Research Domain III: Sustainable Solutions

Chairs: Ottmar Edenhofer and Hermann Held

Research Domain III maps out strategies to mitigate dangerous climate change and to adapt to the unavoidable climate change. We develop instruments to accomplish the necessary reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by the world’s energy systems. To mitigate dangerous climate change we consider four options that can be combined:

1. energy efficiency improvement

2. substitution of fossil fuels by renewable energy sources or nuclear power

3. carbon capturing and sequestration

4. structural change in consumption patterns

Mitigation can be achieved through different international regimes of offering inducement. These regimes, however, affect the global distribution of income and wealth in different ways.

Research Domain III develops regimes for competing normative models under discussion now, but especially for those that do not intensify global wealth inequality. In research for an international climate regime economic justice has to be considered just as much as economic efficiency. Since it is to the largest part the developing world that has to adapt to unavoidable climate change, strategies for adaptation should be mapped out especially for these countries.

All strategies have to be built upon the current knowledge about climatic, ecological and economic systems’ dynamics. The production of biomass for example, intensifies conflicts about land and water use. Resolving these conflicts is part of all sustainable efforts to deal with climate change.

The risks of technological options to mitigate climate change, where so far no process-based representations exist, have to be weighed systematically against the risks of climate change.

Central Questions and Products

• What are the options to mitigate dangerous climate change regionally, nationally and globally? Which of these are suited for short-term, medium-term or long-term application?

• What effect do technological change, urban dynamics and international trade have on mitigation and adaptation options? How easily can coalitions to mitigate dangerous climate change be formed?

• What kind of policy instruments can foster climate-friendly technologies and investments in adaptation?

• How do land use and climate change affect each other and what are the consequences for management strategies?
• How can it be ensured that the benefits of climate protection measures outweigh the associated risks?
• Which additional efforts (under which normative preconditions) should society make for climate protection to guard against possible failures of climate protection measures?
• Which measures of adaptation should be left to the market and which measures should be implemented by governments, where market is threatening to fail?

We develop climate policy scenarios that imply the current knowledge about the Earth system’s determining components and that represent win-win solutions to stakeholders. Specific items are:

• Policy recommendations for the Kyoto-Plus process that are robust under climate, biosphere and socio-economic risks and uncertainties
• A prototypical adaptation fund
• Integration of adaptation and mitigation in cities
• To place climate policy within the dynamics of globalization
• To develop tools (e.g. REMIND model family) that provide and support climate policy scenario analyses
  

Our research domain comprises of scientific clusters of competence and products derived from their activities:

• International Climate Policy
• Low Stabilization Scenarios in view of Technological Feasibility, Risk Assessment, Economic Evaluation, and Model Uncertainties
• Mitigation Policies in the Context of Globalization
  

We have organised our work along the following informal research groups:

• Adaptation Studies
• Energy System Modelling
  
• Policy Instruments Modelling
  
• Landuse Management
  
• Macro-economic Modelling
• Risk Analysis