Duration: January 2017 until December 2018
Funded by: Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation
Project Participants: University of Technology Sydney Institute for Sustainable Futures (UTS/ ISF) University of Melbourne Institut für Fahrzeugkonzepte (FK)
Project Manager at the Institute of Networked Energy Systems: Dr. Thomas Pregger
Project Description: The Paris Agreement sets a long-term target of holding the global average temperature increase to well below 2°C and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Most of the available global long-term scenarios are not ambitious enough to meet these targets with a high degree of certainty or are based on options that have proven to be either unsupported by markets and the society and/or may cause significant damage to ecosystems. The aim of the project is to develop two 100% renewable and integrated energy and transport scenarios leading to a full decarbonisation (‘defossilisation’) of the global energy sector within one generation (by 2050). These energy paths are based on technologies currently available and/or under development and exclude the options BECCS, fossil CCS, unsustainable biomass use, geoengineering, and nuclear energy. The scenarios are modelled by DLR for 10 world regions (OECD North America, OECD Europe, OECD Pacific, Latin America, Africa, Middle East, Eurasia/Eastern Europe, China, India, Other Developing Asia) considering different demand and conversion sectors (power, heat and fuels for industry, transport, residential & other sectors). The power sector is modelled by UTS/ISF at hourly resolution to determine storage needs for the integration of high shares of variable renewable energy – in particular solar and wind. In addition, the University of Melbourne is developing non-energy-related greenhouse gas emission scenarios to complement a sustainable path for land use change and the agricultural sector. Both goal-oriented pathways are evaluated in terms of their implicit use of the carbon budget, their costs, and their exceedance probabilities for 1.5°C and 2°C temperature rise.
Further information on the project Global 2°C- and 1.5°C Scenarios: