TY  - JOUR
A1  - Luderer, Gunnar
A1  - Madeddu, Silvia
A1  - Merfort, Leon
A1  - Ueckerdt, Falko
A1  - Pehl, Michaja
A1  - Pietzcker, Robert C.
A1  - Rottoli, Marianna
A1  - Schreyer, Felix
A1  - Bauer, Nico
A1  - Baumstark, Lavinia
A1  - Bertram, Christoph
A1  - Dirnaichner, Alois
A1  - Humpenöder, Florian
A1  - Levesque, Antoine
A1  - Popp, Alexander
A1  - Rodrigues, Renato
A1  - Strefler, Jessica
A1  - Kriegler, Elmar
T1  - Impact of declining renewable energy costs on electrification in low-emission scenarios
JF  - Nature energy
N2  - Cost degression in photovoltaics, wind-power and battery storage has been faster than previously anticipated. In the future, climate policy to limit global warming to 1.5–2 °C will make carbon-based fuels increasingly scarce and expensive. Here we show that further progress in solar- and wind-power technology along with carbon pricing to reach the Paris Climate targets could make electricity cheaper than carbon-based fuels. In combination with demand-side innovation, for instance in e-mobility and heat pumps, this is likely to induce a fundamental transformation of energy systems towards a dominance of electricity-based end uses. In a 1.5 °C scenario with limited availability of bioenergy and carbon dioxide removal, electricity could account for 66% of final energy by mid-century, three times the current levels and substantially higher than in previous climate policy scenarios assessed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The lower production of bioenergy in our high-electrification scenarios markedly reduces energy-related land and water requirements.
KW  - climate-change mitigation
KW  - energy modelling
KW  - renewable energy
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-021-00937-z
SN  - 2058-7546
N1  - Corrigendum: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-022-01000-1
VL  - 7
IS  - 1
SP  - 32
EP  - 42
PB  - Nature Publishing Group
CY  - London
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - van Soest, Heleen L.
A1  - Aleluia Reis, Lara
A1  - Baptista, Luiz Bernardo
A1  - Bertram, Christoph
A1  - Després, Jacques
A1  - Drouet, Laurent
A1  - den Elzen, Michel
A1  - Fragkos, Panagiotis
A1  - Fricko, Oliver
A1  - Fujimori, Shinichiro
A1  - Grant, Neil
A1  - Harmsen, Mathijs
A1  - Iyer, Gokul
A1  - Keramidas, Kimon
A1  - Köberle, Alexandre C.
A1  - Kriegler, Elmar
A1  - Malik, Aman
A1  - Mittal, Shivika
A1  - Oshiro, Ken
A1  - Riahi, Keywan
A1  - Roelfsema, Mark
A1  - van Ruijven, Bas
A1  - Schaeffer, Roberto
A1  - Silva Herran, Diego
A1  - Tavoni, Massimo
A1  - Ünlü, Gamze
A1  - Vandyck, Toon
A1  - van Vuuren, Detlef P.
T1  - Global roll-out of comprehensive policy measures may aid in bridging emissions gap
JF  - Nature communications
N2  - Closing the emissions gap between Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and the global emissions levels needed to achieve the Paris Agreement’s climate goals will require a comprehensive package of policy measures. National and sectoral policies can help fill the gap, but success stories in one country cannot be automatically replicated in other countries. They need to be adapted to the local context. Here, we develop a new Bridge scenario based on nationally relevant, short-term measures informed by interactions with country experts. These good practice policies are rolled out globally between now and 2030 and combined with carbon pricing thereafter. We implement this scenario with an ensemble of global integrated assessment models. We show that the Bridge scenario closes two-thirds of the emissions gap between NDC and 2 °C scenarios by 2030 and enables a pathway in line with the 2 °C goal when combined with the necessary long-term changes, i.e. more comprehensive pricing measures after 2030. The Bridge scenario leads to a scale-up of renewable energy (reaching 52%–88% of global electricity supply by 2050), electrification of end-uses, efficiency improvements in energy demand sectors, and enhanced afforestation and reforestation. Our analysis suggests that early action via good-practice policies is less costly than a delay in global climate cooperation.
KW  - climate-change mitigation
KW  - climate-change policy
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-26595-z
N1  - Corrigendum: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-27969-7
VL  - 12
IS  - 1
PB  - Nature Publishing Group UK
CY  - London
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Bertram, Christoph
A1  - Riahi, Keywan
A1  - Hilaire, Jérôme
A1  - Bosetti, Valentina
A1  - Drouet, Laurent
A1  - Fricko, Oliver
A1  - Malik, Aman
A1  - Nogueira, Larissa Pupo
A1  - van der Zwaan, Bob
A1  - van Ruijven, Bas
A1  - van Vuuren, Detlef P.
