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Considerations of equity in directing global financial flows for regional climate mitigation investments are critically important. A new study helps inform the current negotiations at COP27 while keeping fairness at the forefront.

Human-driven methane emissions account for nearly 45% of current net warming. The Global Methane Assessment 2030 baseline report, issued by the Climate and Clean Air Coalition and coauthored by IIASA researcher Lena Höglund-Isaksson, evaluates the progress of global reduction efforts. If the world is to keep global temperature rise below 1.5° and 2°C targets, swift action is needed.

IIASA is proud to announce that 11 researchers from across various IIASA programs have been named on the 2022 Highly Cited Researchers™ list from Clarivate.

In a new study just published in the journal Nature Sustainability, an international team of scientists from the Earth Commission, convened by Future Earth, investigated the Earth system impacts of escaping poverty and achieving a dignified life for all. The research was inspired by discussions on potential trade-offs between achieving social and environmental goals.

Global carbon emissions in 2022 remain at record levels with no sign of the decrease that is urgently needed to limit warming to 1.5°C, according to the Global Carbon Project science team. If current emissions levels persist, there is now a 50% chance that global warming of 1.5°C will be exceeded in nine years.

The Covid-19 pandemic and the return of military conflict to Europe are two of the present’s defining crises. A new IIASA-led study sheds light on their ramifications for the global energy system.

IIASA is coordinating CircEUlar, a new four-year project funded by Horizon Europe aiming to develop circular pathways for a low-carbon transition in the European Union.  

An international team of researchers highlighted the inherent risk of relying too much on carbon removal technologies to limit climate change in a new study just published in Nature.

Current severe heatwaves that will likely increase in severity and frequency in the future are driving a rise in the use of air conditioners, threatening the environment with their high energy consumption and refrigerants with high warming potential. A new study finds that switching to propane as a refrigerant could lessen the global temperature increase from space cooling.

IIASA is proud to announce that Energy, Climate, and Environment Program Director, Keywan Riahi has been selected as a member of the scientific advisory board of the Vienna Climate Council. Members of the council are appointed by the mayor and agree to hold this position for at least two years.

Over the next three years, more than 120 scientists will be working on a new comprehensive climate report for Austria. IIASA is taking a leading role in the activities with IIASA researchers Keywan Riahi and Daniel Huppmann serving as co-chairs of the Austrian Panel on Climate Change.

It is our pleasure to announce that IIASA Emeritus Research Scholar, Arnulf Grubler, has been elected as a member of the Academia Europaea.

The Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use signed at COP26 represents a commitment by leaders representing over 85% of the world’s forests to halt and reverse deforestation and land degradation by 2030. But could the declaration’s ambitions be too ambiguous? An international team of researchers looked into this question.

With the rapid reduction in the costs of renewable energy generation, such as wind and solar power, there is a growing need for energy storage technologies to make sure that electricity supply and demand are balanced properly. IIASA researchers have come up with a new energy storage concept that could turn tall buildings into batteries to improve the power quality in urban settings.

Despite successes in reducing poverty globally in the last two decades, almost one billion people are still living without access to reliable and affordable electricity, which in turn negatively affects health and welfare, and impedes sustainable development. Knowing where these people are is crucial if aid and infrastructure are to reach them. A new IIASA-led study proposes a novel method to estimate global economic wellbeing using nighttime satellite images.

IIASA is proud to announce that Energy, Climate, and Environment Program Director, Keywan Riahi has been elected as a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW) ̶ Austria’s largest non-university research and science institution.

Researchers from the IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program found that agricultural efforts in downstream countries in Central Asia, traditionally hampered by a lack of water for irrigation during the summer growing season, would be significantly boosted with a “dual water and energy storage scheme”, which also paves the way for high shares of renewable energy generation in the region.

There is an increasing awareness in the scientific community that open-source scientific software is an integral requirement for open science, increasing transparency, and the reproducibility of research findings. Two manuscripts by IIASA researchers presenting state-of-the-art developments furthering these goals were recently recognized by the scientific journals where these works were published.

Between 2010 and 2019, average annual global greenhouse gas emissions were at their highest levels in human history, but the rate of growth has slowed. Without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, limiting global warming to 1.5°C is beyond reach. However, there is increasing evidence of the success of climate action, said scientists in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.

IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program Director Keywan Riahi and Joeri Rogelj, a senior researcher at the institute, have been appointed to the new European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change. This new independent advisory body will provide scientific advice to underpin climate action and efforts by the European Union (EU) to reach climate neutrality by 2050.