarbonisation'', ''Modelling the Clean Industrial Deal'', ''Citizens in the Transition'', and ''Land-use and Renewable Energy". The seven non-EU regions again included the United States of America, China, India, Sri Lanka, Ukraine, Kenya, and Ethiopia.
Generally, the PRM has proven to be an effective method to collect relevant research questions to inform modelling studies. The continued engagement with the same stakeholder groups under thematic areas through the two cycles of the PRM seemed an effective stakeholder engagement method that increases responsiveness.
I2AM PARIS is an open data exchange platform for climate and energy policy modelling, developed by the Horizon 2020 PARIS REINFORCE project. Drawing from the current capabilities of the platform, this report provides a summary of platform improvements in the context of the IAM COMPACT project. Notably, efforts will be placed in adding validity checks for modelling data that is uploaded to the platform and providing an indication of whether modelling results are credible by comparing them with relevant benchmarks such as the vetting criteria from IPCC AR6 WGIII. We will also develop user-friendly interfaces for data input, allowing modellers from other projects to easily interact with, and add new modelling and scenario information to, the platform. Existing components of the platform will be also improved in term of functionalities. New model documentation will be added, while the existing documentation will be updated, emphasising interpretability by non-experts. In this direction, we will also create a component with videos and training material for new modellers. Finally, the representation of sectoral models will be enhanced in existing components, while new result workspaces will be created to showcase the outcomes of the project’s modelling exercises.
IAM COMPACT has established links with its sister project, ELEVATE, and stayed up to date with its activities, with the sister project represented in our Scientific Advisory Board (SAB).
The project’s data exchange platform, the IAM PARIS open-access data exchange platform, has been established as an international modelling vessel, attracting the participation of over twenty non-consortium modelling teams (including from the sister project), who have published their models’ documentations. Various synergies have been established with other projects in terms of policy events, with IAM COMPACT co-organising or participating in four other projects’ events, including the NDC ASPECTS, TRANSIENCE, and DIAMOND projects, and the Climate Compatible Growth (CCG) programme. Twenty-eight scientific publications have been published by IAM COMPACT jointly with other projects (such as DIAMOND, NDC ASPECTS, 4C, PROVIDE, ELEVATE). Notably, one of our briefs, focusing on the project’s policy response mechanism, has been presented at various international modelling meetings and events (including the IAMC 2024 and ECEMP 2024 meetings) as well as in transdisciplinary science meetings (such as SSH in Energy 2024), gathering positive feedback and interest with regards to our stakeholder engagement practices. Efforts to establish synergies will continue until the end of the project.
This report documents the first version of the Open Data Management Plan (DMP) of IAM COMPACT. The DMP is a dynamic framework that will be maintained and modified throughout the project. It currently provides information on data description, a data sharing methodology and resource allocation to achieve Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) data, and details on how the project will ensure data security and adherence to ethical standards. Besides this report, IAM COMPACT will be using the ARGOS service of OpenAIRE and EUDAT to deliver a machine-actionable data management plan (maDMP). The maDMP will be continuously updated with metadata for project datasets that will be generated from project activities. The DMP report will also be updated at the end of the project (D3.3).
This deliverable provides an update on the project’s Open Data Management Plan (DMP) and serves as both a documentation of the newly developed IAM PARIS platform scenario filtering capabilities—which showcases our enhanced approach to data management—and a guide for consortium partners and external stakeholders on utilising these functionalities. The integration of scenario metadata filtering directly enables targeted analysis of climate mitigation pathways. The report demonstrates the continued efforts within the IAM COMPACT project to ensure its data is organised, stored, and disseminated to satisfy the Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability (FAIR) principles compliance. The platform enhancement can be utilised by policymakers, researchers, and industry stakeholders to identify scenarios relevant to their specific contexts and feasibility concerns. The implementation demonstrates how the vetting and validation tool developed in D4.4 can be operationalised within a user-accessible platform.
Linking models to other models provides a way of expanding the boundaries of the analysis, but often requires solving difficult problems and even after that comes with trade-offs. This deliverable provides an analysis starting from how different models and their capabilities are characterised, then uses such model typologies to link IAM COMPACT models to the preliminary research questions collected in the stakeholder mechanism before finishing with a discussion about the various issues that should be considered when designing the linking strategy. The aim of this work is to feed into the next steps of the scenario and research question development process, and to the development of a generalised model linking process flow for the second modelling cycle.
Over the years, energy-system models (ESMs) and integrated assessment models (IAMs) have become indispensable for evaluating our progress toward climate targets, crafting pathways that align with specific goals, and judging the impact of various mitigation strategies. As the urgency of the climate crisis has grown, so too has the need to encompass a broader range of sectors and the interactions between them. However, expanding a model’s boundaries often adds layers of complexity. To address this without overwhelming individual models, researchers frequently link established models together, allowing cross-system dynamics to emerge organically through those connections. Connecting models not only broadens the analytical scope but also deepens detail in particular sectors while preserving the overall systemic context. Despite its widespread use, model linking presents numerous challenges—arising from differing assumptions, structures, data formats, and temporal or spatial scales—that are seldom explored in depth within published studies. In this deliverable, we first discuss four key problems that are central to most model linking activities, then develop a general “checklist” to be used when considering model linking. We finally demonstrate the use of the checklist for a study carried out in the IAM COMPACT project.