A1  - Weitzel, Matthias
A1  - Longa, Francesco Dalla
A1  - de Boer, Harmen-Sytze
A1  - Emmerling, Johannes
A1  - Fosse, Florian
A1  - Fragkiadakis, Kostas
A1  - Harmsen, Mathijs
A1  - Keramidas, Kimon
A1  - Kishimoto, Paul Natsuo
A1  - Kriegler, Elmar
A1  - Krey, Volker
A1  - Paroussos, Leonidas
A1  - Saygin, Deger
A1  - Vrontisi, Zoi
A1  - Luderer, Gunnar
T1  - Energy system developments and investments in the decisive decade for the Paris Agreement goals
JF  - Environmental research letters
N2  - The Paris Agreement does not only stipulate to limit the global average temperature increase to well below 2 °C, it also calls for 'making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions'. Consequently, there is an urgent need to understand the implications of climate targets for energy systems and quantify the associated investment requirements in the coming decade. A meaningful analysis must however consider the near-term mitigation requirements to avoid the overshoot of a temperature goal. It must also include the recently observed fast technological progress in key mitigation options. Here, we use a new and unique scenario ensemble that limit peak warming by construction and that stems from seven up-to-date integrated assessment models. This allows us to study the near-term implications of different limits to peak temperature increase under a consistent and up-to-date set of assumptions. We find that ambitious immediate action allows for limiting median warming outcomes to well below 2 °C in all models. By contrast, current nationally determined contributions for 2030 would add around 0.2 °C of peak warming, leading to an unavoidable transgression of 1.5 °C in all models, and 2 °C in some. In contrast to the incremental changes as foreseen by current plans, ambitious peak warming targets require decisive emission cuts until 2030, with the most substantial contribution to decarbonization coming from the power sector. Therefore, investments into low-carbon power generation need to increase beyond current levels to meet the Paris goals, especially for solar and wind technologies and related system enhancements for electricity transmission, distribution and storage. Estimates on absolute investment levels, up-scaling of other low-carbon power generation technologies and investment shares in less ambitious scenarios vary considerably across models. In scenarios limiting peak warming to below 2 °C, while coal is phased out quickly, oil and gas are still being used significantly until 2030, albeit at lower than current levels. This requires continued investments into existing oil and gas infrastructure, but investments into new fields in such scenarios might not be needed. The results show that credible and effective policy action is essential for ensuring efficient allocation of investments aligned with medium-term climate targets.
KW  - Paris Agreement
KW  - energy investments
KW  - mitigation policies
KW  - climate policy
KW  - integrated assessment modelling
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac09ae
SN  - 1748-9326
VL  - 16
IS  - 7
PB  - IOP Publishing
CY  - Bristol
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Duan, Hongbo
A1  - Zhou, Sheng
A1  - Jiang, Kejun
A1  - Bertram, Christoph
A1  - Harmsen, Mathijs
A1  - Kriegler, Elmar
A1  - van Vuuren, Detlef P.
A1  - Wang, Shouyang
A1  - Fujimori, Shinichiro
A1  - Tavoni, Massimo
A1  - Ming, Xi
A1  - Keramidas, Kimon
A1  - Iyer, Gokul
A1  - Edmonds, James
T1  - Assessing China’s efforts to pursue the 1.5°C warming limit
JF  - Science
N2  - Given the increasing interest in keeping global warming below 1.5°C, a key question is what this would mean for China’s emission pathway, energy restructuring, and decarbonization. By conducting a multimodel study, we find that the 1.5°C-consistent goal would require China to reduce its carbon emissions and energy consumption by more than 90 and 39%, respectively, compared with the “no policy” case. Negative emission technologies play an important role in achieving near-zero emissions, with captured carbon accounting on average for 20% of the total reductions in 2050. Our multimodel comparisons reveal large differences in necessary emission reductions across sectors, whereas what is consistent is that the power sector is required to achieve full decarbonization by 2050. The cross-model averages indicate that China’s accumulated policy costs may amount to 2.8 to 5.7% of its gross domestic product by 2050, given the 1.5°C warming limit.
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aba8767
SN  - 1095-9203
SN  - 0036-8075
VL  - 372
IS  - 6540
SP  - 378
EP  - 385
PB  - American Association for the Advancement of Science
CY  - Washington, DC
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Riahi, Keywan
A1  - Bertram, Christoph
A1  - Huppmann, Daniel
A1  - Rogelj, Joeri
A1  - Bosetti, Valentina
A1  - Cabardos, Anique-Marie
A1  - Deppermann, Andre
A1  - Drouet, Laurent
A1  - Frank, Stefan
A1  - Fricko, Oliver
A1  - Fujimori, Shinichiro
A1  - Harmsen, Mathijs
A1  - Hasegawa, Tomoko
A1  - Krey, Volker
A1  - Luderer, Gunnar
A1  - Paroussos, Leonidas
A1  - Schaeffer, Roberto
A1  - Weitzel, Matthias
A1  - van der Zwaan, Bob
A1  - Vrontisi, Zoi
A1  - Longa, Francesco Dalla
A1  - Després, Jacques
A1  - Fosse, Florian
A1  - Fragkiadakis, Kostas
A1  - Gusti, Mykola
A1  - Humpenöder, Florian
A1  - Keramidas, Kimon
A1  - Kishimoto, Paul
A1  - Kriegler, Elmar
A1  - Meinshausen, Malte
A1  - Nogueira, Larissa Pupo
A1  - Oshiro, Ken
A1  - Popp, Alexander
A1  - Rochedo, Pedro R. R.
