Radboud Summer School

Climate Change Mitigation: Options and Policies

Nijmegen, 14-18 August 2017

Lecture outlines

Topic of the day Options for climate change mitigation Policy making - Practical group

assignment organized by CTCN

Synthesis & presentations

Aug 13 Monday, Aug 14 Tuesday, Aug 15 Wednesday, Aug 16 Thursday, Aug 17 Friday, Aug 18

8.45-9.00 Coffee / tea break

9.00-10.30 Welcome lecture Lecture:

Costs of mitigation

options: investment,

system and macro-level

costs - Gabriel Bachner,

Keith Williges, UniGraz

Lecture:

Novel instruments in

international climate

policy making –

Patrick Nussbaumer,

CTCN

Group assignment

(CTCN):

Task 3: Selecting

technologies for INDC

priority areas

Keynote speech

Yvo de Boer, SRI Executive,

UNFCCC Executive Secretary

2006-2010, head of GGGI

2014-2016

10.30-11.00 Coffee / tea break

11.00-12.00 Lecture:

Climate change

mitigation basics -

Heleen de Coninck,

Radboud University

Lecture:

Transition pathways and

risk analysis for climate

change policies – Wytze

van der Gaast,

TRANSrisk, JIN

Group assignment

(CTCN):

Task 1: Identifying

priority areas for

national climate plans

(INDCs)

Lecture:

Policy instruments and

evaluation - Emilie

Alberola, I4CE

Group assignment

(CTCN):

Task 5: Group

presentations on action

plans

12.00-13.30 Lunch

13.30-15.00 Lecture:

Low-emission pathway

development: climate

and non-climate aspects

– Maarten van den

Berg, NL Environmental

Assessment Agency

Lecture:

Life-cycle assessment -

Zoran Steinmann, Steef

Hanssen, Radboud

University

Lecture:

Understanding

country contexts for

climate policy making

- Andreas Tuerk,

UniGraz

Group assignment

(CTCN):

Task 4: Preparing

action plan for

selected technology

Group assignment

(CTCN):

Task 5 continued: Group

presentations on action

plans

15.00-15.30 Coffee / tea break Closure - by course leader

15.30-17.00 Arrival Lecture:

Mitigation technologies

and public acceptance -

Goda Perlaviciute,

University Groningen

Lecture:

R&D on mitigation

technologies - Sören

Lindner, Radboud

University

Group assignment

(CTCN):

Task 2: Discussion

identified INDC priority

areas

Free time (prepare

group presentations

Task 5)

Drinks

19.00 Games & sports night Pancake boat tour Waal

river

BBQ and guest lecture Free Departure

Monday 14 August 2017 – 11.00 – 12.00

Climate change mitigation basics

Heleen de Coninck

Outline

Climate policy making has two main components: policies for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases (mitigation) and policies to adapt to a changing climate (adaptation). This lecture focuses on the component of mitigation. It will explain how international climate policy making at the level of the United Nations has addressed mitigation aspects since the early 1990s, such as via the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Kyoto Protocol and, more recently, the Paris Agreement.

The lecture will particularly zoom in on the role of technologies for mitigation, by introducing the EU funded project CARISMA and its focus on how to make climate technologies fit in countries’ overall socio-economic priorities and contexts, and how to increase the effectiveness of national and international policies to support development and transfer of these technologies.

It will be explained that for successful technology transfer a technology-focus alone is insufficient for success. Technologies for mitigation need to be understood in terms of impacts that they have on the rest of society, risks related to their implementation and, related to that, whether and how citizens accept clean technologies in their own regions.

As such, the lecture sets the stage for the remainder of the course programme.

Heleen de Coninck

Associate professor in innovation studies at the Environmental Science department at Radboud University’s Faculty of Science

Before joining Radboud University in 2012, Heleen worked for over ten years at the unit Policy Studies of the Energy research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN). Her main field of work is climate change mitigation and policy analysis, in particular at the international level, and she has conducted research and consultancy for among others the European Commission, UNFCCC, UNIDO, UNEP, the World Bank and various governments and private sector actors. Currently, Heleen is also the chair of Climate Strategies, a climate policy research network that aims to improve the linkage between climate policy research and the negotiations at the European and UN level. In 2009, she finished a PhD on technology in the international climate regime at the VU University Amsterdam in collaboration with Princeton University in the United States and ECN.

