Policy Brief - Integrated impact of transition pathways towards a low carbon, secure and competitive EU society

On July 31st, 2018, the REEEM Consortium delivered its First Policy Brief, on the integrated impact of transition pathways towards a low carbon, secure and competitive EU society. The report extracts key messages from the wide modelling effort undertaken in the first 22 months of the project, involving more than 15 multi-sectoral best-in-class modelling tools.

It discusses the potential impacts of high decarbonisation targets (in line with 80% CO2 emissions reduction from the energy sector by 2050 compared to 1990) in a EU political, economic, social, technological and environmental setting evolving from the current one without major disruptions. From the assessment of the impacts, it draws policy recommendations. These revolve around the need to:

• Account for differences in the marginal cost of decarbonisation between Member States when proposing burden sharing in GHGs emissions reduction;
• Study the influence of different parameters such as technology learning and environmental externalities, to unveil potential macro-economic benefits of decarbonisation;
• Promote the development of technologies that could effectively contribute to the decarbonisation of the energy industry, such as solar PV and onshore wind;
• Support innovation in storage technologies which could effectively influence the energy system performance;
• Account for different co-development dynamics in the value chain of energy technologies in each Member State;
• Develop bi-directional and iterative processes to turn the targets set out in the National Energy and Climate strategies into actionable plans at a local scale.