Two ERC Synergy Grants for PIK research on societal transformation and the climate–inequality nexus

PIK Director Johan Rockström leads the team behind “Societal tipping towards a safe future for humanity on Earth”, bringing together researchers from PIK, the University of Exeter, Wageningen University & Research, and Princeton University. The six-year project will analyse past societal transformations, examine current trends in energy and food systems, and model scenarios for how collective action and social innovation could bring global systems back within safe planetary boundaries. The project combines historical analysis, empirical evidence and complex systems modelling to understand when and how transformative change becomes achievable at societal scale.

Connecting inequality research and climate pathways

PIK scientist Franziska Piontek is a principal investigator in “Global Inequality Patterns for Development and Deep Decarbonization”, alongside partners from the Paris School of Economics, Sciences Po and Yale University. The six-year project will investigate which distributions of income, wealth and material resources are compatible with improving living standards worldwide while sharply reducing emissions. It will examine how inequalities within and between countries shape access to low-carbon technologies and the ability to invest in the transition. It will also study how climate action can reduce or reinforce those inequalities. PIK’s contribution will focus on integrating inequality more fully into climate–economy modelling and in turn benchmark distributional scenarios.

The ERC scheme enables groups of two to four researchers with complementary expertise to pursue ambitious research questions that they could not address individually. Researchers choose the questions and decide how best to investigate them. The grants are part of the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme.