Climate change mitigation requires integrated strategies that jointly address environmental, health, and socio-economic dimensions of the transition to carbon neutrality. The European Union and China, together responsible for almost half of global greenhouse gas emissions, share the challenge of aligning decarbonization with sustainable growth, health protection, and social justice.
PANTHEON is a four-year project (2024–2028) that develops next-generation scientific tools to explore these interactions and provide actionable evidence for policymakers.
The project’s overall objective is to build a new Integrated Assessment Modelling (IAM) framework that combines high-resolution emission inventories, techno-economic data on net-zero technologies, land-use and biodiversity impact modules, health-impact and air-pollution models, and socio-economic feedback within a participatory process involving scientists, policy makers, industry representatives, and civil-society actors from the EU and China.
This comprehensive framework creates an integrated space where technical feasibility, environmental protection, and social fairness can be assessed together, producing three interlinked strands of impact:
- Scientific: a co-developed and transparent integrated modelling framework that unites multiple models and high-resolution datasets across space, time, and sectors, providing the scientific community with new open access tools, data, and scenarios to analyze the co-benefits and trade-offs of net-zero transitions.
- Societal: enhanced mutual learning and stakeholder co-creation foster reflexive, inclusive approaches to sustainability transitions, integrating diverse perspectives and ensuring that scientific outcomes remain connected to real-world needs.
- Policy: high-resolution roadmaps and socio-economic–environmental impact analyses inform evidence-based decarbonization policy recommendations.