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This report documents the first version of the Open Science Protocols of IAM COMPACT. First, it includes a detailed description of the state-of-art of open science practices along with a presentation of the FAIR and TRUST principles, highlighting their novelties and limitations while exemplifying their usages. Second, it describes the required infrastructure to facilitate the application of open science principles by enabling code sharing, data storage, and user-friendly documentation. Finally, the report contains a protocol for the consortium members to facilitate the integration of the FAIR and TRUST principles, to promote the smooth interconnection of the models, and to transparently manage the produced outcomes.
This deliverable contains updates to and expansion of deliverable D3.6 – Open Science Protocols (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.10464844). It includes:
(a) a brief summary of the state-of-art of open science practices;
(b) a discussion of the results of a qualitative and quantitative survey that was conducted with all modelling teams from the 1st modelling cycle, and which gathers insights, feedback, and suggestions for the operationalisation of open science principles in the project;
(c) the updated Open Science Protocol for IAM COMPACT, which aims to be used in the 2nd Policy Response Mechanism cycle; and
(d) suggestions to boost the dissemination and comprehension of the protocol.
The updated protocol aims at the integration of the FAIR and TRUST principles in all project activities and by all consortium partners to promote the smooth interconnection of the models and multi-model exercises, and transparently manage the produced outcomes. To that aim, it details clear steps and suggests useful open-source platforms and tools for the different tasks.
I2AM PARIS is an open data exchange platform for climate and energy policy modelling, developed by the Horizon 2020 PARIS REINFORCE project. This report provides a summary of implemented and planned platform improvements in the context of the IAM COMPACT project, following up on the strategy documented in the I2AM PARIS Upgrade Plan (D3.1), delivered in the beginning of the project. Notably, efforts have been placed on adding validity checks for modelling data that is uploaded to the platform and providing an indication of whether modelling results are plausible by comparing them with relevant benchmarks such as the vetting criteria from IPCC AR6 WGIII. Existing components of the platform have also been improved in terms of functionalities. New model documentation has been added, while the existing documentation has been updated, emphasising interpretability by non-experts. In this direction, we have also created a component with videos and additional training material for new modellers. In terms of future improvements, we also plan to develop user-friendly interfaces for data input, allowing modellers from other projects to easily interact with, and add new modelling and scenario information to, the platform. Finally, the representation of sectoral models is planned to be enhanced, while new result workspaces to be created to showcase the outcomes of the project’s modelling exercises.
IAM PARIS is an open data exchange platform for climate and energy policy modelling, developed by the H2020 PARIS REINFORCE project—and supported by a multitude of H2020 and Horizon Europe projects since. This report provides a summary of implemented improvements in the context of the IAM COMPACT project, following up on the strategy documented in the I2AM PARIS Upgrade Plan (D3.1), delivered in the beginning of the project, and their mid-term implementation (D3.8). Notably, efforts have been placed on the redesign of the IAM PARIS platform to focus on dynamic content generation from our researchers and partners. Existing components of the platform have also been improved in terms of functionalities. Users can now create dedicated workspaces in the IAM PARIS Content Management System (CMS), allowing them to organise and present model results and narratives in a structured and customisable format. Four data stories have been created to visualise in a dynamic and interactive way key project outputs. Finally, five new workspaces have been added, corresponding to modelling studies of the 1st Policy Response Mechanism of IAM COMPACT.
This report outlines the first flow of activities carried out under Work Package 4, Task 4.1, to produce guidelines to translate policy needs into scenario frameworks, by understanding the different types of climate and sustainability policies, and how they can be represented in the modelling of mitigation scenarios within the consortium. This involves categorising and linking policy questions to the IAM COMPACT modelling ensemble. The report begins by reviewing the relevant literature and establishing a set of policy types and categories. The consortium's models are then analysed to assess how policy needs can be best represented from a modelling perspective. Next, the preliminary policy questions provided by stakeholders in the context of the IAM COMPACT Policy Response Mechanism (PRM) within WP2 are explained, classified, and clustered as a first step to represent them into models and translate them into scenarios. Finally, the report concludes with a proposal of a process to follow for matching policy needs with modelling frameworks as a guideline for forthcoming work, which will include the formulation of a policy catalogue (MS9), the grouping of interrelated policy questions into common scenario logics, examining policy-model matching, and addressing synergies and trade-offs.
