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Publications

Scientific publications

Peer-reviewed scientific publications of the consortium documenting and disseminating IAM COMPACT project outputs.
2023
Date
February 2023
Authors
Anastasios Karamaneas
Konstantinos Koasidis
Natasha Frilingou
Georgios Xexakis
Alexandros Nikas
Haris Doukas
Journal
Renewable & Sustainable Energy Transition
Title
A stakeholder-informed modelling study of Greece's energy transition amidst an energy crisis: the role of natural gas and climate ambition
Short description

While fossil fuel prices soar during the 2022 global energy crisis, the European Union activates all available fossil-fuel levers and Greece still plans to use natural gas as a transition fuel for delignitisation, with strong concerns over potential exacerbation of energy poverty and hurdles to progress in climate action. This study assesses the trajectory of the Greek electricity mix and its reliance on natural gas under the current policy framework on the one hand, and an ambitious scenario aiming for complete decarbonisation by 2035 on the other. We model these scenarios using an energy system modelling framework, comprising LEAP and OSeMOSYS model implementations for Greece, and use a stakeholder-informed fuzzy cognitive mapping exercise to uncover transition uncertainties. While power generation from natural gas is projected to increase by almost 50% until 2030 under existing policies, the proposed decarbonisation scenario has the potential to achieve complete independence from Russian gas by 2026 while also leading to a cleaner and considerably cheaper power sector. This ‘higher climate ambition’ scenario is found feasible and more robust in case high fossil fuel prices persist post-2022, even if bottlenecks stressed by stakeholders such as community acceptance or technological constraints emerge and potentially constrain the expansion of certain renewable energy technologies. Apart from the added value of stakeholder input in modelling science, as reflected in the impact of barriers Greek stakeholders critically highlighted, our results emphasise that a diversified energy-supply mix alongside bold energy efficiency strategies are key to rapid and feasible decarbonisation in the country.




Tags
Regional modelling
Interdisciplinary science
Transdisciplinary science

Date
January 2023
Authors
Ajay Gambhir
Journal
Environmental Research Letters
Title
This really does change everything: attaining 1.5C needs all available mitigation levers
Short description

There are multiple ways in which society can theoretically transition from its current carbon-intensive state to a zero-carbon future, ideally fast enough to limit global warming to 1.5oC above pre-industrial levels. Although the carbon budget associated with this temperature is close to being consumed (IPCC 2021), it still remains achievable - just. Furthermore, we know what needs to be done to achieve it, because we know what contributes to CO2 emissions. We need energy sources, whose carbon content results in emissions. Reducing both our demand for energy and its carbon intensity (by increasing the share of zero-carbon fuels in our energy mix) is thus of paramount importance. Some industrial manufacturing processes, particularly in cement production, produce CO2 as a chemical by-product. Capturing that CO2, finding alternative ways to produce cement, or reducing cement demand, is therefore necessary. Our agriculture, forestry and other land use (AFOLU) can be a net source or sink of CO2, so making it a large net sink by enhancing carbon dioxide removals (CDR), for example through afforestation, would help. And we hope to have available a range of human-made CDR technologies and measures, such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), Direct Air Capture (DAC) and enhanced weathering (EW). Scaling these in an
environmentally sustainable way would enhance our chances of keeping within the carbon budget. Finally, rapid progress in reducing short-lived greenhouse gases, particularly methane, would further help our chances of achieving 1.5oC.



Tags
Global modelling

2022
Date
December 2022
Authors
Jarmo S. Kikstra
Zebedee R. J. Nicholls
Christopher J. Smith
Jared Lewis
Robin D. Lamboll
Edward Byers
Marit Sandstad
Malte Meinshausen
Gidden
Joeri Rogelj
Elmar Kriegler
Glen P. Peters
Jan S. Fuglestvedt
Ragnhild B. Skeie
Bjørn H. Samset
Laura Wienpahl
Detlef P. van Vuuren
Kaj-Ivar van der Wijst
Alaa Al Khourdajie
Piers M. Forster
Andy Reisinger
Roberto Schaeffer
Keywan Riahi
Journal
Geoscientific Model Development
Title
The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report WGIII climate assessment of mitigation pathways: from emissions to global temperatures
Short description

