European Climate and Energy Modelling Forum

Project Information

ECEMF

Grant agreement ID: 101022622

DOI

10.3030/101022622

Project closed

EC signature date 9 April 2021

Start date 1 May 2021

End date 30 April 2025

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Secure, clean and efficient energy

Total cost

€ 5 011 580,00

EU contribution

€ 4 999 563,00

Coordinated by

KUNGLIGA TEKNISKA HOEGSKOLAN
Sweden

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - ECEMF (European Climate and Energy Modelling Forum)

Reporting period: 2024-05-01 to 2025-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The EU-funded ECEMF project launches the European Climate and Energy Modelling Forum, a focal point for European climate and energy policymakers and researchers. The forum’s programme of events and novel communications channel allows researchers and stakeholders to inform future energy and climate policy development at the national and European level, especially the European Green Deal and the transformation to a climate-neutral society. Answers will be provided by the first inclusive and open full-scale model comparison exercise on achieving climate neutrality in Europe. The model comparison exercise involves over 20 models and 15 research groups and will produce a coherent and relevant evidence base for energy and climate policy impact assessment. The results detail the alternative pathways for energy demand sectors, energy supply infrastructure and markets, the role of societal and behavioural trends and the link to international policy, markets and trade. Results will support the development of policy-relevant insights for national and European decision-makers.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the first 18 months of the project, we established the ECEMF website (https://ecemf.eu) stakeholder network, communications plan and outreach activities including research policy workshops, conferences and events and setting up the community forum (https://community.ecemf.eu). We developed and conducted a diagnostic scenario exercise to understand the similarities and differences between the models in the consortium, documenting and publishing the protocol to enable broader (future external) participation in the model comparison exercise. We set up the technical and software infrastructure (IIASA Scenario Explorer, nomenclature, pyam) to support the diagnostic scenario and model comparison exercises. We specified and began the design and implementation of the IT-based communications channel to support communication between climate and energy researchers in the forum and stakeholders. Finally, we established each substantive research work package covering energy demand, energy supply, behaviour change and European policy and the global context.

During the second reporting period (months 19-36), we realised several key achievements in both research into European climate neutrality scenarios and the development of digital infrastructure to support model intercomparison. We developed climate neutrality scenarios for the European Union integrating assumptions, boundary conditions and insights from supply-side, sectoral and behavioural models. We developed multi-model scenario exercises examining the impacts of energy trade and geopolitical factors in the EU’s pathway to climate neutrality and the role of alternative policy instruments and technologies to reach the EU’s 2040 and 2050 climate targets. These results informed the EC's consultation on 2040 targets with the ECEMF project cited several times. We hosted several capacity-building events to establish better practices of modelling and scenario analysis across the European energy and climate research communities and co-hosted several editions of the annual European Climate and Energy Modeling Platform conference on behalf of the Commission. The deployed and publicly accessible IT-based communications channel consists of a visualisation tool (FutureSight) and a discussion forum (community.ecemf.eu) which connect to the large database of scenarios generated during the project.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

To inform the development of future energy and climate policies at national and European levels we have successfully organised and co-hosted with the European Commission, the online conference European Climate and Energy Modelling Platform 2022 (ECEMP, formerly EMP-E) in which we presented the model comparison work of ECEMF. We have also conducted the first three of eight policy research workshops to co-develop research questions to ensure that the research agenda is adapted to address important topics. The Scenario Explorer is currently used internally, and we will provide a public-facing version during 2023 to publish European climate neutrality scenarios. A public forum is available at http://community.ecemf.eu and the visualisation functionality under development will be made available during 2023. Together, these technologies will support near real-time distributed digital discussions with national and EU policymakers with the capacity to field parallel threads of questions and answers on data, assumptions, and scenarios and increase the exposure of the project through embedded interactive visualisations sharable on social media. We will publish 12 synthesis reports and 12 policy briefs on different aspects of the project as part of our dissemination and community strategy.

We have been actively working to create a closer European modelling community, setting an example in terms of transparency, openness and reuse of existing standards and codes that we hope will set the standard for future efforts in this space. We have published the Diagnostic Model Comparison Protocol under an open license and will do the same with the Model Comparison Protocol on Net Zero scenarios. We have published a preliminary draft of the open teaching materials online (https://www.ecemf.eu/learn/) and will develop a course for the first of eight planned capacity-building workshops which will be held at the OpenMod workshop in March 2023. Within the project, we have adopted existing standards developed in the OpenEntrance project and further improved them, rather than creating our own.

Through the reporting and dissemination of our core research activities – with the largest model comparison effort focussing on European climate neutrality - we will present a more coherent, unified evidence base that will, in turn, form a concrete basis for action by policymakers.

We are working to improve collaboration beyond Europe, which will lead to a greater influence on global energy and climate policy. For example, we have initiated a cross-model comparison between ECEMF and Stanford EMF of North America and Europe, which will come to fruition during 2024.

We have created a publicly accessible and fully open-source software ecosystem for the comparison of data, scenarios and results including toolkits, scripts and data standards to strengthen the visibility and acceptance of open science in the European energy and climate modelling community and beyond.

We have also established a stakeholder network, and are working towards launching a Secretariat and governance structure to create the forum as a permanent fixture in the European energy and climate research space.

The European Climate and Energy Modelling Forum