This deliverable brings together four studies exploring European sub‑national and sectoral perspectives on climate change mitigation, energy security and resilience, employment impacts, and policy assessment. The first study focuses on the power sector, comparing a scenario consistent with the EU’s ‘Fit for 55’ package against a hypothetical coal phaseout. The ‘Fit for 55’ scenario delivers higher and more evenly distributed net employment gains at lower overall system cost, while the ‘coal phaseout’ scenario achieves deeper emission reductions but creates significant re‑skilling challenges; these are especially acute for coal and lignite workers lacking key system and content skills needed for emerging technologies such as solar and wind. Skills required for new green jobs are relatively uniform across Europe, while the scale of re‑skilling varies by region. The second study shows that well‑designed, diversified renewable energy systems can be both secure and resilient, capable of meeting long‑term climate goals while managing operational risks; however, if security and robustness to disruptive events are priorities, these aspects must be explicitly included in scenario design and modelling practices. The third study evaluates renewable methanol imports, finding that economic and employment benefits plateau beyond a 50% import share; it highlights the importance of diversifying supply sources and maintaining domestic production capacity to enhance energy security and system efficiency. The fourth study shows that EU and Member State policies under Fit for 55 and updated NECPs can enable deep power‑sector decarbonisation by 2030 but require substantial, regionally coordinated investments in renewable generation and supporting infrastructure.
This report is a follow-up to and update of D4.1 (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.10464780); it therefore shares the same approach, by processing the policy needs identified during the realisation of the IAM COMPACT project with the aim of translating them into scenario frameworks. This deliverable also provides a first robust version of the policy catalogue (MS9) in which all 1st PRM cycle policy needs are categorised.
It begins with an update of the mapping of modelling capabilities (in the form of heatmaps) carried out by surveying the modelling teams. This information is helpful for associating policy needs and questions to the most suitable models. This is followed by an overview of the modelling work conducted during the 1st PRM cycle—both in setting it up and in the implementation of the studies. It also addresses the new policy needs in the framework of the second modelling cycle, encompassing pending tasks, new policy assumptions and a second package of research questions from policymakers.
Finally, all information gathered during D4.1 and this report itself are used to build the policy catalogue in a three-step process: first, a classification of the modelled policies according to their geographical scope and associated policy type and/or instrument; second, a linkage between policy types and the project's set of IAMs; and, third, also based on the literature, a connection between policy types and their impacts on the SDGs, divided into synergies and trade-offs. This analysis has been applied to the policy needs of both the 1st and 2nd PRM cycle.
This report will be used as guidance for all modelling work taking place to address research questions in the first modelling cycle of IAM COMPACT. It, furthermore, points forward to further work on harmonisation and management of model inputs and outputs that will be undertaken during 2023 and early 2024. It also describes the role of a broad scenario logic and harmonisation of assumptions and input data in general and can thus be useful for other projects that will investigate a similarly diverse set of research questions or employ a similarly diverse set of models as IAM COMPACT.
This deliverable contains updates to and expansion of deliverable D4.3, ‘Broad Scenario Logic’. A broad scenario logic is understood as a set of assumptions and harmonised data that serve as a default background for different research questions in the project and the modelling studies that address those research questions. Each study supplements the broad scenario logic with a specific and more complete scenario protocol and, if necessary, can override any part of the broad scenario logic to address the given research question.
The deliverable expands on the first version of the logic (D4.3) by describing the harmonisation that took place in the 1st modelling cycle of IAM COMPACT after D4.3 was submitted, and by specifying updates and changes to the harmonisation data that was given in D4.3. The updated harmonisation data is intended for use in the 2nd modelling cycle. The deliverable also describes and discusses the results of a qualitative survey that was conducted with the participants in the 1st modelling cycle to elicit feedback and suggestions for changes to D4.3, and which motivated some of the changes made. Finally, it provides some clarifications on output formats and requirements for model results.
The IAM COMPACT model ensemble was strategically selected to be flexible enough to allow for the assessment of emerging issues in response to urgent policy needs. An early modelling exercise aimed to provide quick insights into the energy supply crisis in Europe, by exploring the trade-offs among different approaches to replacing Russian gas in the bloc, aiming to understand and quantify their implications to energy sustainability, affordability, and emissions within the EU.
Emerging questions aside, the project builds on a detailed, multi-step policy response mechanism that co-defines the most pertinent policy questions with EC and national policymakers, groups these questions into Studies, co-designs a scenario framework and a series of critical aspects that the consortium is expected to explore, before carrying out modelling analyses aimed at addressing these questions, revisiting them, and co-creating policy prescriptions. As part of the first policy response mechanism cycle, seven such studies were put together, each documented in different deliverables; to address each, however, a common baseline must be defined, one that considers a reference scenario reflecting current policies, near-term pledges, and longer-term commitments. This deliverable thus documents this exercise, by analysing the trajectory of global CO2 emissions considering current mitigation efforts, including updated policies, NDCs for 2030, and new long-term strategies that were put in place in the run-up to or after COP26.
The deliverable finally includes a set of mitigation scenarios for major emitting nations, namely India, China, and the USA, co-created with stakeholders as part of this first policy response mechanism cycle.
