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Aleh Cherp

Professor, Coordinator of the MESPOM Consortium

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Societal Transformations in Models for Energy and Climate Policy : The Ambitious Next Step

Author

  • Evelina Trutnevyte
  • Léon F. Hirt
  • Nico Bauer
  • Aleh Cherp
  • Adam Hawkes
  • Oreane Y. Edelenbosch
  • Simona Pedde
  • Detlef P. van Vuuren

Summary, in English

Whether and how long-term energy and climate targets can be reached depend on a range of interlinked factors: technology, economy, environment, policy, and society at large. Integrated assessment models of climate change or energy-system models have limited representations of societal transformations, such as behavior of various actors, transformation dynamics in time, and heterogeneity across and within societies. After reviewing the state of the art, we propose a research agenda to guide experiments to integrate more insights from social sciences into models: (1) map and assess societal assumptions in existing models, (2) conduct empirical research on generalizable and quantifiable patterns to be integrated into models, and (3) build and extensively validate modified or new models. Our proposed agenda offers three benefits: interdisciplinary learning between modelers and social scientists, improved models with a more complete representation of multifaceted reality, and identification of new and more effective solutions to energy and climate challenges.

Department/s

  • The International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics

Publishing year

2019-12-20

Language

English

Pages

423-433

Publication/Series

One Earth

Volume

1

Issue

4

Document type

Journal article review

Publisher

Cell Press

Topic

  • Social Sciences Interdisciplinary

Keywords

  • climate change
  • energy system models
  • integrated assessment models
  • social sciences and humanities
  • societal transformations

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 2590-3330