The primary research objective is to address regional carbon budget management and contribute to meeting climate commitments of 2°C degree of global warming by 2050, within the EU and globally. Setting goals to cut emissions rates does not allow a temperature limit to be met, as this limit instead concerns the cumulative emissions stock in the atmosphere. Only by taking into account cumulative emissions can the Green Deal targets underpin compliance with the Paris Agreement goal.
Secondary research objectives are required to fulfil this primary objective. The research includes the following:
1) The dynamic of emissions changes rapidly and constantly: developing a flexible and “easy to use” simulation tool is paramount to assess and redistribute carbon budgets among EU27 Member States as frequently as necessary to encourage progress or overcome countries’ difficulties toward the decarbonization pathways. PLEDGES incorporates a new emissions trading concept among Nations which allows the management of unexpected deviations from the assessed carbon budgets. To fulfil the previous requirements, the tool has been developed using the System Dynamics methodology
2) Once the Emissions Trading is established, the PLEDGES tool also assesses the cost of the compensation strategy, based on the use of “National Abatement Cost Curves”. This allows policymakers to decide the most convenient strategy based on the available decarbonization technologies and suggests where to direct future investments. The development of Member States Abatement cost curves also represents an innovative field of research PLEDGES has contributed to.
3) Investigating the socio-historical, political, cultural, and economic dimensions of emissions behaviours in the 27 Member States, including the carbon budget erosion in charge of the consumption behaviours of European households. This gives basis to policy recommendations going beyond the national geographical level, highlighting the importance of carbon budgeting impact also at the individual level.
4) National-based case studies of budget quotas trading are carried out to assess the limits of the PLEDGES approach and point out potential synergies of the model into existing Integrated assessment models.
As an overall result, the PLEDGES model provides insights into how emissions trading and compensation strategies can be applied to address unexpected increases in emissions while pursuing the Green Deal decarbonization goals. This innovative tool offers a promising approach to enhance the EU's ability to meet its climate commitments and contribute to global climate change mitigation efforts.
