Next generation scenarios for informing climate and sustainability transitions

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 some of the following expected outcomes:

• Strengthened collaboration and integration across research communities, better capturing interactions and trade-offs between various climate domains as well as between climate and non-climate objectives, such as biodiversity or pollution related. This will support more comprehensive and consistent evaluations, benefiting key global assessments (IPCC, IPBES) and improving their impact on European and global policies (European Green Deal, UNFCCC, CBD);
• More relevant, robust and actionable scenarios that inform optimal policy interventions, serving the needs and supporting decision-making of diverse end-users at various spatial scales, from policymakers and planning authorities to businesses and civil society;
• More globally representative, diverse, inclusive, transparent, widely accepted and better communicated scenarios that support climate-resilient development pathways and foster global consensus on climate action.

Scope:

Climate scenarios have been instrumental in shaping global, national, and increasingly local responses to climate change by helping stakeholders make informed decisions. Against the backdrop of rapid environmental shifts, social upheavals, high uncertainties and complexity, scenarios must be advanced to inform low-emission climate-resilient pathways, while also accounting for other critical policy priorities, such as environmental protection.

Actions should improve Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) or propose alternative approaches to address key challenges and gaps in current climate scenario frameworks. They should extend the scope of scenarios beyond the 21st century, enlarge the future possibility space with more diverse narratives and drivers (e.g. post-growth), more explicit consideration of equity, justice, geopolitics and attention to inclusivity.

Proposals are expected to address only one of the following priority areas, which should be clearly indicated:

Area A: Integration of climate impacts and adaptation dimension

Develop approaches to better integrate physical climate impacts, adaptation, its costs and limits into mitigation pathways. This includes exploring how climate impacts including extremes and biophysical feedbacks affect mitigation strategies, testing the resilience of low-emission pathways to climate impacts, and how adaptation interacts with mitigation.

Area B: Improved scenario frameworks

Update baseline scenarios and expand scenario narratives to better address multi-scale, cross-sectoral issues and the needs of downstream assessments. Scenarios should capture a wider range of plausible futures to reflect changing socio-economic and environmental conditions (including a broader range of economic growth assumptions), technological advancements, evolving policy landscape and disruptive events. This includes extension of Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) and Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) scenario framework, or development of alternatives, to enhance regional and local applicability, to support adaptation pathway development, and to improve relevance beyond the climate research community - notably for biodiversity and SDGs.

Area C: Improved policy representation

Enhance the granularity and diversity of policy (both mitigation and adaptation) representation in scenarios with more focus on implementation aspects to bridge the gap between modelled pathways and real-world action. Address social, geopolitical, economic and technological factors, considering interactions between industrial, trade, climate and other environmental policies (e.g. air pollution). Examine implications for competitiveness, employment, investment flows, energy security, supply chain resilience, technological innovation, international spillovers, as well as well-being. Investigate implementation and impact of recent commitments and initiatives (e.g. fossil fuel phase-out, Global Methane Pledge) and the impact of rising geopolitical tensions on their implementation, and mitigation action overall.

Actions should promote transdisciplinary collaboration and co-design with stakeholders to integrate diverse perspectives and needs They should develop and test new approaches, including communication, to improve uptake of results by various audiences. The topic therefore requires inclusion of relevant SSH expertise, to produce meaningful and significant effects to enhance the societal impact of related research activities.

All projects funded from this topic are strongly encouraged to collaborate and envisage clustering activities together and with other relevant projects in and outside of Horizon Europe. They should contribute to the organisation of the European Climate and Energy Modelling Platform^[1] conferences to foster dialogue between scientists, policymakers and other stakeholders. They should also support inclusive and transparent model intercomparison exercises, aligning with the efforts of the European Climate and Energy Modelling Forum^[2].

International cooperation is generally encouraged and specifically required with low, and lower/upper-middle-income countries^[3] – particularly major GHG emitters^[4] such as China (contributing to the EU-China Climate Change and Biodiversity (CCB) flagship initiative^[5]), India, Brazil and Indonesia. It should ensure diverse, globally representative scenario space and, where appropriate, foster capacity development.

[1] https://www.ecemf.eu/ecemp/european-climate-and-energy-modelling-platform/

[2] https://www.ecemf.eu/

[3] https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/knowledgebase/articles/906519-world-bank-country-and-lendinggroups; standard Horizon Europe funding rules apply - only participants from some of these countries are automatically eligible for funding

[4] https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2024?vis=ghgtot#emissions_table

[5] International cooperation with China in research and innovation