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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.

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.

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.

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.

Allowing global temperatures to rise beyond maximum thresholds and then trying to bring them back down again through mitigation strategies is risky. A new study by an international team of researchers explored the physical and macroeconomic impacts associated with mitigation pathways with different levels of temperature overshoot.

A new international study coordinated by IIASA shows how near-term mitigation can help to prevent an overshoot in global temperatures, thereby reducing climate risks and bringing long-term economic gains.

IIASA is proud to announce that 12 researchers from across various IIASA programs have been named on the annual Highly Cited Researchers™ list from Clarivate.

Replacing polluting cooking fuels with clean-burning ones can save lives and reduce our impact on the environment. A group of IIASA researchers shows how recovery from the pandemic and climate mitigation policies might affect access to clean fuels.

Storing greater amounts of water in Brazil’s reservoirs could increase precipitation and river flow, alleviating the water and energy supply crisis in Brazil.

Access to modern, reliable, and affordable energy services is a must for development and ensuring a decent quality of life. IIASA researchers used a novel bottom-up approach to analyze how access to energy services may evolve over time under different scenarios of socioeconomic growth and policy scenarios that meet climate mitigation goals.

IIASA researchers and international colleagues explored the potential of using finely ground rock to help with the removal of CO₂ from the atmosphere on the road to achieving net-zero emissions and keeping global warming below 1.5°C.

Hydropower has massive potential as a source of clean electricity, and the Indus basin can be a key player in fulfilling long-term energy storage demands across Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. IIASA researchers explored the role the Indus basin could play to support global sustainable development.

What do pipes and anchors have to do with storing energy? More than you might think! A new IIASA-led study explored the potential of a lesser known, but promising sustainable energy storage system called Buoyancy Energy Storage.

Lifestyle changes for demand-side climate change mitigation is gaining more and more importance and attention. A new IIASA-led study set out to understand the full potential of behavior change and what drives such changes in people’s choices across the world using data from almost two billion Facebook profiles.

To improve climate related risk management in the financial sector and facilitate a smooth transition toward a sustainable economy, IIASA researchers joined forces with other scientists and a network of over 60 central banks and financial market supervisors to publish an updated set of scenarios. They show early greenhouse gas emissions reductions can minimize both physical and financial risk - in contrast, delayed action or no action would drive up costs.

With the COP Climate conference in Glasgow only a few months away, the ambitions of the Paris Agreement and the importance of taking action at the national level to reach global climate goals is returning to the spotlight. IIASA researchers and colleagues have proposed a novel systematic and independent scenario framework that could help policymakers assess and compare climate policies and long-term strategies across countries to support coordinated global climate action.

A new study published in the journal Science, highlights the opportunity to complement current climate mitigation scenarios with scenarios that capture the interdependence among investors’ perception of future climate risk, the credibility of climate policies, and the allocation of investments across low- and high-carbon assets in the economy.

The United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, has appointed a new group of ten renowned experts including IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program Director, Keywan Riahi, to support the UN Technology Facilitation Mechanism to bring science into the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

IIASA researcher Charlie Wilson has been awarded a European Research Council (ERC) grant to study how the digitalization of our everyday lives impacts climate change and to explore how it can be steered to help, rather than hinder climate action.