Assessing the performance of policy instruments to inform climate change mitigation action

This Destination contributes directly to the Strategic Plan’s Key Strategic Orientations ‘Green transition’, ‘Digital transition’ and ‘A more resilient, competitive, inclusive and democratic Europe’.

In line with the Strategic Plan, the overall expected impact of this Destination is to contribute to the “Advancing science for a transition to a climate-neutral and resilient society”.

Expected impacts:

Research should contribute to closing major knowledge gaps on the changing climate together with their associated impacts and risks, on both society and nature. It should also help develop tools to support decision-makers in designing and implementing effective mitigation and adaptation actions at various time and spatial scales while properly accounting for synergies and trade-offs with other policy objectives, such as just transition, territorial cohesion and leaving no one behind.

The main impacts to be generated by topics under this Destination are:

1. Supporting climate action (both mitigation and adaptation) in Europe and globally, through advancing climate science and the knowledge base underpinning actionable solutions, to accelerate the transition to a climate-neutral, climate-resilient and prosperous society.
2. Closing key knowledge gaps related to climate change, thereby contributing substantially to key European and international assessments such as IPCC, IPBES, EUCRA, and other initiatives such as the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) and the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) under the World Climate Research Programme.
3. Strengthening the European Research Area on climate change by boosting scientific excellence and capacity in an inclusive manner across the participating countries.
4. Maximising synergies between mitigation and adaptation and with other policy priorities such as biodiversity and ecosystem preservation and restoration, disaster-preparedness, digitalisation, circular economy, prosperity and competitiveness, strategic autonomy, security and resilience, just transition, and the Sustainable Development Goals by exploring co-benefits, trade-offs and potential unintended consequences of climate strategies and policy interventions.

Important components of climate science research are also addressed in other Clusters -particularly Cluster 6 – which addresses the climate-ocean-cryosphere-polar nexus and the climate-energy-land-food-water-biodiversity nexus. Efforts to foster synergies and complementarities across these research activities are strongly encouraged.

Expected Outcome:

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Enhanced knowledge of the effectiveness of policy instruments on EU and Member State level to inform mitigation action and policy improvements, ensuring a fair transition and social acceptability;
• Methodologies are developed and improved for ex-ante assessment and ex-post evaluation of greenhouse gas emission reductions from climate policies and measures;
• Strengthened collaboration and established networks between researchers, policy experts and government officials involved in designing and evaluating climate policies on EU and national level.

Scope:

As the EU and its Member States intensify efforts to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to achieve climate neutrality by 2050, understanding the effectiveness and acceptability of policy instruments becomes crucial. The implementation of the European Green Deal and climate legislation under the recent “Fit-for-55" package has further emphasised the need to better identify and quantify the impact of climate policies and measures both on EU and national level. Many policies are also subject to fast-changing political dynamics. Ex-post evaluation can help explain whether emission reductions occurred and explain why, while also identifying other benefits or trade-offs of climate mitigation.

By 2023, the EU had achieved a 37% reduction in its GHG emissions compared to 1990 levels^[1]. However, even after almost two decades of EU climate policies, there is still limited understanding of the effectiveness of mitigation policies. The increasing complexity of the policy mix makes it difficult to clearly link individual policies or measures to specific emission reductions and other benefits in different sectors. The interaction with other thematic policies such as those on biodiversity, agriculture and trade is therefore also important.

This topic is expected to assess the performance of EU policies and measures for reducing GHG emissions. The focus is on sectors not covered by the current EU Emission Trading System (ETS 1)^[2]. This would include gaining insights into factors that influence behavioural change and acceptance of policies, taking into account gender-specific aspects. Actions should consider economic, social, distributional and other effects of mitigation action, including trade-offs and co-benefits such as vis-à-vis climate resilience.

Actions should go beyond traditional decomposition analysis and employ state-of-the-art econometric techniques. They are expected to improve existing methodologies or develop new ones to help distinguish the contribution of GHG emission reductions between policy-driven effects and external drivers. Machine learning and other digital tools and methods could be applied to fill information gaps and gain additional insights.

Actions should assess the impact of national policies on Member State level and how such policies interact with EU-wide policies and measures. They should also identify and highlight examples of national policies and measures that have successfully reduced GHG emissions and brought other environmental, social and economic benefits. Actions are expected to develop, test or improve methodologies and tools for ex-ante estimates of GHG emission reductions when designing policies and measures on EU and national level, including integrating climate objectives in other policies. This should include economy-wide modelling which takes into account cross-sectoral feedbacks as well as price responsiveness and behavioural change by consumers.

Actions are encouraged to use available datasets on climate mitigation policies and measures, such as the OECD/CAPMF database^[3], and the integrated national climate and energy policies and measures datahub hosted by the European Environment Agency (EEA)^[4]. The use of additional activity data provided by EUROSTAT^[5] or national statistical sources may be necessary to provide a comprehensive understanding of policy impacts.

All projects funded under this topic are strongly encouraged to connect, coordinate, and participate in networking and joint activities to foster cross-project cooperation and exchange, particularly to reinforce synergies between methodologies.

This topic requires interdisciplinary collaboration between political scientists, economists and other relevant Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) disciplines. Actions are also strongly encouraged to include a process of mutual learning and co-creation with stakeholders (e.g., representatives of governments, public administrations, NGOs and academia) to meet end-user needs and support the uptake of results.

[1] Progress on climate action - European Commission

[2] https://climate.ec.europa.eu/eu-action/eu-emissions-trading-system-eu-ets/scope-eu-ets_en

[3] https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/the-climate-actions-and-policies-measurement-framework_2caa60ce-en.html

[4] Integrated national climate and energy policies and measures; EEA database on greenhouse gas policies and measures in Europe — European Environment Agency

[5] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Greenhouse_gas_emission_footprints