A1  - Ünlü, Gamze
A1  - van Ruijven, Bas
A1  - Takakura, Junya
A1  - Tavoni, Massimo
A1  - van Vuuren, Detlef P.
A1  - Zakeri, Behnam
T1  - Cost and attainability of meeting stringent climate targets without overshoot
JF  - Nature climate change
N2  - Global emissions scenarios play a critical role in the assessment of strategies to mitigate climate change. The current scenarios, however, are criticized because they feature strategies with pronounced overshoot of the global temperature goal, requiring a long-term repair phase to draw temperatures down again through net-negative emissions. Some impacts might not be reversible. Hence, we explore a new set of net-zero CO2 emissions scenarios with limited overshoot. We show that upfront investments are needed in the near term for limiting temperature overshoot but that these would bring long-term economic gains. Our study further identifies alternative configurations of net-zero CO2 emissions systems and the roles of different sectors and regions for balancing sources and sinks. Even without net-negative emissions, CO2 removal is important for accelerating near-term reductions and for providing an anthropogenic sink that can offset the residual emissions in sectors that are hard to abate.
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01215-2
SN  - 1758-678X
SN  - 1758-6798
VL  - 11
IS  - 12
SP  - 1063
EP  - 1069
PB  - Nature Publishing Group
CY  - London
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Soergel, Bjoern
A1  - Kriegler, Elmar
A1  - Weindl, Isabelle
A1  - Rauner, Sebastian
A1  - Dirnaichner, Alois
A1  - Ruhe, Constantin
A1  - Hofmann, Matthias
A1  - Bauer, Nico
A1  - Bertram, Christoph
A1  - Bodirsky, Benjamin Leon
A1  - Leimbach, Marian
A1  - Leininger, Julia
A1  - Levesque, Antoine
A1  - Luderer, Gunnar
A1  - Pehl, Michaja
A1  - Wingens, Christopher
A1  - Baumstark, Lavinia
A1  - Beier, Felicitas
A1  - Dietrich, Jan Philipp
A1  - Humpenöder, Florian
A1  - von Jeetze, Patrick
A1  - Klein, David
A1  - Koch, Johannes
A1  - Pietzcker, Robert C.
A1  - Strefler, Jessica
A1  - Lotze-Campen, Hermann
A1  - Popp, Alexander
T1  - A sustainable development pathway for climate action within the UN 2030 Agenda
JF  - Nature climate change
N2  - Ambitious climate policies, as well as economic development, education, technological progress and less resource-intensive lifestyles, are crucial elements for progress towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, using an integrated modelling framework covering 56 indicators or proxies across all 17 SDGs, we show that they are insufficient to reach the targets. An additional sustainable development package, including international climate finance, progressive redistribution of carbon pricing revenues, sufficient and healthy nutrition and improved access to modern energy, enables a more comprehensive sustainable development pathway. We quantify climate and SDG outcomes, showing that these interventions substantially boost progress towards many aspects of the UN Agenda 2030 and simultaneously facilitate reaching ambitious climate targets. Nonetheless, several important gaps remain; for example, with respect to the eradication of extreme poverty (180 million people remaining in 2030). These gaps can be closed by 2050 for many SDGs while also respecting the 1.5 °C target and several other planetary boundaries.
KW  - climate-change mitigation
KW  - climate-change policy
KW  - socioeconomic scenarios
KW  - sustainability
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01098-3
SN  - 1758-678X
SN  - 1758-6798
VL  - 11
IS  - 8
SP  - 656
EP  - 664
PB  - Nature Publishing Group
CY  - London
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Malik, Aman
A1  - Bertram, Christoph
A1  - Kriegler, Elmar
A1  - Luderer, Gunnar
T1  - Climate policy accelerates structural changes in energy employment
JF  - Energy policy
N2  - The employment implications of decarbonizing the energy sector have received far less attention than the technology dimension of the transition, although being of critical importance to policymakers. In this work, we adapt a methodology based on employment factors to project future changes in quantity and composition of direct energy supply jobs for two scenarios - (1) relatively weak emissions reductions as pledged in the nationally determined contributions (NDC) and (2) stringent reductions compatible with the 1.5 °C target. We find that in the near-term the 1.5°C-compatible scenario results in a net increase in jobs through gains in solar and wind jobs in construction, installation, and manufacturing, despite significant losses in coal fuel supply; eventually leading to a peak in total direct energy jobs in 2025. In the long run, improvements in labour productivity lead to a decrease of total direct energy employment compared to today, however, total jobs are still higher in a 1.5 °C than in an NDC scenario. Operation and maintenance jobs dominate future jobs, replacing fuel supply jobs. The results point to the need for active policies aimed at retraining, both inside and outside the renewable energy sector, to complement climate policies within the concept of a “just transition”.
KW  - energy supply
KW  - employment
KW  - just transition
KW  - political feasibility
KW  - mitigation pathways
KW  - integrated assessment models
Y1  - 2021
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2021.112642
SN  - 0301-4215
VL  - 159
PB  - Elsevier Science
CY  - Amsterdam
ER  -