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Technological breakthroughs and policy measures targeting energy efficiency and clean energy alone will not suffice to deliver Paris Agreement-compliant greenhouse gas emissions trajectories in the next decades. Strong cases have recently been made for acknowledging the decarbonisation potential lying in transforming linear economic models into closed-loop industrial ecosystems and in shifting lifestyle patterns towards this direction. This perspective highlights the research capacity needed to inform on the role and potential of the circular economy for climate change mitigation and to enhance the scientific capabilities to quantitatively explore their synergies and trade-offs. This begins with establishing conceptual and methodological bridges amongst the relevant and currently fragmented research communities, thereby allowing an interdisciplinary integration and assessment of circularity, decarbonisation, and sustainable development. Following similar calls for science in support of climate action, a transdisciplinary scientific agenda is needed to co-create the goals and scientific processes underpinning the transition pathways towards a circular, net-zero economy with representatives from policy, industry, and civil society. Here, it is argued that such integration of disciplines, methods, and communities can then lead to new and/or structurally enhanced quantitative systems models that better represent critical industrial value chains, consumption patterns, and mitigation technologies. This will be a crucial advancement towards assessing the material implications of, and the contribution of enhanced circularity performance to, mitigation pathways that are compatible with the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement and the transition to a circular economy. © 2021 The Authors This work was supported by the H2020 European Commis- sion projects “PARIS REINFORCE”(Grant Agreement No. 820846), “LOCOMOTION”(Grant Agreement No. 821105), “NDC ASPECTS”(Grant Agreement No. 101003866), and “newTRENDS”(Grant Agreement No. 893311); the European Research Council (ERC) project “FINEPRINT”(Grant Agreement No. 725525); the Hel- lenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (HFRI) and General Secretariat for Research and Technology (GSRT) project “ATOM”(Grant Agreement No. HFRI-FM17–2566); the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities projects RTI2018–099858- A-I00 and RTI2018–093352-B-I00; the María de Maeztu excel- lence accreditation 2018–2022 (Ref. MDM-2017–0714), funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/50110 0 011033; and by the Basque Government through the BERC 2018–2021 program and BIDERATU project (KK- 2021/0 0 050, ELKARTEK programme 2021). The sole responsibility for the content of this paper lies with the authors; the paper does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the European Commission, the Basque Government, or the Spanish Government.

Chapter 11 of Narratives of Low-Carbon Transitions.

This book examines the uncertainties underlying various strategies for a low-carbon future. Most prominently, such strategies relate to transitions in the energy sector, on both the supply and the demand side. At the same time they interact with other sectors, such as industrial production, transport, and building, and ultimately require new behaviour patterns at household and individual levels. Currently, much research is available on the effectiveness of these strategies but, in order to successfully implement comprehensive transition pathways, it is crucial not only to understand the benefits but also the risks. Filling this gap, this volume provides an interdisciplinary, conceptual framework to assess risks and uncertainties associated with low-carbon policies and applies this consistently across 11 country cases from around the world, illustrating alternative transition pathways in various contexts. The cases are presented as narratives, drawing on stakeholder-driven research efforts. They showcase diverse empirical evidence reflecting the complex challenges to and potential negative consequences of such pathways. Together, they enable the reader to draw valuable lessons on the risks and uncertainties associated with choosing the envisaged transition pathways, as well as ways to manage the implementation of these pathways and ultimately enable sustainable and lasting social and environmental effects. This book will be of great interest to students, scholars, and practitioners of environmental and energy policy, low-carbon transitions, renewable energy technologies, climate change action, and sustainability in general., Routledge, ISBN:978-0-429-45878-1

