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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.

To have a better chance of holding global warming to 1.5°C, we need to accelerate the phase-down of HFC refrigerants under the Montreal Protocol. This could also reduce pollution and improve energy access.

Mountain regions have a large potential for hydropower that cannot be harnessed effectively by conventional technologies. IIASA researcher Julian Hunt and an international team of researchers developed an innovative hydropower technology based on electric trucks that could provide a flexible and clean solution for electricity generation in mountainous regions.

Many countries have set carbon neutrality as a policy goal, but according to a new study by an international team of researchers from IIASA, Japan, and the US, there are various risks associated with the reduction of greenhouse gases, especially in the agriculture, forestry, and land use sectors, that need to be considered when formulating mitigation strategies.

The world is not on track to achieve all the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, and more insight into how we can get back on track is urgently needed. An article by an international team of scientists proposes a more limited set of more easily measurable targets that can be used in scenario analysis for achieving all of the SDGs by the target date.

Four exceptional young scientists from the 2021 Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP) have been recognized as YSSP award finalists. Two will receive funding to continue their research projects at IIASA and two candidates have been given Honorable Mentions for outstanding effort.

After more than 40 years of collaboration, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and IIASA have established a formal partnership on a variety of policy-relevant projects related to energy, climate, air quality, and more.

The increasing amounts of municipal solid waste and ineffective waste management systems threaten the environment and contribute to climate warming, yet the waste sector is often neglected in discussions about climate change and air pollution. A new IIASA-led study shows, for the first time, how circular waste management systems can help to effectively curb emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants.

Climate change disproportionately affects the world’s most vulnerable populations. Not only are these effects compounding and magnifying existing inequalities, but the impacts will increase in severity over time, affecting both current and future generations. A new international study shows that the redistribution of revenues from a carbon tax can promote equity and protect marginalized populations.