CircoMod is a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe Framework Programme and carried out by a consortium of 12 European organizations. The project aims at developing a new generation of advanced models and scenarios that will assess how CE can reduce future GHGs and material use. The project brings together a unique consortium of leading research teams from different disciplines, including industrial ecology and material flow modelling, process-oriented integrated assessment modelling, and macro-economic modelling. It aims for a breakthrough in integrating CE and GHG mitigation assessments by developing an analytical framework that maps circular economy strategies to existing influential climate scenarios; by providing robust and timely CE data in an open repository; and, by improving the representation of the CE in leading models used by European and global institutions, while strengthening links between the models. These key scientific breakthroughs enable robust scientific assessments in collaboration with stakeholders across policy and industry.

General Objectives

The central objective of CircoMod is to model how circular economy strategies impact GHG emissions and resource efficiency across a wide range of materials, sectors, individual EU countries, and at the global scale. The project will develop and implement a scenario model framework combining newly developed material systems models and prominent climate change mitigation models (both macro-economic models and process-based, technology-specific Integrated Assessment Models, IAMs) to represent product systems and material cycles. This will enable a full evaluation of CE strategies and their contribution to GHG mitigation.

Expected Results

CircMod will provide timely input to international assessments such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the International Resource Panel (IRP). It will provide actionable insights into the circular economy and help address one of the largest challenges of the coming decades.