ENERGY use for Adaptation

Project Information

ENERGYA

Grant agreement ID: 756194

DOI

10.3030/756194

Project closed

EC signature date 19 October 2017

Start date 1 March 2018

End date 31 July 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 495 000,00

EU contribution

€ 1 495 000,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITA CA' FOSCARI VENEZIA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - ENERGYA (ENERGY use for Adaptation)

Reporting period: 2022-09-01 to 2023-07-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

ENERGYA will improve our understanding of how energy and energy services can be used by households and industries to adapt to the risk posed by climate change.

Specifically, the project will develop an interdisciplinary and scalable research framework integrating data and methods from economics with geography, climate science, and integrated assessment modelling to provide new knowledge concerning heterogeneity in energy use across countries, sectors, socioeconomic conditions and income groups, and assess the broad implications adaptation-driven energy use can have on the economy, the environment, and welfare.

Given the central role of energy as multiplier for socioeconomic development and as enabling condition for climate resilience, the research proposed in ENERGYA will result in timely insights for the transition towards sustainability described by the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations as well as the Paris International Climate Agreement.

ENERGYA has three main objectives. First, it will produce novel statistical and econometric analyses for OECD and major emerging countries (Brazil, Mexico, India, and Indonesia) to shed light on the underlying mechanisms driving energy use. Second, it will infer future potential impacts from long-run climate and socioeconomic changes building on historical empirical evidence. Third, it will analyse the macro and distributional implications of adaptation-driven energy use with an economy-energy model characterising the distribution of energy use dynamics across and within countries.

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

From the beginning of the project, the following activities have been performed:


1. Preparing a coordinated visual identity of the project (logo, template for power point presentations, WP5).
2. Designing and launching the project website www.energy-a.eu. as information platform and repository for sharing innovative research and outputs of the project.
3. Maintenance and update of the website.
4. Preparing the first draft of the Data Management Plan.
5. Collecting and processing energy statistics for different countries, specifically from the OECD EPIC database and the ENERDATA databases (Odyssee and Enerdemand) for OECD and European countries (WP1).
6. Collecting and processing household survey data for the four countries, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico in collaboration with the country experts (WP1).
7. Collecting and processing climate data (WP1). Different sources have been used. Historical data are from Global Land Data Assimilation System Version 2 (GLDAS-2). Future data are from NASA Earth Exchange Global Daily Downscaled Projections (NEX-GDDP) dataset, the two datasets that have also been indicated in the DMP. This activity required significant computing power and storage capacity, and it was possible thank to the collaboration with Boston University and Fondazione CMCC. Both institutes have powerful computing facilities which enabling the processing of big climate data, mitigating Risk 2, as both resources could be used.
8. Defining the meteorological variables, including indicators of changes in mean climate conditions as well as in extreme weather events to be used as explanatory variables in the econometric analysis of WP2. A first paper descring 71 extreme events has been published, and the database has been made open access, see http://www.energy-a.eu/71-climate-extreme-indices-in-1-dataset/. Selected Climate indices have then been merged with the energy data at country level (from ENERDATA) as well as at regional, subnational level (selected OECD countries, plus 4 focus countries)
9. Preparing a database gathering data from different sources across the four countries of interest (WP1, M1.1). Gathering data from different countries and sources and process them in a consistent way turned out to be more labor-intensive than expected. In order not to delay the project workflow, and additional researcher has been hired in order to assist with the data collection and cleaning process. Having this additional resource has made it possible to submit two papers that contribute to D2.1 D2.2 and D3.1.
10. Set of empirical analyses (WP2, D2.1 D2.2) see http://www.energy-a.eu/
11. Set of projections for air conditioning (WP3, D3.1) see http://www.energy-a.eu/
12. Implementation of modelling analyses for evaluating the future implications of energy use for adaptation (WP4, Deliverable 4.1 & 4.2)
13. Conceptualization of energy use for adaptation, see http://www.energy-a.eu/sustainability-of-energy-for-adaptation/.

Significant effort has been allocated to dissemination and communication activities, as foreseen in WP5. Targeted visualizations have been produced in order to disseminate and communicate the content of our research, please see the website for examples. Press release and actions have been undertaken, and our results have been communicated across different countries, in different languages. Just to give one example, the article that was published in June 2019 in Nature Communication (Amplification of future energy demand growth due to climate change, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10399-3/metrics ) has appeared in more than 40 outlets (newspapers, magazines, website, see http://www.energy-a.eu/the-weather-is-not-the-climate-but/). Dissemination and communication activites have been implemented in collaboration with a communication expert, who also prepared the communication plan.

Two scientific workshops have been organized and one final conference. We also concluded the project with a nice public engagement project consisting of a photographic exhibition in Venice, on the web thecoolingsolution.com and of a book, , see http://www.energy-a.eu/

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)

ENERGYA has:

1. Characterized the heterogeneous response of energy services and fuel demand that can be used for adaptation across different countries, sectors, across levels of socioeconomic development and income groups.

2. Developed a flexible framework capable of portraying the energy needs that will be required under a broad range of scenarios.

3. Developed an economy-energy multi-region computable general equilibrium model (CGE) with a micro-level representation of households’ income and consumption patterns

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