To implement the Paris Agreement's goals, greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced to net-zero around 2050. However, current policies are still insufficient to reach this target and net-zero promises by countries are generally lacking concrete roadmaps how to reach them. ELEVATE aims to create a robust scientific understanding required to strengthen NDCs and current climate policies towards reaching net-zero emissions. For this, ELEVATE brings together a unique multidisciplinary consortium of leading international and national modelling teams, climate policy experts and social scientists. The consortium aims to interact directly with policymakers to define information gaps and attractive policies, thus enhancing usability of the knowledge base and stimulating mutual learning. Based on this, the consortium will systematically assess NDCs and policies at the global and national levels to identify current progress and good practice policies. Subsequently, ELEVATE will look into a range of critical enabling factors related to sectoral action, international climate policy and the relationship with justice and sustainable development that can be leveraged to strengthen action. This allows a new generation of global and national mitigation scenarios, exploring the possibility of strengthening climate policies in countries worldwide and support net-zero goals. We assess the impact of different ways to formulate net-zero goals and the impact of climate uncertainty. Outcomes include detailed pathways and milestones on how policies can be strengthened to achieving net-zero goals. ELEVATE goes significantly beyond the state-of-the-art by 1) the inclusion of social sciences in all aspects of the analysis providing significantly improved insights into issues related to implementation and feasibility, 2) the detailed focus on sectoral action, 3) the stakeholder interaction and 4) the direct collaboration between the global and national teams on net-zero emission scenarios.

The CircEUlar project aims to understand the dynamics and levers for societal transformation towards a net-zero emission circular economy. CircEUlar will develop new modelling approaches for analysing circularity from a systems perspective accounting for: 1) dematerialisation and the transition to a service-based economy to limit material stock growth; 2) lifetime extension of material stocks through repair, maintenance, reuse; 3) waste treatment and material recycling. CircEUlar’s approach will be comprehensive, combining new data and modelling of economy-wide material stocks and flows, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and industrial value chains across interlinked sectors, with deep-dive analysis of mobility and buildings as material-intensive demand sectors. These two focus areas have large material stocks, potential for circular transformation, and strong dependence on both circular consumption and production practices. CircEUlar will also focus on digitalisation as a potential enabler of dematerialisation and supply chain circularity. CircEUlar integrates multiple fields of data, knowledge and expertise including: 1) empirical analysis of firm and consumer propensities towards circular economy measures; 2) industry input on process-level innovations and circular economy business models; 3) modelling analysis of economy-wide material stocks and flows, and policy levers of change towards societal transformation. CircEUlar will integrate new insights on circular economy potentials and impacts into EU and global modelling frameworks for: 1) analysing alternative pathways to net-zero GHG emissions; 2) testing effective policy levers for both circular production and consumption. 3) assessing outcomes for climate, environment, economy and society, in line with European Green Deal objectives.

NAVIGATE aims to develop the Next generation of AdVanced InteGrated Assessment modelling to support climaTE policy making. It will critically improve the capability of Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) to inform the design and evaluation of climate policies by targeting major advancements in two areas: describing transformative change in the economy, in technology and in consumer goods and services, and describing distributional impacts of climate change and climate policy. By tackling existing weaknesses and lack of capabilities of the current generation of IAMs, NAVIGATE will provide new insight into how long-term climate goals can translate into short-term policy action, and how countries and sectors can work in concert to implement the Paris Agreement. NAVIGATE is bringing together leading institutions in the field of integrated assessment modelling with leading domain experts. They will provide a broad and diverse collection of state-of-the-art tools ranging from domain specific models and data to an extensive set of flagship IAMs to foster a successful implementation of the project. NAVIGATE will engage in a concerted effort to increase the usability, transparency, legitimacy and hence uptake of IAM results. At the center of this will be a stakeholder dialogue to elicit user needs and engage in co-production of knowledge about IAMs and their uses. This will be accompanied by the development of methodologies to better assess the robustness of IAM results, by extended model documentation and new communication tools, and by capacity building efforts to lower the entrance barrier to IAM activities for other research teams, including research teams in less-developed countries. The NAVIGATE partners have long-standing expertise in national, EU and international climate policy advice and will actively promote uptake of project results by policy makers and international assessments.

CAPABLE will provide robust, resilient and actionable recommendations for the design of socially and economically acceptable climate policy measures for 2030 and beyond. We will examine past experience, policy design and implementation solutions to identify strategies that can enable a successful transition. We will achieve this by addressing climate, economic, and social challenges. In order to do so, we will draw on economic methods of decision making and policy evaluation, and sociology, political sciences and psychology to capture the multidimensional outcomes and implications of different climate policy instruments. Moreover, we will produce a number of new datasets, and apply state-of-the-art methods to produce new insights on policy perception and performance. Finally, we will integrate the scientific evidence, an interactive stakeholder dialogue, and various dissemination channels including a new online policy tool as a user-oriented service for climate policy-makers at the EU, national, and local level. Taken together, the methodological and empirical advancements will provide broader evidence for desirable climate strategies in Europe, along with lessons for the rest of the world.