Category: News

Over 100 participants joined the ENGAGE, COMMIT, and NAVIGATE teams in a virtual workshop on 18 November 2020 to hear the latest information from modelling teams and policymakers on the relationships between COVID-19, low-emission pathways in line with the Paris Agreement climate goals, and the next steps in the Paris Agreement implementation process.

Representatives from PBL, the UNFCCC, IIASA, and CMCC shared insights into the implications of COVID for UNFCCC processes and timelines, the results of an expert and policymaker survey on the potential impact of COVID on climate policy, and what we know so far about Paris-compatible pathways in light of COVID-19. COPPE and NewClimate provided more information about country-specific measures for a green recovery and climate action. Officials from South Africa, Germany, and the US then presented national perspectives on climate action and COVID-19 recovery.

Leading questions covered in the discussions

• What are the implications of COVID for the climate policy making process?
• In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, do we need to update our understanding of a transition to a carbon neutral future in line with the Paris goals?
• Can ambitious climate action scenarios be seen as COVID-recovery scenarios?
• What are the possibilities for a green recovery?​

The ENGAGE and NAVIGATE projects jointly hosted a workshop for European stakeholders on 28 September. The meeting took a participatory approach to discuss how the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing recovery packages could affect the achievement of decarbonization goals.

The discussion was supported by short inputs from the ENGAGE and NAVIGATE projects on recent surveys that have been carried out, as well as ongoing research on demand and supply shocks, lifestyle changes and recovery packages as a result of the pandemic. Stakeholders and researchers from the project discussed constraints and enablers in break-out sessions, with experts from policy, business and industry, civil society and academia coming together to share their insights.

Researchers from across the ENGAGE Consortium held an online meeting on 22 September to learn more about the ongoing work in WPs 2 and 4. NewClimate presented their recent work updating the Climate Policy Database, collecting and compiling new climate policies and COVID recovery packages with the assistance and feedback from other ENGAGE partners. PBL presented a new proposal for a national modelling protocol based on the approach adopted by KyotoU in conjunction with other national partners, with suggestions on how to include the expected impact of the COVID pandemic in national models.

A virtual model documentation workshop co-organised by the ENGAGE, NAVIGATE, and COMMIT projects was held on 13 May 2020. 53 participants from around the globe reviewed how to fill out reference cards and fully document their integrated assessment models (IAM) in the IAMC wiki. For more information about IAMs and model documentation, you can find the wiki here: https://www.iamcdocumentation.eu/index.php/IAMC_wiki.

An ENGAGE capacity building workshop for researchers from Asian ENGAGE partner institutes was held 7-11 January 2020 at Kyoto University in Japan. ENGAGE partners from Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Korea and Japan attended the workshop, as well as other collaborators from the AIM modeling group. ENGAGE participants primarily represented the project’s Work Package 4, which focuses on national mid-century strategies. The workshop provided training on how to use the AIM model, how to generate the IAMC data template, and how to reflect national policy information into the AIM, ensuring that ENGAGE project’s Asian partners will be able to contribute their national climate mitigation scenarios to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) database.

Key discussions during the workshop included exchange of national policy informatio, as well as key elements of national scenario generation and how to effectively deliver scenario results. Specific sessions were also decided to using the model. All participants presented their own national scenarios and discussed future areas of research.

The second ENGAGE project meeting was held online from 17–20 March 2020, hosted by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL). Participants presented new research and discussed future plans to meet the objectives of the work packages.

Partners and participants

• developed a plan for near-term tasks to ensure that they feed into long-term project objectives;
• identified cross-cutting activities and information flows between work packages; and
• received feedback from the project’s Coordination and Advisory Boards on project implementation.

A virtual stakeholder meeting was also held as part of the meeting. The meeting brought together a wide variety of experts to discuss issues related to feasibility and decarbonisation pathways.

ENGAGE is a consortium of more than two dozen international and multidisciplinary research groups who are collaborating to co-produce knowledge for designing cost-effective, technologically sound, socially and politically feasible pathways that can meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement. To learn more about the ENGAGE project, visit http://www.engage-climate.org/project.

The ENGAGE project formally began on September 1, 2019, and the project kick-off meeting was held at the Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria, from 18-20 September. The meeting was attended by nearly 70 project partners from approximately 26 institutes and discussed the aims, work packages and tasks, and future directions of the project. The meeting included an outreach event in Vienna on sustainable development and climate change that explored aspects of global research to national implementation and was attended by 100 people, including local stakeholders.