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EMF 28

29 November 2016

Overview

Principal Investigator Ilkka Keppo
Duration of the project 14 – 20 months

The Energy Modeling Forum, EMF (http://emf.stanford.edu/ ), was established in 1976 as a collaborative platform for conducting studies on important energy and environmental studies.

EMF 28 is the 28th comparison project conducted under the EMF umbrella. It is a companion study to the global and US model comparison studies (EMF 27 and EMF 24) and it focuses on the effect of technology choices and technology availability on climate policy. The EMF 28 study will focus on the European policy context in particular the EU 2020 and 2050 climate targets.

Some of the key research questions are:

  • What would the EU energy system transition look like to meet EU emissions reductions goals that are consistent with an international goal of staying below 2°C? In this context, the study focuses in particular on the targets for 2020, as laid out in the EU climate and energy package (20% emissions reductions, 20% renewable energy) and the 2050 Roadmap of the European Commission that leads to an 80% emission reduction.
  • What are the implications of national/regional approaches vs. the perspective of a European integratio
  • How might technological improvements and technological availability influence the answers to both of the above questions?

The more general overall aim of the study is to identify and explore mitigation pathways, and their associated costs, for the EU until 2050 under different technology options. The study is also motivated by a desire to more clearly articulate the technology assumptions in models as one means to understand differences in model behavior.

Outputs

The results of the study will be published in a special issue of a scientific, peer reviewed journal. The special issue will include a number of comparison papers, focusing on different aspects of the results. Additionally, some modelling teams will provide short, individual papers focusing on their own results only.

Impact

The outputs of the comparison study are likely to be useful especially for the European Commission when it develops its strategies for the next four decades. The scenario set-up of the study includes that of the “2050 Roadmap of the European Commission” and should therefore be especially relevant.