This report is an update to Deliverable D4.6, building upon earlier work to address the new stakeholder-driven research questions that emerged during the co-creation process of the 2nd cycle of the Policy Response Mechanism (PRM2). Specifically, we introduce Study 8, which examines how global trade dynamics (in particular, for clean energy technologies) and policy frameworks may impact the EU’s decarbonisation efforts and green technology ransition in a world of increasing trade and economic tensions. Using a combination of materials modelling (MARIO) and integrated assessment models (GCAM, TIAM, PROMETHEUS), the study investigates the implications of restricted trade between major economies and explores alternative partnerships for green technology supply chains, with a focus on electric vehicles (EVs). We find that disruptions to EV supply chains significantly affect decarbonisation pathways. Results show that domestic battery production increases EV prices by 12.7% with emissions penalties of 4.5-10.9% by 2050, while alternative partnerships offer varying trade-offs, with Brazil emerging as most favourable with minimal price increases and substantial carbon reductions. All scenarios demonstrate decreased electrification, compensated differently across models: GCAM and PROMETHEUS project increased hydrogen use while TIAM shows greater reliance on conventional fuels. Despite methodological differences, all models consistently identify Brazil as the optimal alternative partner and EU domestic production as least favourable, highlighting how the EU's climate objectives are substantially influenced by global supply chain configurations and strategic trade partnerships.
In addition to Study 8, this deliverable continues to build on the extensive work conducted with stakeholders in the USA, India, and China.
Four in-depth analyses of sectoral and cross-sectoral issues, conducted as part of the first Policy Response Mechanism cycle (PRM-1) of the IAM COMPACT project, are presented in this deliverable:
- A study focussing on potential relocation of the EU steel industry to other world regions because of high energy and CO2 prices in the EU; the associated impacts on costs, CO2 emissions, energy demand, and employment are assessed for three scenarios, and five different models including three integrated assessment models (IAMs), one sectoral bottom-up model, and one Input – Output (I/O) model have been (soft-) linked
- A study analysing the impacts of implementing an increasing amount of wind and solar power technologies in terms of raw material demand; the analysis covers four global regions, including the EU, while results from one IAM regarding renewables upscaling have been processed with another model to derive raw material demands
- A study analysing the capacity and flexibility requirements of future electricity systems to meet carbon neutrality for the case of Greece, which soft-links a cost-optimising energy system model with a short-term power system model and analyses two scenarios for a carbon-neutral Greek electricity system up to 2050.
- A study addressing the uptake of small-scale PV by the residential sector in Greece, using an agent-based model to analyse how consumers’ investing behaviour affects the adoption of small-scale PV systems by 2030 by comparing the effects of different policies; uncertainty about the effects of policies that emerges from agents’ adoption behaviour is quantified and presented.
This report covers the results of Task 4.4, 'Sectoral and Cross-Sectoral Analysis', of the IAM COMPACT project. First, it presents the findings of Study 9 of the 2nd cycle of the project’s Policy Response Mechanism (PRM2) on the decarbonisation of the EU steel industry, which builds upon the findings of Study 4 of PRM1. The report analyses the influence of various policy instruments, such as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), trade of direct reduced iron (DRI), and subsidies for green steel production, on the relocation of iron and steel production, as well as on costs and emissions. To do so, it utilises several modelling frameworks, including GCAM, MARIO and ITOM. Second, it documents a study building on six scenarios aimed at examining the impact of financing costs on global hydrogen markets, trade flows, and hydrogen-related investments in the year 2050.
This IAM COMPACT Deliverable, D4.9, presents three studies related to the European sub-national and sectoral deep dives into questions of climate change mitigation, air pollution co-benefits and regional inequalities, energy security and resilience, and policy assessment. The first study quantifies air quality and health impacts of 250 mitigation scenarios in the European electricity sector in 2035 across 296 NUTS-2 sub-national regions. It shows that the direct PM2.5 concentrations attributable to electricity generation could be reduced by 45% to 99%, if Europe follows a net zero emissions goal as compared to a reference system. The most vulnerable regions (Balkans, North-West Germany, Southeast France, and the West Midlands in England) would benefit from higher air quality co-benefits than the continental average. The second study, conducted as part of the first IAM COMPACT Policy Response Mechanism (PRM), uses a multi-model approach for Greece and the European Union and shows that the energy transition necessitates diversification from energy security and flexibility perspectives, combining dispatchable and variable generation, flexible demands, and energy storage. The third study, also part of the 1st PRM cycle of the project, uses a multi-model approach for the Greek power and residential sectors and shows the need to accelerate investments in variable renewable generation and energy storage and to phase out natural gas between 2037 and 2044. The required renovation rate in Greece should reach 2.5% to 3.5% of the housing stock per year with the focus on electrification rather than natural gas as a transition fuel.
This report first documents the development of a comprehensive database of green recovery packages globally, using data from reputational well-established sources, including the International Energy Agency (IEA), the Global Recovery Observatory, and the Energy Policy Tracker, and covering 105 countries representing more than 90% of global GDP, with green recovery funds totaling about 2.4 trillion USD and including 2109 unique policies and measures. Subsequently, using said database, this report also documents the analysis of the energy system and emissions impact of green recovery packages across energy supply and demand sectors, using three Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs): PROMETHEUS, GCAM, and TIAM. Utilising data gathered from the developed green recovery packages database, which is described in this report, four scenarios were developed to examine the impacts of green recovery funding at a global scale as well as with an additional focus on three major emitters (China, Europe, and India) under different policy contexts. The findings emphasise the positive role of green recovery packages in facilitating the transition to a low-carbon economy. However, it also underscores that, while these packages support innovation and specific national contexts, additional and robust climate policies are imperative to bridge the substantial investment gap for a net-zero transition and achieve the Paris Agreement goals effectively. Finally, this deliverable includes a national deep dive of green recovery spending in Greece.