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Monday 14 August 2017 – 13.30 – 15.00

Low-emission pathway development: climate and non-climate aspects

Maarten van den Berg

Outline

Low-carbon emission scenarios inform the climate policy making process on the global scale. Such scenarios are developed by Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), which describe the key processes in the interaction of human development and the natural environment. With this integrated approach, we can formulate mitigation strategies and address complex interactions with other Sustainable Development Goals related to land use, resource use, air quality, energy use, etc.

In this lecture, Maarten van den Berg will introduce IAMs and provide examples of their application. The lecture will address the integrated approach that brings key disciplines together in IAMs, combining knowledge on earth system processes with technological and socio-economic information.

Maarten van den Berg

Department of Climate, Air and Energy at the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency

Maarten works at the PBL Environmental Assessment Agency as a policy researcher on global climate and energy policy. He has participated in several EU projects using the integrated assessment model IMAGE. His research focuses on low-carbon mitigation scenarios and the interaction with the earth system and climate policies.

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Monday 14 August 2017 – 15.30 – 17.00

Mitigation technologies and public acceptance

Goda Perlaviciute

Outline

Public acceptability is a cornerstone of climate change mitigation. Democratic decision making requires considering and address public concerns in deciding upon effective ways to combat climate change. Also, mitigation solutions will not work without public support.

Yet, many proposed sustainable solutions, for example renewable energy projects and technology, face public opposition and strong negative emotions. Practitioners are horrified by public reactance and emotions; they lack sound ways to deal with these responses. This often results in frustration among practitioners, even stronger public resistance, and delays and even cancelations of climate mitigation projects.

To make mitigation strategies adequate and effective, it is crucial to understand which factors drive public acceptability. During this lecture, you will learn to apply value theory to explain public acceptability of mitigation solutions. You will see how knowing what drives public acceptability can help you develop and implement better solutions that enjoy public support.

Goda Perlaviciute

Assistant professor Environmental psychology at Groningen University

Goda’s key research interests lie in public evaluations and acceptability of energy sources, systems and policies, and which factors influence these evaluations and acceptability judgements. She focuses on theory development and applying theory in addressing acute environmental and energy problems.

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Tuesday 15 August 2017 – 9.00 – 10.30

Costs of mitigation options: investment, system and macro-level costs

Gabriel Bachner, Keith Williges and Andreas Türk

Outline

To reach the global climate targets, the electrification of the economy seems to be a promising strategy, which requires a significant expansion of renewable electricity and reductions of conventional electricity generation, with potentially far-reaching indirect economic effects.

In order to decide which type of renewable electricity technology should be put in place, cost assessments are necessary. Traditionally, such assessments are based on the comparison of direct costs of electricity generation, the “levelized costs of electricity” (LCOE), which relate lifetime costs to lifetime electricity generation (e.g. in $/kWh).

However, this approach has a number of drawbacks. First, in the traditional LCOE calculation there is no incorporation of the benefits of renewables, such as potential emission reductions. Second, the direct costs do not consider what is known as “system integration costs”, which take into account the impact of adding more renewables to an already existing energy system. While considering system costs is a step beyond the direct cost assessment, there remains a third aspect, which is not captured by LCOE: the indirect and economy-wide effects.

An economy-wide analysis is crucial as a significant expansion of renewables is underway, and since such actions can lead to unexpected consequences for other economic actors and sectors. For example, when introducing cost-competitive photovoltaics (PV) at a large scale, traditional fossil fuel based electricity suppliers might lose market shares and eventually have to close down their businesses. However, other sectors, such as the suppliers for the construction of PV panels, might benefit from such a development. Households may be confronted with changed electricity prices.

During this lecture, you will gain a better understanding as to how economic comparisons of different energy technologies have been structured in the past, and how incorporating system costs can potentially change the outlook on the benefits or drawbacks of renewables generation. Building from direct and system costs, you will get to know a macroeconomic approach that is able to reveal the far-reaching economy-wide effects.

