COP21: Results and Implications for Pathways and Policies for Low Emissions European Societies

The National Determined Contributions (NDCs) provide important indications regarding the future GHG emissions and related policies, in relation to the international energy market, technological, economic, trade and financial context. This key information on the development trajectories of major economies is essential for EU policy development as it will determine the global context in which EU policies will evolve. Nevertheless, the NDCs adopt a medium-term horizon and do not provide all the required information to fully characterize the detailed energy system pathways that meet the Paris Agreement (PA) goals. NDCs therefore fall short of characterizing the global trajectories at a sufficiently granular and long-term perspective for informing EU policies. To close this knowledge gap, COP21 RIPPLES aims at analysing the underlying transformations required in the different sectors of the economy to meet the PA mitigation targets. To this purpose, COP21 RIPPLES uses existing scenarios as well as a number of new national and global scenarios. These new scenarios are not conceived themselves as an output of the project but rather as methodological tool to answer specific questions across different Work Packages