The main objective of this report consists of the synthesis and description of the first distributional analysis performed in the IAM COMPACT project. Therefore, in this deliverable we show two different examples on distributional analysis with two different methodologies, approaches and focus regions, which represent a good example of the type of analysis that can be performed in IAM COMPACT. The first analysis explores the distributional consequences of a key policy at EU level, using a microeconomic model which includes a large database on European households. On the other side, the second analysis offer an overview of the distributional impacts on vulnerable households of different climate policy paths in Greece. For doing so, GEM-E3-FIT is expanded to represent ten household income classes in EU Member States, to consistently capture the potential distributional impacts of ambitious energy and climate policies for Greece until 2050. Moreover, each of the analyses has focused on one key socioeconomic dimension: the impacts on gender of a European policy in the first analysis and the consequences of climate policies on energy poverty (focusing on low-income households) in Greece in the second analysis. Finally, the deliverable also includes the description of a tool, called MEDUSA, that will allow the integration of information from other IAMs used in IAM COMPACT to perform distributional and social analyses throughout the duration of the project. Initially developed for the Spanish economy, MEDUSA is planned to be made available to explore the social implications of the entire EU during the project.
This document updates Deliverable D5.2, by presenting two new distributional analyses on inequality impacts of climate policies developed within IAM COMPACT. Each analysis applies a different methodology, building on earlier work while expanding the geographical scope and methodological complexity to better assess the inequality impacts of climate policies. The first analysis explores how different implementations of the EU’s climate policy portfolio affect various consumer groups across and within Member States. It finds that a general EU-wide carbon price, while cost-efficient, has regressive impacts, disproportionately burdening low-income households. In contrast, policies based on national plans (NECPs) are less regressive. Although income is the dominant factor influencing outcomes, gender, urban-rural location, and household structure also play a role. The second analysis evaluates global decarbonisation scenarios for passenger transport through to 2050, focusing on differentiated carbon taxes across income groups. It shows that uniform cost policies are regressive, burdening lower-income consumers, especially in air travel. In contrast, a global per capita emissions cap by 2050 sets heterogenous carbon prices, shielding low-income households, while the higher costs borne by wealthier individuals lead to a faster adoption of clean transport technologies, which may translate into faster decline of clean technology costs, thereby benefitting all consumers in a mitigation context. The model enhancements and inter-model connections presented in these analyses reflect major methodological progress developed in the project, offering a robust, integrated framework for evaluating the system-wide and distributional and impacts of climate policy.
The deliverable aims to enhance the scenario analyses in WP4 by exploring a broad spectrum of uncertainties, including extreme environmental, technological, policy, and societal shifts. It focuses on resilient pathways and technologies in both national and global contexts, under extreme conditions. The urgency of addressing climate change underscores the importance of integrated assessment models (IAMs) in decision-making, especially in energy. IAMs, however, struggle with the complexities of real-world systems and extreme events like sudden technological or policy changes and natural disasters. The study addresses these challenges by examining critical questions across dimensions, defining extremes, understanding geographical differences, identifying system vulnerabilities, assessing model adaptability, and integrating new frameworks and technologies, aiming to improve IAMs’ response to extreme events in the energy sector.
The literature review discusses IAMs’ role in capturing extreme events, their types, impacts, and the need for IAMs to incorporate such conditions beyond conventional models. It categorises extremes, explores their origins and impacts, and proposes a scenario framework and narratives informed by recent studies and the NGFS scenario approach. This framework considers climate and socio-economic tipping points through transformational response and resilience, presenting four narratives: Business as Usual, Unadaptive Transformation, Effective Transformation, and Incremental Resilience.
Expert interviews explore how technologies and measures can enhance resilience in transformation pathways during extreme events and identify feasible mitigation trajectories. Key themes from the interviews highlight the distinction between risk and uncertainty, technological impacts, abrupt policy changes, regional differences, vulnerabilities, and challenges in adapting IAMs. The interviews underscore the need for adaptable strategies, robust modelling, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
This report updates the work on modelling extreme events by introducing a detailed framework called Disruptive Events-Resilient Pathways (DERP) framework, a systematic approach for incorporating disruptions into long-term mitigation scenarios. The previous deliverable of this task (D5.4) conducted a literature review and expert interviews to define extremes and identify system vulnerabilities, culminating in a preliminary multi-model analysis of technology constraints. It also included a preliminary version of the DERP framework. This update builds on that foundation by proposing an updated version of the DERP framework, which maps scenarios along two dimensions: mitigation action effectiveness and resilience to socioeconomic impacts.
We demonstrate the framework by applying it to a stylised disruption of intensifying heatwaves and droughts across a diverse set of IAMs. The results show that low-resilience pathways require significantly more infrastructure capacity to maintain function under stress, while high-resilience pathways enable a more effective energy transition. The analysis also reveals that narrowly optimised strategies can create concentrated vulnerabilities, whereas diversified approaches enhance systemic robustness. The framework thus provides a crucial diagnostic tool for stress-testing mitigation strategies against unexpected events.
