RITE-IIASA side event on EDITS at UNFCCC COP27

Ensuring well-being and access to essential and social services is why society requires materials and energy. Technological, social and infrastructural innovations can deeply reduce demand for energy and stimulate a just transition. The event moderator Joyashree Roy, Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Thailand, pointed out that implementing demand-side solutions and drastically reducing the energy consumption globally “does not mean shifting the responsibility of climate mitigation to people, but on the contrary, it is about empowering people by providing access to right infrastructure, access to technology and incentives.” Many new cities will be built in the developing world so there is huge opportunity to build them for inclusive growth by avoiding locking in unsustainability.

Keigo Akimoto, Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth (RITE), Japan, opened the event and introduced the Energy Demand changes Induced by Technological and Social innovations (EDITS) network, which is a global collaboration across disciplines to identify gaps and potentials to enhance modeling, analyzing, and communicating the demand-side solutions of the energy and material systems for better and easier climate mitigation and the SDGs. He showed that ”digitalization and the related innovations could induce rapid changes in our society, reduce several resources and the embedded energy consumptions.” Societies and businesses are constantly changing, thus a number of megaternds, such as urbanization, circular and sharing economy, along with digitalization could be reaped for the benefits to achieve cheaper costs for deep emissions reduction.

Bas van Ruijven, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria talked about the energy system leverage effects of demand-side solutions and said that a “low energy demand development reduces dependence on uncertain and unknown carbon dioxide removal technologies (CDR), reduces trade-offs between mitigation and SDGs, particularly biodiversity and food security, and offers increased flexibility for critical choices on the energy supply side.”

Elena Verdolini, European Institute on Economics and the Environment (RFF-CMCC), Italy explained that “technological innovation is a crucial component of any mitigation strategy. While the IPCC WGIII report finds that about half of the emissions reductions required until 2030 to remain below 2 degrees can be achieved with technologies that are currently available, and with costs of less than 100$/tCO2, the rest of emission reductions will need to come from novel technologies. Digital technologies offer many opportunities to promote energy efficiency, coordinate demand-response solutions, and increase our ability to implement efficient mitigation strategies, including through stakeholder's participation.” But she extended that the risks must be mangaged through appropriate and strong policies, for instance to avoid ”manipulation of the public, side-tracking the mitigation agenda, increase in distrust, and the wrongful use of data.”

Diana Ürge-Vorsatz, Central European University (CEU), IPCC WG3 Co-Vice chair talked about the opportunities from urban space and society in 2050. Cities can be a “source of social inclusion and well-being, local communities and local economic activity and productivity, as well as physical and mental health”.

The panel discussed that in developed country cities most technological, social, business (model) innovations are needed for rethinking and restructuring existing urban form, repurposing, retrofitting, repairing and reusing existing infrastructure, vehicle stocks and equipment rather having to build/produce new ones. As stated by Dr Akimoto and agreed by all speakers, there is a lot of research and policy leverage through ”better understanding of the potential changes and contribution to emissions reduction in parallel with the achievement of multiple SDGs through comprehensive analyses” that should ”induce engagement by everyone from consumers, through industrial actors, to policymakers”.