Transition @ PIK

The Sustainable Transitions Flagship

Welcome to the Sustainable Transitions Flagship webpage. Our mission is to investigate and quantify the shifts in resource consumption and development paradigms that are required for climate protection, adaptation and the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Our main research questions are:
  • Are changes in lifestyles required for climate protection, or can we rely on technological innovation alone?
  • Do INDCs constitute a significant divergence from EKC-like emission trajectories?
  • Which climate-relevant SDGs targets have been incompatible (trade-off) over the past decades?
  • What are country-specific pathways for the achievement of the SDGs nexus?

Our approach is the systematic identification of empirical relationships between socio-economic and resource consumption metrics via data integration and pattern detection. In addition, we are keen on synthesizing knowledge from empirical studies and stakeholder consultation into operable models.



Current projects

The European Calculator (EC) | 2016-2019 is an H2020 project designed to provide decision makers with a modelling solution to quantify, on-demand, the country and sectoral trade-offs of future policies. Its scientific mission is to develop a model of appropriate complexity that fills the gap between academically-driven integrated climate energy-economy models and the needs of decision-makers.

The Sustainable land use-based alternatives in the Colombian and Peruvian Amazon (SUSA) | 2015-2018 is BMU funded project designing sustainable development options and land use-based alternatives to enhance climate change mitigation and adaptation capacities in the Colombian and Peruvian Amazon while enhancing ecosystem services and local livelihoods.