Paris Agreement risks and opportunities: ADVANCE project presents findings in Brussels

10/24/2016 - To meet the climate stabilization targets of the Paris Agreement, the greenhouse gas emission reduction plans so far presented by nations worldwide have to be substantially improved. While renewables can almost fully decarbonize the power sector, aiming at a 1.5 degrees Celsius limit for global warming would require major additional efforts to also reduce emissions from demand sectors, for instance through a shift to electric and hydrogen vehicles. These are just some of the findings presented at the final meeting of the ADVANCE project this Monday in Brussels. The Acronym stands for “Advanced Model Development and Validation for Improved Analysis of Costs and Impacts of Mitigation policies”, an unprecedented research effort funded by the European Union.
Paris Agreement risks and opportunities: ADVANCE project presents findings in Brussels

“Over the pasts four years, fourteen research institutions from all over the world have joined forces to develop a new generation of so-called Integrated Assessment Models,” says project director Gunnar Luderer from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “These are sophisticated computer simulations describing the social and economic interactions that determine climate change as well as the options to stabilize our climate by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, taking into account temperature targets as well as the economic costs. This can help to inform critical choices of policy-makers.” The international team of scientists applied the improved models to assess implications of the Paris Agreement, including the aspirational target of limiting global temperature increase not just to well below 2 degrees Celsius but to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The final meeting brings together stakeholders, climate policy experts and the ADVANCE scientists. Their results will be published in policy briefs as well as scientific journals in the near future.

Weblink to the project: http://www.fp7-advance.eu/