This deliverable covers two different tasks of WP5, aiming to expand aspects of Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), and address related questions received from our Policy Response Mechanism. The first task (Task 5.4) aims to capture key disruptive innovations and technologies currently underrepresented in IAMs and includes four modelling studies. Section 2 presents probabilistic projections of the diffusion of solar photovoltaics, wind power, biogases, heat pumps, and three types of low-carbon passenger cars in 39 European countries for 2023-2050 and compares the projected capacities against the quantities required for the energy transition. Section 3 examines how maximal effort across all sectors to reduce gross, in addition to net emissions, might contribute to a reduced
role of CDR in deep mitigation. Section 4 then explores the impact of future interest rates in decarbonisation pathways, by applying an empirical dataset of estimated cost of capital differentiated by technology and country in two global IAMs and one electricity-system model. Section 5 explores the impacts of climate scenarios on adjustment in firms’ credit risk and financial valuation and highlights the critical role of the financial sector in influencing the pace of the transition to net zero emissions, and finally Section 6 investigates the economic implications of considering the adoption rates of clean technologies in the context of heterogeneous discount rates across consumer categories and explores the potential of behavioural change and social innovation in climate action.
Intended to reflect the IAM COMPACT project’s research efforts in issues relating to behavioural, societal, and disruptive innovation, this deliverable first applies hindcasting using the D-EXPANSE model across 31 European countries, revealing that real-world electricity transitions deviate from cost-optimal scenarios by 44–60%, far exceeding the commonly assumed 10–20% slack in Modelling to Generate Alternatives, highlighting the need for empirically grounded, country-specific slack values. It then shows that incorporating geopolitical risks into the D-EXPANSE electricity system model improved hindcasting accuracy of the technology mix for many European countries—especially larger ones—by better reflecting real-world diversification toward renewables, though disentangling geopolitical effects from broader societal factors remains a key challenge for future research. The deliverable then shows that, while climate finance has reached record levels, it remains vastly insufficient, inequitably distributed, and skewed toward mitigation over adaptation, with persistent gaps in transparency, definitions, and governance. Without structural reforms to align finance with local priorities, enhance access, and ensure accountability, global climate goals risk being undermined by continued political inertia and systemic inequities. Finally, it investigates the impact of lifestyle changes in the EU-27, particularly in mobility, housing, and diets, finding that these can reduce emissions by 10–25%, offering significant mitigation potential even under ambitious policy scenarios, with generally beneficial cost impacts, though future implementation depends on addressing social acceptance and harmonising data inconsistencies across models.
The task associated with this report aims to provide sustainable decarbonisation pathways, including biodiversity, materials, and biophysical limits, as well as place climate action as a cross-cutting theme across the sustainability spectrum. It aligns climate action and sustainable development by assessing integrated co-benefits of climate-neutral pathways and policies targeting different SDGs. IAM-driven pathways have limited coverage of SDGs and are mostly focused on climate action, energy efficiency, industry, and infrastructure, while other environmental and social dimensions are rarely assessed. Thus, we analyse the capabilities of each IAM COMPACT model to represent SDGs, creating a suitable quantitative framework that facilitates their evaluation. We emphasise synergistic effects among SDGs, by detecting barriers to and co-benefits of specific goals, assessing model weaknesses and potential improvements to fill gaps and reinforce modelling capacity, and providing feedback on measures targeting multiple SDGs.
We then focus on models’ capacity to analyse energy, land, and material resources, biophysical limits, aspects of global biodiversity conservation, and nature restoration. By developing a set of biodiversity indicators, a policy package is created to affect the indicators and produce scenarios that are simulated with the goal of gaining a deeper understanding of biodiversity, material resources, and biophysical limits.
Finally, we synthesise the previous sections and develop a multi-level integration of IAMs and uncertainty analysis with quantified implications for multiple SDGs. We draw from relevant SDG indicators extracted from IAMs, a novel multi-objective optimisation process, and stochastic multicriteria acceptability analysis.
This report presents progress in developing sustainable decarbonisation pathways that integrate biodiversity, material use, and biophysical constraints, while aligning climate action with broader sustainable development goals (SDGs). Section 1 updates a prior assessment of SDG coverage across IAMs, using an expanded survey of indicators derived from literature and UN sources. Modellers reviewed indicator representation and proposed additions, confirming continued use of previously reported metrics. Section 2 discusses how climate mitigation strategies optimised across environmental and socioeconomic goals can deliver strong biodiversity co-benefits, particularly through land conservation, while highlighting the need for more integrated approaches to fully capture trade-offs and synergies in the AFOLU sector. Section 3 shows the state-of-the-art in the application of the 2030 Agenda in IAMs, highlighting epistemic barriers to fairly representing the social dimensions of gender, peace, international partnership implications. Section 4 documents two stakeholder-informed studies: one using the WILIAM model to evaluate land-use impacts of solar PV and forest bioenergy expansion in the EU, and another applying the CLEWs framework to examine energy, water, and food security in Ethiopia. Section 5 explores the effects of dietary shifts toward plant-based and low-ruminant consumption, in terms of improved nutrition, reduced emissions, water stress, and food costs, and biodiversity promotion; regional strategies yield faster benefits compared to global targets, underscoring the need for supportive social policies. Finally, Section 6 outlines ongoing efforts to improve IAM capacity for tracking SDG progress alongside climate mitigation, strengthening the policy relevance of IAM-based analysis.