China's urbanisation has caused city populations to grow rapidly, boosting continuous development and scaling up the construction industry more intensely. The building sector is thus a key area to consider for climate change mitigation efforts. This study initially seeks to explore the development of a green transition pathway for the Chinese building sector, informed by national and local low-carbon policies and strategies, with specific references to Beijing and Shanghai. Acknowledging that the barriers and impacts of these policies have not been explored in depth and in consideration of the multiplicity of stakeholder views, we then set out to collect stakeholders’ perspectives of implementation and consequential risks associated with the envisaged transition and with the policies aiming to promote this transition. These concerns are evaluated in a multiple-criteria group decision making approach. By focusing on the resulting most critical implementation barriers, we then outline five plausible socioeconomic scenarios, against which we simulate the impacts of the considered policy strategies on the low-carbon transition of the Chinese built environment as well the extent of their key possible negative consequences, by means of fuzzy cognitive maps., Energy Research & Social Science, 59, ISSN:2214-6296

Purpose The aim of this paper is to frame the stakeholder-driven system mapping approach in the context of climate change, building on stakeholder knowledge of system boundaries, key elements and interactions within a system and to introduce a decision support tool for managing and visualising this knowledge into insightful system maps with policy implications. Design/methodology/approach This methodological framework is based on the concepts of market maps. The process of eliciting and visualising expert knowledge is facilitated by means of a reference implementation in MATLAB, which allows for designing technological innovation systems models in either a structured or a visual format. Findings System mapping can contribute to evaluating systems for climate change by capturing knowledge of expert groups with regard to the dynamic interrelations between climate policy strategies and other system components, which may promote or hinder the desired transition to low carbon societies. Research limitations/implications This study explores how system mapping addresses gaps in analytical tools and complements the systems of innovation framework. Knowledge elicitation, however, must be facilitated and build upon a structured framework such as technological innovation systems. Practical implications This approach can provide policymakers with significant insight into the strengths and weaknesses of current policy frameworks based on tacit knowledge embedded in stakeholders. Social implications The developed methodological framework aims to include societal groups in the climate policy-making process by acknowledging stakeholders’ role in developing transition pathways. The system map codifies stakeholder input in a structured and transparent manner. Originality/value This is the first study that clearly defines the system mapping approach in the frame of climate policy and introduces the first dedicated software option for researchers and decision makers to use for implementing this methodology.

Quantitative systems modelling in support of climate policy has tended to focus more on the supply side in assessing interactions among technology, economy, environment, policy and society. By contrast, the demand side is usually underrepresented, often emphasising technological options for energy efficiency improvements. In this perspective, we argue that scientific support to climate action is not only about exploring capacity of “what”, in terms of policy and outcome, but also about assessing feasibility and desirability, in terms of “when”, “where” and especially for “whom”. Without the necessary behavioural and societal transformations, the world faces an inadequate response to the climate crisis challenge. This could result from poor uptake of low-carbon technologies, continued high-carbon intensive lifestyles, or economy-wide rebound effects. For this reason, we propose a framing for a holistic and transdisciplinary perspective on the role of human choices and behaviours in influencing the low-carbon transition, starting from the desires of individuals and communities, and analysing how these interact with the energy and economic landscape, leading to systemic change at the macro-level. In making a case for a political ecology agenda, we expand our scope, from comprehending the role of societal acceptance and uptake of end-use technologies, to co-developing knowledge with citizens from non-mainstream and marginalised communities, and to defining the modelling requirements to assess the decarbonisation potential of shifting lifestyle patterns in climate change and action., Energy Research & Social Science, 70, ISSN:2214-6296

Chapter 11 ofNarratives of Low-Carbon Transitions.&nbsp

This research introduces a two-level integration of climate-economy modelling and portfolio analysis, to simulate technological subsidisation with implications for multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), across socioeconomic trajectories and considering different levels of uncertainties. We use integrated assessment modelling outputs relevant for progress across three SDGs—namely air pollution-related mortality (SDG3), access to clean energy (SDG7) and greenhouse gas emissions (SDG13)—calculated with the Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM) for different subsidy levels for six sustainable technologies, across three Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), feeding them into a portfolio analysis model. Optimal portfolios that are robust in the individual socioeconomic scenarios as well as across the socioeconomic scenarios are identified, by means of an SSP-robustness score. A second link between the two models is established, by feeding portfolio analysis results back into GCAM. Application in a case study for Eastern Africa confirms that most SSP-robust portfolios show smaller output ranges among scenarios.