While the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) physical science reports usually assess a handful of future scenarios, the Working Group III contribution on climate mitigation to the IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report (AR6 WGIII) assesses hundreds to thousands of future emissions scenarios. A key task in WGIII is to assess the global mean temperature outcomes of these scenarios in a consistent manner, given the challenge that the emissions scenarios from different integrated assessment models (IAMs) come with different sectoral and gas-to-gas coverage and cannot all be assessed consistently by complex Earth system models. In this work, we describe the “climate-assessment” workflow and its methods, including infilling of missing emissions and emissions harmonisation as applied to 1202 mitigation scenarios in AR6 WGIII. We evaluate the global mean temperature projections and effective radiative forcing (ERF) characteristics of climate emulators FaIRv1.6.2 and MAGICCv7.5.3 and use the CICERO simple climate model (CICERO-SCM) for sensitivity analysis. We discuss the implied overshoot severity of the mitigation pathways using overshoot degree years and look at emissions and temperature characteristics of scenarios compatible with one possible interpretation of the Paris Agreement. We find that the lowest class of emissions scenarios that limit global warming to “1.5 ∘C (with a probability of greater than 50 %) with no or limited overshoot” includes 97 scenarios for MAGICCv7.5.3 and 203 for FaIRv1.6.2. For the MAGICCv7.5.3 results, “limited overshoot” typically implies exceedance of median temperature projections of up to about 0.1 ∘C for up to a few decades before returning to below 1.5 ∘C by or before the year 2100. For more than half of the scenarios in this category that comply with three criteria for being “Paris-compatible”, including net-zero or net-negative greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, median temperatures decline by about 0.3–0.4 ∘C after peaking at 1.5–1.6 ∘C in 2035–2055. We compare the methods applied in AR6 with the methods used for SR1.5 and discuss their implications. This article also introduces a “climate-assessment” Python package which allows for fully reproducing the IPCC AR6 WGIII temperature assessment. This work provides a community tool for assessing the temperature outcomes of emissions pathways and provides a basis for further work such as extending the workflow to include downscaling of climate characteristics to a regional level and calculating impacts.




Tags
Global modelling

Date
December 2022
Authors
Sigit Perdana
Georgios Xexakis
Konstantinos Koasidis
Marc Vielle
Alexandros Nikas
Haris Doukas
Ajay Gambhir
Annela Anger-Kraavi
Elin May
Ben McWilliams
Baptiste Boitier
Title
Expert perceptions of game-changing innovations towards net zero
Short description

Current technological improvements are yet to put the world on track to net-zero, which will require the uptake of transformative low-carbon innovations to supplement mitigation efforts. However, the role of such innovations is not yet fully understood; some of these ‘miracles’ are considered indispensable to Paris Agreement-compliant mitigation, but their limitations, availability, and potential remain a source of debate. We evaluate such potentially game-changing innovations from the experts' perspective, aiming to support the design of realistic decarbonisation scenarios and better-informed net-zero policy strategies. In a worldwide survey, 260 climate and energy experts assessed transformative innovations against their mitigation potential, at-scale availability and/or widescale adoption, and risk of delayed diffusion. Hierarchical clustering and multi-criteria decision-making revealed differences in perceptions of core technological innovations, with next-generation energy storage, alternative building materials, iron-ore electrolysis, and hydrogen in steelmaking emerging as top priorities. Instead, technologies highly represented in well-below-2°C scenarios seemingly feature considerable and impactful delays, hinting at the need to re-evaluate their role in future pathways. Experts' assessments appear to converge more on the potential role of other disruptive innovations, including lifestyle shifts and alternative economic models, indicating the importance of scenarios including non-technological and demand-side innovations. To provide insights for expert elicitation processes, we finally note caveats related to the level of representativeness among the 260 engaged experts, the level of their expertise that may have varied across the examined innovations, and the potential for subjective interpretation to which the employed linguistic scales may be prone to.




Tags
Synergies

Date
December 2022
Authors
Ida Sognnaes
Title
What can we learn from probabilistic feasibility assessments?
Short description

In a new paper in Nature Energy, Odenweller et al. use uncertainty analysis to derive a probabilistic feasibility space for green hydrogen supply. Their analysis shows that even if electrolysis capacity grows as fast as wind and solar power have done, green hydrogen supply will remain scarce in the short term and uncertain in the long term.




Tags
Synergies