This document details the CDE plan to be employed for the entire duration of IAM COMPACT. It outlines both the centrally led outreach activities and tools developed to ensure the efficient uptake and replication of the IAM COMPACT outcomes, and the decentralised efforts to be applied towards reaching and involving all interested actors and target groups through each partner’s stakeholder engagement process and contacts. In doing so, it provides clear guidance that considers “why”, “who”, “what”, “when”, and “how” to engage, as well as the promotional and informational materials that are fundamental for project outreach, and the measures to assess the successful implementation of the CDE activities.
A consolidated CDE plan, able to ensure high academic excellence and practical usability, is considered key in the project’s effort to maximise the impact of its results and their use in policymaking towards supporting the Paris Agreement goals and NDC pledges. All corresponding CDE activities lie at the core of the project, as reflected in the “Explaining” pillar (policy analysis, capacity development, communication, dissemination, exploitation), aiming to establish a two-way science-policy/-society dialogue in a timely manner and via the best means available.
This document is the first update to the initial CDE plan, which was issued at the beginning of the project and detailed the strategy to be followed (D6.1). Its purpose is to describe and evaluate the actions undertaken so far for maximising the impact of IAM COMPACT and for supporting proactive engagement with different stakeholder groups, considering “why”, “who”, “what”, “when”, and “how” to engage. To fulfil these objectives, different means for communication and dissemination have been established alongside activities for meaningfully involving target audiences in knowledge co-creation with the goal to enhance the legitimacy of the scientific process and to improve the transparency and uptake of the produced scientific outcomes and modelling results.
Overall, the IAM COMPACT CDE activities are on track, following the initial plan laid out in the Grant Agreement and the first version of the CDE plan. The focus is placed on reiterating and strengthening the entire consortium's commitment to actively contributing to and boosting the impact and the exploitation potential of IAM COMPACT.
This deliverable offers the final update to the IAM COMPACT Communication, Dissemination, and Exploitation (CDE) Plan, outlining the full scope and results of the project’s outreach strategy. Building on the foundations laid in the initial1 and first updated2 versions, it captures the efforts made to ensure that the IAM COMPACT project’s research outputs--including models, tools, insights, policy recommendations—reached relevant audiences and supported meaningful uptake at local, national, and international levels.
Over the course of the project, the CDE plan evolved from a forward-looking into a fully operational strategy. It guided focused communication, encouraged knowledge exchange, and supported capacity building, particularly in the project’s four pilot countries, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sri Lanka, and Ukraine. Driven by a co-creative approach, it enabled active stakeholder participation and promoted the alignment of scientific work with real-world policy needs and priorities.
This final update evaluates the whole-project CDE implementation strategy against 11 predefined performance indicators and long-term output and impact expectations. It offers an account of what was achieved, how tools and approaches were adapted and refined, and where the greatest added value was delivered. As such, it is both a final report and a reference point for similar research initiatives seeking to strengthen the interface between integrated assessment modelling, policymaking, and society.
To disseminate obtained, processed, and accumulated knowledge for scientific debate and progress, IAM COMPACT has engaged in sharing its scientific insights in numerous high-impact journals and conferences. As the project aims to inform policy choices, we have transposed highly technical modelling results into legible policy recommendations in the form of timely publications of policy briefs, articles, and commentaries in multiple media outlets for stakeholders, policymakers, businesses, and civil society actors, as well as have created a series of infographics and educational videos to promote capacity building and comprehensibility of modelling by all stakeholders at all scales.
By January 2024, IAM COMPACT had produced 20 scientific publications in highly esteemed scientific journals, 1 book chapter, and 12 posters/papers in academic conferences. Regarding its policy outreach, it has already published 2 policy briefs, 5 press releases, and 8 newsletters. In an endeavour to create awareness with stakeholders and provide open access self-learning training materials, the project has also uploaded 21 videos demonstrating each modelling ensemble, accompanied by 21 slide packs, and 10 infographics. Towards informing a wider audience on climate, environment, energy, biodiversity, and sustainability aspects related to the project, we have also engaged in science communication in various media outlets, with 11 articles/commentaries. Finally, we have participated in 5 policy events and 12 policy/capacity building workshops, aiming to increase the outreach of the project’s outputs and enhance cooperation and mutual learning.
Overall, the significance of the project’s scientific and policy outeach is in line with its pathways towards outcomes and impact.
To disseminate obtained, processed, and accumulated knowledge for scientific debate and progress, IAM COMPACT has engaged in sharing its scientific insights in numerous high-impact journals and conferences. As the project aims to inform policy choices, we have transposed highly technical modelling results into legible policy recommendations in the form of timely publications of policy briefs, articles, and commentaries in multiple media outlets for stakeholders, policymakers, businesses, and civil society actors, as well as have created a series of infographics and educational videos to promote capacity building and comprehensibility of modelling by all stakeholders at all scales.
