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In the EU, COVID-19 and associated policy responses led to economy-wide disruptions and shifts in services demand, with considerable energy-system implications. The European Commission's response paved the way towards enhancing climate ambition through the European Green Deal. Understanding the interactions among environmental, social, and economic dimensions in climate action post-COVID thus emerged as a key challenge. This study disaggregates the implications of climate ambition, speed of economic recovery from COVID-19, and behavioural changes due to pandemic-related measures and/or environmental concerns for EU transition dynamics, over the next decade. It soft-links two large-scale energy-economy models, EU-TIMES and NEMESIS, to shed light on opportunities and challenges related to delivering on the EU's 2030 climate targets. Results indicate that half the effort required to reach the updated 55% emissions reduction target should come from electricity decarbonisation, followed by transport. Alongside a post-COVID return to normal, the European Green Deal may lead to increased carbon prices and fossil-fuel rebounds, but these risks may be mitigated by certain behavioural changes, gains from which in transport energy use would outweigh associated consumption increases in the residential sector. Finally, the EU recovery mechanism could deliver about half the required investments needed to deliver on the 2030 ambition.

With the EU policy context fast evolving in the light of recent challenges, such as COVID-19, there is a need to guide and scientifically underpin key policymaking decisions to ensure that ambitious targets are realised. In this context, this deliverable presents a set of EU scenarios that achieve the 55% emission reduction target by 2030 and net zero by 2050, on top of a realistic current policies baseline, essentially ensuring that EU effectively manages its contribution towards achieving the Paris Agreement target. Produced by a diverse set of models in a multi-model setup, the scenarios are assessed in terms of their implications on key climate, economy, and energy indicators, as well as their impact on the member-state and sectoral level. Key results including the role of key mitigation options su h as renewables, electrification, carbon capture and storage, negative emissions technologies, and hydrogen are validated from the l ns of stakeholder input, as elicited in a series of national stakeholder workshops in Europe. Finally, the analysis further delves into niche modelling areas, including updates on the current policies baseline scenario in the light of COVID-19 and the “Fit for 55” package, long term strategies for the Agriculture Forestry and Land-Use sector, and the evaluation of a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism.

Policy analyses conducted with national TIMES models identified that the representation of retirement profile in the car sector is overly optimistic. In traditional TIMES models, the capacity of future installed technologies is constant until the end of the lifetime. However, analyses on cars’ retirement profiles found out that the real-life retirement profiles are far from constant. They are characterised by a low decay in the first years after purchase and by a long tail in the distribution, meaning that few cars remain in the car stock for long time. A recent version of the TIMES code (TIMES v4.2.0) has been equipped with a novel attribute that enables to improve the representation of technology’s retirement profile. This study utilizes such new attribute within TIMES-DKMS softlinked to DCSM (the Danish Car Stock Model), aiming at reaching a more detailed and realistic representation of the survival profile of car technologies. The study finds out that an early ban on sales and import of internal combustion engine (ICE) cars is not sufficient to decarbonise the Danish inland transportation sector by 2050, and that scrapping incentives are needed to replace ICE cars with low- and zero-emission vehicles, thus enabling the fulfilment of the Danish environmental targets in 2050.

The present report describes two main upgrades that have been made to the JRC-EU-TIMES model during the year 2017: • An improvement of the description of residential and non-residential buildings • An update of data and a new representation for heating &cooling and heat distribution technologies The model updates have been validated through tests with the JRC-EU-TIMES model and with stylised models allowing isolating the observed effect of the changed model input. The updates performed greatly improve the ability of the JRC-EU-TIMES model to perform studies options for the decarbonisation of the heating and cooling sector., JRC.C.7-Knowledge for the Energy Union

