Open ENTRANCE Deliverable 7.4 – Open ENTRANCE Synthesis and recommendations

The H2020 Open ENTRANCE project (open ENergy TRansition ANalyses for a low-Carbon Economy), running between 2019 and 2023, aimed to develop, use, and disseminate an open, transparent, and integrated modelling platform for assessing low-carbon transition scenarios in Europe. The project was successful in reaching these objectives. The Open Platform helped identify the most cost-efficient alternatives for development of the energy system to reach pre-defined climate goals, to determine the macro-economic consequences and the distributional effects of the alternatives, and to explore impacts and options on different geographical levels. The Platform is open and can be used by any interested actor. The Platform hosts a description and input and output data of the scenarios developed during the project. These give a common framework to conduct studies with consistent and open assumptions, contributing to their impact through the replicability of the results and the clear assumptions in the scenarios. The four scenarios are defined on three characteristics (policy exertion, smart society, and technological novelty) and share ambitious climate goals of limiting global warming to either 1.5 or 2 degrees. The analysis of the development of the energy system under these scenarios shows that the present European policy is not sufficient to provide the region’s contribution required to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 or 2 degrees. To reach such a target, massive investment is necessary in the power sector as well as for the decarbonisation of other sectors before 2035. Efficiency gains from electrification of the transport and the heating sector will have a major role, while hydrogen will also be important for the decarbonisation of specific applications (e.g. air transport, steel production). The transition can be achieved with little impact on the GDP. This is due to the fact that the impact of increased energy efficiency is able to counter the effect of the cap on emissions and of the feedback effects from climate change. Eight case studies are demonstrating the potential of the Platform for detailed local analyses, delivering results on different topics or various geographic scopes, and allowing to validate the robustness of the results. The results from the project, The Open Platform and the analyses results demonstrate their value by being used by 16 other projects on the end of the project. Maintenance will be necessary to preserve continued positive impact of the Platform. Based on the project results, we recommend an increase in the speed of the energy transition to be back on track to meet the objectives of limiting temperature increase. This means a more rapid electrification of the transport sector, the installation of heat pumps in buildings, and investments in large amounts of renewable energy. The cost of inaction is larger than the cost of the transition