Project description
Studying the dynamics of decarbonisation
The EU has embarked on an ambitious path to decarbonisation in order to mitigate climate change and ensure economic prosperity. The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement marked the beginning and was followed by the EU’s Green Deal programme to become climate-neutral by 2050. Since the phasing out of fossil fuel consumption in the power sector is inevitable, decarbonisation will herald deep structural changes and may cause social inequalities and hardship. The EU-funded CINTRAN project will study the structural changes to find ways to minimise the risks. It will conduct quantitative model-based research and qualitative analysis, focusing on Greece (Western Macedonia), Poland (Silesia), Estonia (Ida-Virumaa) and Germany (Rhenish mining area). The findings will provide insights into the dynamics of decarbonisation.
Objective
In order to meet the climate change mitigation objectives of the European Union as well as the objectives of the Paris Agreement, it is inevitable that the European Union phases out fossil fuel consumption in the power sector and decarbonizes fossil-fuel dependent industries. These industries are not spread evenly across the EU but concentrated in a number of carbon-intensive regions. Decarbonization will lead to deep structural changes with implications for regional economies, labour markets, as well as for the regions’ social, political, cultural and demographic composition. If not managed well, these structural changes may cause serious economic impacts, societal upheaval, aggravated social inequalities and hardship.
To minimize such consequences it is necessary to better understand the patterns and dynamics of structural change in response to decarbonization at the regional level, to understand which parameters determine the pace of transformation as well as the capacity of regional actors to adapt and pro-actively create alternative structures. This project aims to enable these activities through highly integrated, inter- and transdisciplinary research working in close collaboration with regional stakeholders. It combines quantitative model-based research with qualitative in-depth analysis. The qualitative research will focus on four highly fossil-fuel dependent regions: Western Macedonia (Greece), Silesia (Poland), Ida-Virumaa (Estonia) and the Rhenish mining area (Germany). The regions were selected to cover a diverse set of different fuels, state of economic development, diversification of the regional economy, political economy, and spatial composition. This diversity will enable the project to derive generalizable insights about the patterns and dynamics of decarbonization and the corresponding structural adjustments that hold relevance for all carbon-intensive regions in the EU and its neighbouring countries.
Fields of science
- social sciencessociologysocial issuessocial inequalities
- social scienceseconomics and businessbusiness and managementemployment
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuels
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changes
- social scienceseconomics and businesseconomicspolitical economy
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
42103 Wuppertal
Germany
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.