Search results

Editorial: Integrating development and climate policies / Bert Metz, Marcel Kok -- Synthesis: Integrating development and climate policies: national and international benefits / Marcel Kok. [et al.] -- Research: Methods for quantifying the benefits of sustainable development policies and measures (SD-PAMs) / Harald Winkler, Niklas Hohne, Michel Den Elzen ; Bilateral and multilateral financial assistance for the energy sector of developing countries / Dennis Tirpak, Helen Adams -- Synthesis: Financing the integration of climate change mitigation into development / Alan S. Miller ; Adaptation and the poor : development, resilience and transition / Anne Jerneck, Lennart Olsson ; Adapting development cooperation to adapt to climate change / Shardul Agrawala, Maarten Van Aalst ; Climate adaptation from a poverty perspective / Geoff O'Brien. [et al.] ; Sustainable development and climate change : lessons from country studies / Kirsten Halsn~es, P.R. Shukla, Amit Garg ; Brazilian transport initiatives with GHG reductions as a co-benefit / Suzana Kahn Ribeiro, Adrianna Andrade De Abreu.

The assessment of the socio-economic and financial impacts of climate change represents a main source of uncertainty for policy makers and investors. However, traditional climate economics and financial risk models are not properly equipped to consider the characteristics of climate risks and the opportunities from climate-alignment, being constrained by equilibrium conditions and linearity of impacts, as well as by representative agents and intertemporal optimization. Given the closing window of opportunity to achieve the 2 °C target, there is an urgent need for a new wave of models able to embrace uncertainty and complexity deriving not only from climate impacts on socio-economic systems, but also from their reaction. In this regard, approaches rooted on evolutionary economics and complexity science could provide complementary insights to traditional climate economics models. This special issue contributes to fill in this knowledge gap by collecting nine papers applying evolutionary and complex systems approaches, and agent-based and network models to climate change economics, presented at the Special Session of the Research Area "Environment-Economics Interactions" of the European Association of Evolutionary Political Economy (EAEPE)'s conference 2016. By introducing conceptual and methodological innovations in climate economics and finance, the nine articles analyse the conditions for effective climate policies and financial instruments to align countries to the global climate targets, compared to the costs of inaction. This information is crucial to support decision-makers in the analysis of climate-finance policies and instruments to foster the transition to a sustainable and inclusive low-carbon economy.

Energy system transition research has been experimenting with the integration of qualitative and quantitative analysis due to the increased articulation it provides. Current approaches tend to be heavily biased by qualitative or quantitative methodologies, and more often are aimed toward a single academic discipline. This paper proposes an interdisciplinary methodology for the elaboration of energy system socio-technical scenarios, applied here to the low carbon transition of the UK. An iterative approach was used to produce quantitative descriptions of the UK's energy transition out to 2050, building on qualitative storylines or narratives that had been developed through the formal application of a transition pathways approach. The combination of the qualitative and quantitative analysis in this way subsequently formed the cornerstone of wider interdisciplinary research, helping to harmonise assumptions, and facilitating 'whole systems' thinking. The methodology pulls on niche expertise of contributors to map and investigate the governance and technological landscape of a system change. Initial inconsistencies were found between energy supply and demand and addressed, the treatment of gas generation, capacity factors, total installed generating capacity and installation rates of renewables employed. Knowledge gaps relating to the operation of combined heat and power, sources of waste heat and future fuel sources were also investigated. Adopting the methodological approach to integrate qualitative and quantitative analysis resulted in a far more comprehensive elaboration than previously, providing a stronger basis for wider research, and for deducing more robust insights for decision-making. It is asserted that this formal process helps build robust future scenarios not only for socio political storylines but also for the quantification of any qualitative storyline.

Energy system transition research has been experimenting with the integration of qualitative and quantitative analysis due to the increased articulation it provides. Current approaches tend to be heavily biased by qualitative or quantitative methodologies, and more often are aimed toward a single academic discipline. This paper proposes an interdisciplinary methodology for the elaboration of energy system sociotechnical scenarios, applied here to the low carbon transition of the UK. An iterative approach was used to produce quantitative descriptions of the UK's energy transition out to 2050, building on qualitative storylines or narratives that had been developed through the formal application of a transition pathways approach. The combination of the qualitative and quantitative analysis in this way subsequently formed the cornerstone of wider interdisciplinary research, helping to harmonise assumptions, and facilitating 'whole systems' thinking. The methodology pulls on niche expertise of contributors to map and investigate the governance and technological landscape of a system change. Initial inconsistencies were found between energy supply and demand and addressed, the treatment of gas generation, capacity factors, total installed generating capacity, installation rates of renewables employed and the amount of electricity used by battery electric vehicles. Knowledge gaps relating to the operation of combined heat and power, sources of waste heat and future fuel sources were also investigated. By adopting the methodological approached to integrate qualitative and quantitative analysis the resulting elaboration is far more comprehensive, providing a stronger basis for wider research, and for deducing more robust insights for decision-making. It is asserted that this formal process helps build robust future scenarios not only for socio political storylines but also for the quantification of any qualitative storyline.