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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.

IIASA, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and the Environmental System Research Institute (ESRI) are proud to announce the launch of version 4 of the Global Agro-Ecological Zones platform (GAEZ v4) – a research tool that supports sustainable development in the agricultural sector – on the occasion of the World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought.

A new project funded under the Belmont Forum’s joint Collaborative Research Action on Pathways to Sustainability will develop novel tools and capacities to understand and manage interlinkages between the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and support sustainable development pathways for African countries, tailored to local capacities and priorities.

Do you have a clear picture of what science says about past and future impacts of climate change in your country? Do you know how this knowledge has been generated and how reliable it is? The newly released open climate impacts encyclopedia ISIpedia was designed to provide state-of-the-art climate impact information by translating the latest climate impact science into understandable and informative texts.

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.

IIASA researchers have contributed to a new global campaign that illustrates the centrality of data to sustainable development with a project that uses citizen science to monitor marine litter in Ghana for official UN Sustainable Development Goals reporting.

What drives the feasibility of climate scenarios commonly reviewed by organizations like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)? And can they actually be achieved in practice? A new systematic framework can help understand what to improve in the next generation of scenarios and explore how to make ambitious emission reductions possible by strengthening enabling conditions.

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.

The farming of livestock to feed the global appetite for animal products greatly contributes to global warming. A new study however shows that emission intensity per unit of animal protein produced from the sector has decreased globally over the past two decades due to greater production efficiency, raising questions around the extent to which methane emissions will change in the future and how we can better manage their negative impacts.

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 way in which banks react to climate risks and uncertainty could impact financial stability as well as the world’s transition to a low-carbon economy. A new study by researchers from IIASA and the Vienna University of Economics and Business explored the role that banks’ expectations about climate-related risks will play in fostering or hindering an orderly low-carbon transition.

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).

Through combining their expertise, four European Research Council (ERC) grantees have awoken the scientific community to what nutrient imbalances could mean for our planet, and for our species. Their findings could lead the world towards more accurate climate modeling, more equitable policymaking, and more sustainable food production.

A new report released by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) assessed the biophysical and economic benefits of air pollution policies in Arctic Council countries. The analysis relied on a suite of modeling tools, including the IIASA GAINS model, to project the impacts of increasingly ambitious policy action up to 2050.

The terms “co-creation” and “co-production”, which denote the possibility for laypeople to participate in decision-making processes that affect their lives, have been gaining popularity. A new IIASA-led study explored options for empowering citizens as a driver for moving from awareness about the need to transform energy systems to action and participation.

No less than nine IIASA researchers have made it onto the Reuters Hot List – the media giant’s ranking of the world’s most influential climate scientists – with IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program Director, Keywan Riahi, claiming the top spot.

World Population and Just Societies Program Director Raya Muttarak is invited to talk about relationship between global climate change and migration at the Seminar Series at the Centre for Demographic Studies, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

The Earth Commission laid out its approach to defining a “safe and just corridor for people and planet” in a paper published today in Earth’s Future.

IIASA researchers have used Sentinel 1 satellite imagery from the European Space Agency to produce a map of the extent and year of detection of oil palm plantations in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand that will help policymakers and other stakeholders understand trends in oil palm expansion to inform landscape-level planning.