RFF-CMCC EIEE Webinar – Seminar

Title: Energy System Modelling in support of EU Climate Policy: the role of the JRC model POTEnCIA in the setting of the 2040 Climate Target

Speaker: Frederik Neuwahl, European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC)

Abstract: The 2040 Climate Target, adopted by the European Commission on February 6^th of this year, is the last major climate change mitigation policy initiative of the current Commission. It bridges the 2030 decarbonisation targets of the Fit for 55 Policy Package with the 2050 climate neutrality objective set in the EU Climate Law. In short, it is about setting a path to reach net-zero emissions within two and a half decades. In order to support the choice for such a pathway, the Commission conducted a comprehensive ex-ante Impact Assessment making extensive use of quantitative modelling tools. Eventually, in the Communication adopted on February 6th, the Commission decided to aim for an ambitious 90% reduction from 1990 level, based on some 600 pages of Impact Assessment as well as on the recommendations contained in more than an hundred pages of advice of the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change. The quantitative analysis of the Impact Assessment was based on a long-established suite of models that span the Energy dimension, economics, transport, land use, and emissions. For this policy initiative, however, the Commission decided to expand the set of simulation tools used to develop energy scenarios in a multi-model approach that prominently included the participation of the POTEnCIA model. POTEnCIA (Policy-Oriented Tool for ENergy and Climate change Impact Assessment) is a detailed energy system model developed by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commissions since 2011 to endow the Institution with an in-house tool for the detailed assessment of energy and climate change policy scenarios. It reached operational status 5 years ago with the publication of the first POTEnCIA energy Outlook to 2050, and the 2040 Climate Target is one of the first applications of this tool in direct support of a major new EU policy proposal. The 2040 Climate Target is a non-legislative document. It recommends an interim decarbonisation target towards full decarbonisation in 2050. It will then be for the next Commission to move forward with the consolidation of this proposal into a possible mandatory target and in a fully-fledged legislative package to deliver on that target. In preparation for this task, the Commission Service are currently kicking-off the process to develop an updated Reference energy scenario to serve as a term of comparison to assess the ensuing bundle of policy proposals.

• EIEE members only