Preparatory work:

Participants are requested to inform themselves about the current status of renewable energy supply in their countries. What are risks and barriers to renewable electricity deployment?

Reading List:

Bachner, G., Steininger, K.W., Williges, K., Tuerk, A., 2017. The economy-wide effects of large-scale renewable electricity expansion in Europe: the role of integration costs. Conference Paper, presented at the 23rd EAERE conference. Download link

Hirth, L., Ueckerdt, F., Edenhofer, O., 2015. Integration costs revisited – An economic framework for wind and solar variability. Renewable Energy 74, 925–939. Download link

IRENA, 2014. Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2014. Executive Summary. Download link

Schinko, T., Komendantova, N., 2016. De-risking investment into concentrated solar power in North Africa: Impacts on the costs of electricity generation. Renewable Energy 92, 262–272. Download link

Gabriel Bachner

Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change at Graz University, Austria

Gabriel’s key research themes are climate change mitigation as well as adaptation and the associated macroeconomic consequences. Among other things, he focuses on variable renewable electricity generation technologies such as wind or photovoltaics. Methodologically, he develops and applies computable general equilibrium models of different regional and sectoral scales.

Keith Williges

Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change at Graz University, Austria

Keith’s current area of research deals with climate change mitigation options and transitions to a low carbon economy, where he focuses on the costs and impacts of both renewable electricity and net negative emissions technologies, assessing feasible scenarios of future capacity growth and quantifying economy-wide impacts with computable general equilibrium modeling.

Andreas Türk

University of Graz, Austria

Andreas works for the Wegener Center for Climate Change of the University of Graz. He has expertise in international and national energy and climate policy, including the regulatory frameworks of electricity markets, as well as energy efficiency policies related to economic evaluation and policy design. Andreas was involved in many EU projects as well as projects funded by the Austrian government or by international organisations. He is involved in international research networks, such as Climate Strategies and the EU Bridge working group (sub-group on regulatory issues related to storage) and has a significant track record regarding academic publications.

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Tuesday 15 August 2017 – 11.00 – 12.00

Transition pathways and risk analysis for climate change policies

Wytze van der Gaast

Outline

In designing pathways towards low emission futures, it is important to consider the impacts of mitigation measures, such as technologies or a changing behaviour, to the rest of society. After all, while a technology may deliver a strong contribution to greenhouse gas emission reduction, there may be risks related to implementation of the technology on a large scale. Other lectures in the course have already pointed out that there may be employment consequences, distributional aspects such as income increase for some groups and losses for others, or grid stability issues which require additional investments.

This lecture will present findings from the EU-funded project TRANSrisk which analyses risks related to low emission transition pathways. These risks fall into two categories: consequential risks, which are negative impacts for society of low emission pathways; implementation risks, which relate to barriers and obstacles in the systems (such as a market0 for implementation of mitigation measures.

With respect to consequential risks, the lecture will elaborate on ways to value these; given the climate benefits, how bad is it to have employment losses? For that, an exercise will be organised where students, in their role as stakeholder are asked to value benefits and losses due to large scale implementation of a mitigation technology in order to take a balanced decision about whether and at what scale the technology can be implemented.

With respect to implementation risks, the lecture will demonstrate the use of system mapping as a tool to identify where, in a market system, barriers exist that prevent large-scale technology implementation in a country. For example, policy inconsistencies can be a barrier, or lack of technical knowledge or public resistance to a technology.

Wytze van der Gaast

JIN Climate and Sustainability, Groningen, the Netherlands

Wytze has experience in 16 EU-funded projects on climate-related topics and sustainable development. He’s been a regular advisor to the UN Climate (UNFCCC) secretariat on technology-related topics, including writing handbooks for assessing climate technology needs and for supporting implementation of prioritised climate technologies in developing countries. In 2017, he published a book on International Climate Negotiation Factors: Design, Process, Tactics.

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Tuesday 15 August 2017 – 13.30 – 15.00

Life-cycle assessment of technology options for mitigation

Steef Hanssen and Zoran Steinmann

Outline

With the rising interest in environmental issues, producers are eager to label their products as “climate-neutral” “green” or “zero-emission”. These claims often refer to just one of the stages of a product’s life cycle. On closer inspection, it turns out that these claims do not always hold up to scrutiny if one assesses the full life cycle of a product.

