Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - DEEDS (DialoguE on European Decarbonisation Strategies)

Teaser

Climate change is a major challenge for society. In the Paris Agreement of December 2015, 195 countries agreed to avoid dangerous climate change by limiting global warming to well below 2°C and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. The European Commission will extensively...

Summary

Climate change is a major challenge for society. In the Paris Agreement of December 2015, 195 countries agreed to avoid dangerous climate change by limiting global warming to well below 2°C and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. The European Commission will extensively mobilise the means of science for supporting EU climate action towards a low-carbon future, by launching – under Horizon 2020 – a European Decarbonisation Pathways Initiative (EDPI): a comprehensive portfolio of dedicated research and innovation actions. In order to “assist the Commission in the preparation of legislative proposals and policy initiatives” a High-level Panel of the European Decarbonisation Pathways Initiative (EDPI) was established in October 2016.
An overarching goal of the DEEDS-project is to create a broad dialogue on the vision for a carbon-neutral Europe by 2050 and associated decarbonisation pathways. To this end the project creates a network of leading scientists and relevant research projects related to European decarbonisation pathways. It furthermore supports the EDPI and its High-level Panel in their tasks, through delivering state-of-the art knowledge on selected decarbonisation pathways and related topics. It fosters the uptake of the report and recommendations of the High-level Panel through dedicated co-creation workshops with policy makers (at different levels), business representatives, scientists, NGO’s and other stakeholders and through the communication and dissemination channels of DEEDS.

Work performed

The project has built-in flexibility in planning and addressing topics, to be able to align with the activities of the High-Level Panel in the best way. In practice this worked out, but still we needed to postpone some of the deliverables, while some others were ahead of schedule. All deliverables will be produced before the end of the project.
The main activities of the DEEDS-project within this reporting period have been focused on supporting the High-Level Panel to write the report. To this end “twins” were formed per chapter: a High-Panel member as lead and a DEEDS partner for writing activities and coordinating the work to be done with other DEEDS-partners. In this way DEEDS supported writing 7 chapters and provided input to the introductory chapter as well as the concluding chapter. The report of the High-Level Panel was published in November 2018 on the EC website. The High-Level Panel report can also be downloaded from the DEEDS-website.
The next stage of DEEDS has been prepared that will focus on organising stakeholder dialogues to validate and enrich the HLP-chapters, and on producing policy briefs per chapter that will contain the main points from the report, the comments and additions from the workshops and R&I recommendations for the short and long term. On 28 March 2019 the first workshop “Social Innovation and lifestyle change for the decarbonisation of Europe” was organised in Brussels. For this workshop a short discussion document was written as input to the workshop. The other workshops on the chapters of the High-Level Panel are all organised this year (2019).
Furthermore, the project completed several databases: a database with experts, with relevant projects and a stakeholder database.
The DEEDS website (www.deeds.eu) was launched in March 2018, featuring blog articles, stakeholder participation invitations and news-items. DEEDS produced regular newsletters that also can be found on the website. DEEDS took over the administration, outreach and dissemination of the climatechangemitigation.eu platform. The website currently has 19 member projects.
At COP 24 in Katowice, Poland, DEEDS supported the launch event of the Final Report of the HLP on 12 December in the EU-Pavilion. DEEDS also co-organised a side-event on 13 December with the finished EU-projects CARISMA and HELIX, as well as the think tank Climate Analytics.

Final results

In the second 1,5 year of DEEDS, we will produce many products. A report on research Innovation and Policy initiatives, with a focus on the R&I investments it will require (M24). The DEEDS Knowledge Base will be delivered (M30) that is built up from two databases: 1) relevant decarbonisation technologies and 2) decarbonisation scenarios. We will produce a discussion document, a workshop report and a Policy briefs for each chapter of the HLP-report, so in total 7 of each. The Business Guide for Decarbonisation in Europe will be produced and disseminated . Furthermore, a research agenda for the decarbonisation of Europe as a result of a discussion with Member State representatives.
Measures to maximise impacts are stated in the Grant Agreement. We put specifically emphasis on organising workshops to disseminate, discuss and adapt the conclusions and recommendations of the High-Level Panel to different audiences: Member State policy makers, local and regional policy makers, businesses, science & knowledge institutes, NGO’s and other types of civic organisations. To this end we are actively looking for events and conferences to hook on to, as to organise a workshop on a relevant topic of the HLP-report. We also keep our eyes open for events that we can co-organise with the Commission.
Furthermore we will organise the final conference, preferably in June 2020, for which we also are looking for other events (or final conferences of EU-projects) to cooperate with.

Website & more info

More info: https://deeds.eu/.