Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - INNOPATHS (Innovation pathways, strategies and policies for the Low-Carbon Transition in Europe)

Teaser

The Paris Agreement substantially increased the need for countries and regions to understand the full economic, social and environmental implications of the deep decarbonisation to which the global community is now committed. The EU has long had decarbonisation ambitions, but...

Summary

The Paris Agreement substantially increased the need for countries and regions to understand the full economic, social and environmental implications of the deep decarbonisation to which the global community is now committed. The EU has long had decarbonisation ambitions, but there remains considerable uncertainty as to precisely how these ambitions will be achieved, or what the impacts of such achievement will be on the EU economy and society more generally. INNOPATHS will resolve this uncertainty to the extent possible, will characterise and provide a quantification of the uncertainty which remains, and will describe in great detail a number of possible low-carbon pathways for the EU, together with the economic, social and environmental impacts to which they are likely to lead.
INNOPATHS has five key objectives:

1. Understand the challenges of decarbonistion and the innovation needed to address them
2. Present a detailed assessment of low-carbon technologies, their uncertainties, future prospects and system characteristics
3. Propose policy and innovation system reforms that will help the EU and member states meet their greenhouse gas emission reduction targets
4. Create new, co-designed deep decarbonisation pathways with novel representation of policy and innovation processes for low-carbon technology development
5. Make clear the social, economic and environmental dimensions of the low-carbon transition and how they can be managed.

Work performed

INNOPATHS researchers have made progress on a number of frontiers since the project began in December 2016.

A key output from INNOPATHS is a series of interactive online information and decision support tools for use by policy makers, business and civil society. One such tool is the ‘Technology Matrix Tool’ (TMT), which is designed to provide users with a systematic, transparent and comparable historic values and future estimates of the cost and other key technical and environmental characteristics of important low-carbon technologies across the power, transport, industry, agriculture and ICT sectors. INNOPATHS researchers have collected and produced much of the data required for display by the tool, and have developed analytical tools to allow estimates of uncertainty around projected future values. A prototype of the TMT has also been developed.

Another such tool is the ‘Policy Evaluation Tool’ (PET). The PET is designed to allow stakeholders to easily access and interpret information on the evidence of the various impacts of different types of policy instruments that may be employed the encourage the low-carbon transition in different sectors. A systematic review process to collected this evidence has been underway since early in the project, and a prototype of this tool has also been produced, along with prototypes of the ‘Interactive Decarbonisation Simulator’ (designed in large part to assist and engage stakeholders in the co-development of possible narratives for the low-carbon transition in Europe, discussed below), and the ‘Low-Carbon Pathways Platform’ (LCPP), designed to allow stakeholders to examine different possible options for the low-carbon transition using results from scenarios produced from the modelling activities that will take place in the next phase of the project.
INNOPATHS researchers are investigating the potential ‘losers’ from the low-carbon transition, such as high-carbon industries, alongside the potential ‘winners’, such as industries, companies and their employees that produce products that will be required for this transition, such that potentially negative socio-economic impacts may be anticipated and managed, and benefits maximised. Preliminary results thus far indicate that ‘winners’ in the labour market from policies to encourage decarbonisation has thus far tended to be highly-skilled ‘technicians’, rather than relatively lower-skilled, manual workers. Complementarities and synergies with other projects with related activities are also being explored.

Understanding key drivers and barriers to the development and diffusion of highly efficient or low-carbon technologies is crucial to encourage such activities and policy action that may be taken to achieve this. As such, INNOPATHS researchers ae investigating the key characteristics of the ‘innovation system’ for key technologies across the power, industry, ICT, buildings, transport and agriculture sectors, in four EU Member States (Germany, Poland, Italy and the UK), to understand key differences and commonalities that have encouraged or prevented their development and widespread diffusion in these countries. In parallel, work is ongoing to assess the role of technology ‘spillovers’ (where innovations in one industry or technology may in one domain be transferred to an industry or technology in another), in the development of low-carbon technologies. For solar photovoltaics, early results suggest that of the 34 technology ‘breakthroughs’ that have characterised the development of this technology, at least 7 of them—most prominently, screen printing and wire sawing—came from other sectors, including tire and watch making, ceramics, and semiconductors.

A key challenge to achieving the low-carbon transition is encouraging flows of finance to shift towards low-carbon investments, and away from high-carbon sectors and infrastructure. INNOPATHS researchers have completed a systematic review of t

Final results

INNOPATHS will foster the design and implementation of cost-effective medium to long-term technological transitions, consistent with decarbonisation pathways and economic development in Europe and beyond through trans-disciplinary roadmap co-design and analysis focusing on technical and non-technical barriers to and opportunities from decarbonisation of the European economy. A key output will be a series of interactive online information and decision support tools for use by policy makers, business and civil society.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.innopaths.eu/.