Ireland faces very challenging short-term targets in the period to 2020 arising from EU obligations that are specified in EU Directives and Decisions. In addition to these short-term targets, the EU has committed to a long-term greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction of 80–95% below 1990 levels by 2050, and will require Member States to participate in effort-sharing to deliver deep emissions cuts. Policy-makers require comprehensive, robust, knowledge-based information to inform their decisions on how to meet these targets in a manner that will most benefit the Irish economy. This project draws on and contributes to the wealth of international energy-systems modelling research activity. It involved building, developing, calibrating, testing and running a (partial equilibrium) energysystems optimisation model for Ireland – the Irish TIMES model. The model was developed by University College Cork in collaboration with the Economic and Social Research Institute, E4SMA and KanORS over the period March 2009–November 2011. The real value of the Irish TIMES model is in the new insights it gives into some of the key challenges and decisions facing Ireland in energy and climate policy. The Irish TIMES model provides a means of assessing the implications of alternative future energy system pathways for: (i) the Irish economy (technology choices, prices, output, etc.), (ii) Ireland’s energy mix and energy dependence, and (iii) the environment. It is used in this project to assess the implications of emerging technologies and of mobilising alternative policy choices, such as meeting renewable energy targets and carbonmitigation strategies. The two key new perspectives this research project gives are: (i) a full energy-systems modelling approach and (ii) a focus on the medium term (to 2050) as well as the short term (to 2020). The scenario results respond directly to a number of key policy questions that could not be readily addressed before this model was developed. These relate to Ireland’s targets for: (i) renewable energy to 2020, (ii) GHG reduction to 2020 and (iii) long-term GHG emissions reduction to 2050. The results point to: 1 Alternative pathways for renewable energy to that currently being followed under Ireland’s National Renewable Energy Action Plan (NREAP); 2 The need to urgently reassess Ireland’s renewable energy policies in light of the non-ETS emissions reduction target; 3 A particular focus on renewable heat, renewable transport and electrification of heat, in contrast to the current dominant focus on wind-generated electricity; 4 The impacts of imposing a higher emissions reduction target on Ireland’s energy system to compensate for limited mitigation options in agriculture; 5 The significant challenges in moving to a lowcarbon economy in 2050 with renewable energy accounting for 65–85% of energy supply (compared with 6.5% in 2011); 6 Electrification of heat in particular but also of transport, resulting in the share of energy use delivered by electricity increasing from 18% currently to 31–47% of energy use in 2050.

The Paris Agreement is the last hope to keep global temperature rise below 2°C. The consensus agrees to holding the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and to aim for 1.5°C. Each Party’s successive nationally determined contribution (NDC) will represent a progression beyond the party’s then current NDC, and reflect its highest possible ambition. Using Ireland as a test case, we show that increased mitigation ambition is required to meet the Paris Agreement goals in contrast to current EU policy goals of an 80–95% reduction by 2050. For the 1.5°C consistent carbon budgets, the technically feasible scenarios' abatement costs rise to greater than €8,100/tCO2 by 2050. The greatest economic impact is in the short term. Annual GDP growth rates in the period to 2020 reduce from 4% to 2.2% in the 1.5°C scenario. While aiming for net zero emissions beyond 2050, investment decisions in the next 5–10 years are critical to prevent carbon lock-in. Key policy insightsEconomic growth can be maintained in Ireland while rapidly decarbonizing the energy system.The social cost of carbon needs to be included as standard in valuation of infrastructure investment planning, both by government finance departments and private investors.Technological feasibility is not the limiting factor in achieving rapid deep decarbonization.Immediate increased decarbonization ambition over the next 3–5 years is critical to achieve the Paris Agreement goals, acknowledging the current 80–95% reduction target is not consistent with temperature goals of ‘well below’ 2°C and pursuing 1.5°C.Applying carbon budgets to the energy system results in non-linear CO2 emissions reductions over time, which contrast with current EU policy targets, and the implied optimal climate policy and mitigation investment strategy. Economic growth can be maintained in Ireland while rapidly decarbonizing the energy system. The social cost of carbon needs to be included as standard in valuation of infrastructure investment planning, both by government finance departments and private investors. Technological feasibility is not the limiting factor in achieving rapid deep decarbonization. Immediate increased decarbonization ambition over the next 3–5 years is critical to achieve the Paris Agreement goals, acknowledging the current 80–95% reduction target is not consistent with temperature goals of ‘well below’ 2°C and pursuing 1.5°C. Applying carbon budgets to the energy system results in non-linear CO2 emissions reductions over time, which contrast with current EU policy targets, and the implied optimal climate policy and mitigation investment strategy.