Activities for 2016

Following the development of the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways in 2015, ENE develop spatially downscaled emission and land-use patterns to feed into the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 6. This will form the basis of new climate change projections for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report. From a climate policy perspective, the adoption of the Paris agreement calls for an in-depth assessment of the continually updated Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) and whether they are sufficient for reaching the 1.5 and 2°C targets. ENE will contribute to this assessment, aiming to inform the ratcheting process embedded in the agreement by reviewing and comparing the ambition level implied by the INDCs.

ENE will also expand its work on the political economy of energy transitions by exploring the implications of historic driving forces of nuclear power for the future of this energy technology. The program will also analyze techno-economic, socio-technical, and political factors behind the expansion of renewable electricity in developed and developing countries.

In addition, case studies analyzing policies for expanding energy access in developing G20 nations and the potential transferability and political economy of these policy processes will be a key topic of ENE research in 2016. This will be complemented by developing the Energy for Decent Living research, with the aim of analyzing embedded energy footprints of the goods and services required for a “decent living”.

Methodologically, ENE will focus on advancing research in two areas:

• Enhancing the understanding of interactions between different sustainable development objectives by developing and applying improved analytical tools for the representation of water-energy-land interactions in integrated assessment models at different spatial scales.
• Deepening understanding and enhancing the ability to model the influence of social actors’ behavior on the behavior of others with respect to end-use energy technology adoption and utilization, both within and across countries.

Last edited: 13 May 2016