By July 2025, IAM COMPACT had produced 51 scientific publications in highly esteemed scientific journals, 1 book chapter, and 50 posters/papers in academic conferences. Regarding its policy outreach, it had also published 6 policy briefs, 13 press releases, and 14 newsletters. In an endeavour to create awareness with stakeholders and provide open access self-learning training materials, the project has also uploaded 22 videos demonstrating each modelling ensemble and ourt vetting tool, accompanied by 21 slide packs, and 16 infographics. Towards informing a wider audience on climate, environment, energy, biodiversity, and sustainability aspects related to the project, we have also engaged in science communication in various media outlets, with 14 articles/commentaries. Finally, we have participated in 12 policy events and 13 policy/capacity building workshops, aiming to increase the outreach of the project’s outputs and enhance cooperation and mutual learning.
Overall, the significance of the project’s scientific and policy outeach is in line with its pathways towards outcomes and impact.
The goal of this report is to create concrete understanding of mitigation barriers, enablers, and trends toward NDC implementation within inter-related political, social, economic, structural, technological, and individual changes, by performing a deep dive into critical sectors. To this end, the report synthesises the latest available scientific knowledge on mitigation enablers, barriers, and suitable policy options from a universal perspective. The report is based on a document analysis relying on past and upcoming IPCC reports as well as other authoritative sources. It focuses on five key sectors: Industry, Energy, Transport, Buildings, and AFOLU. The global synthesis is intended to inform the analysis of four country case studies, namely Ethiopia, Kenya, Sri Lanka, and Ukraine. It also elaborates policy options available to leverage potentials and overcome challenges, paying due attention to country-specific conditions, thereby allowing the discussion of strategies that can help effectively overcome obstacles and enhance NDCs and their implementation.
Task 6.5 of IAM COMPACT focuses on building technical and institutional capacity for integrated assessment modelling in four countries: Ethiopia, Kenya, Sri Lanka, and Ukraine. National teams led the capacity development and model creation efforts within and beyond their institutions. Five open-access models were developed to address key policy questions in each country, where such insights have been limited.
In Ethiopia, a geospatial electrification model using OnSSET was created to identify cost-effective ways to provide insights on technically feasible and least-cost pathways for electrifying the remaining part of the population. Additionally, a Climate, Land, Energy, Water systems (CLEWs) model using OSeMOSYS was developed to improve integrated resource management, to be then linked to MicroGridsPy in a future update to support Ethiopia’s sustainable development. Kenya's CLEWs model examines renewable energy's role in enhancing climate-resilient food, energy, and water supplies. The development of this model in IAM COMPACT links to a wider interest across several EU- and UK-funded initiatives. In Sri Lanka, a CLEWs model was designed to explore the balance between agricultural and energy development given land constraints, based on literature and stakeholder inputs. For Ukraine, an energy system model was created to guide the Ministry of Energy in developing green post-war reconstruction strategies for electricity infrastructure.
Several models build upon previous modelling efforts, in line with the aim of making use of the existing capacity and expanding it. The key data sources for all models are documented on Zenodo[1], together with the models’ executables.
This deliverable presents the final results of the modelling work initially documented in D6.7 – Open-access models for case-study countries. The updated version of each model was developed based on the enablers and barriers found in D6.6 and on the second policy response mechanism (PRM) conducted within IAM COMPACT. As in the previous deliverable, we follow the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable), to ensure transparency and reproducibility in both national (where they are intended for) and international contexts. The work led also to the development of two workflows for standardising the modelling input data and results for the CLEWs models. The first workflow post-processes the modelling results into indicators selected after the
second PRM and described in D5.9 – Climate action in the sustainability spectrum - Update. The second converts the input and output data into IAMC format, allowing a more transparent and consistent comparison among the other Integrated Assessment Models. By changing the format, it was also possible to validate the data through the IAM COMPACT validation/vetting app tool. Both workflows had the final objective of making the analysis carried out with an energy system model comparable to the integrated assessment models. The models described in this deliverable aim to address context-specific needs with the possibility of contributing to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Reports (ARs). Additionally, this report can be used for uptaking and improving the models and furthering research in the related contexts, for supporting stakeholder needs and ensuring policy coherence in energy and resource planning. Supported by standardisation of outputs and indicators, it can contribute to the NDC update for the case-study countries. The two additional workflows can support the creation and standardisation of new CLEWs applications in different contexts
This milestone consists of a set of open access training and teaching material developed collaboratively, licensed under CC BY 4.0, and available on IAM COMPACT’s Zenodo repository.
The material is in the form of pptx files and includes the following presentations (divided by concept):
- Introduction to energy (and electrification) modelling; DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.10715685
- Introduction to OnSSET; DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.10719078
- Minigrid modelling; DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.10719106
- Use of energy system models and scenarios in policy – Case studies; DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.10719111
- Introduction to input-output analysis; DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.10719139
- Input-output analysis hands-on; DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.10719152
- Energy-economy modelling case studies; DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.10719167
- Integrated resource modelling and examples; DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.10719192
- Designing scenarios; DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.10719218