The research area of life cycle assessment (LCA) is aimed at developing the methods required for a fair assessment of the environmental impact of products or services. To avoid burden shifting from one stage to another, products are assessed over their entire life cycle, i.e. from extraction of the raw materials, to the production phase, its use and finally the waste disposal. During this lecture, the student will be introduced to the basic principles behind LCA. The student will also learn about some of the uncertainties and difficulties that are inherent to LCA. During the first part of the lecture a contemporary example will be used to introduce the basic principles of life cycle assessment, while the second part of the lecture includes a case study on biofuel production.

Learning goals are to:

- Familiarize the students with the concept of LCA, including life cycle impact assessment - Teach the student to be critically evaluate environmental claims - Introduce the students to some of the key challenges in LCA - Make the students acquire background knowledge on biofuels

Steef Hanssen

Department of Environmental Science at Radboud University’s Faculty of Science

Steef’s overarching interest is to come up with clever ways to protect and work with nature and the environment, while meeting society’s demands. He started his PhD at Radboud University in February 2016. In his PhD Steef investigates the climate change mitigation potential of second-generation bioenergy, specifically electricity and liquid transport fuels from purpose-grown or residual woody and grassy biomass.

Zoran Steinmann

Department of Environmental Science at Radboud University’s Faculty of Science

Zoran has been employed by the Radboud University as Junior Researcher/PhD student since April 2012. is currently working on methods to estimate missing data in LCA. The case study he is working on involves estimating greenhouse gas emissions for coal fuelled power plants worldwide. To do this, he uses a Generalized Linear Model (GLM).

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Tuesday 15 August 2017 – 15.30 – 17.00

R&D on mitigation technologies

Sören Lindner

Outline

There is growing consensus among policymakers and stakeholders that an effective program to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions should include polices that hasten the development and commercialization of low- and no-carbon energy technologies. Such policies target innovation and investment in GHG-reducing technologies and have been much discussed among academics and policymakers alike. Technology policies are generally framed in terms of technology-development activities or technology-specific mandates and incentives rather than primarily in terms of emissions. R&D encompasses activities associated with discovering new knowledge and applying that knowledge to create new and improved products, processes, and services— and in the case of mitigation technologies with the aim of reducing GHG emissions.

This lecture introduces the concept of the technology innovation system (TIS) as an analytical framework applied to mitigation technologies that places innovation stages, processes and drivers within the context of innovation systems. You will learn about key drivers of technology development from the research and innovation stage all the way to market diffusion, as well as potential barriers. Particular attention will be paid to the role of collaboration in R&D in the private sectors and between international/ governmental institutions.

Sören Lindner

Department of Environmental Science at Radboud University’s Faculty of Science

Sören has a broad background in environmental sciences with a specialization in ecological economics (PhD, 2013, Cambridge). His research focusses on understanding the impacts of global economic changes on the environment from different angles and geographic focal points. He uses and develops models that integrate the macro-economic perspective with environmental impact analysis at the regional or sectoral level. At the same time, his research moves at the interface between science and policy, as he opens his scientific research outputs as inputs into sustainable and climate policy making processes at the EU level and developing countries.

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Wednesday, 16 August 2017 – 9.00 – 10.30

Novel instruments in international climate policy making

Patrick Nussbaumer

Outline

This lecture will contain a presentation of the UN Climate technology Centre and Network (CTCN), including its mandate, services, and examples of technical assistance. This will cover about 30 min, including a questions and answers section.

Then, the lecture will focus on the uptake of climate technologies in developing countries. It will start with a discussion about the national climate plans (intended nationally determined contributions, (I)NDCs) as a scene setter for the group assignment following the lecture. The lecture will touch upon scenarios as a tool to support decision making and planning. Concepts around technology uptake will then be presented and discussed. Finally, tools (e.g. benchmarking, road mapping) will be briefly introduced as illustrative examples of efforts to translate strategies into action. This part of the lecture will take one hour, including a questions and answers section.

Patrick Nussbaumer

Industrial development officer at CTCN, Copenhagen, Denmark

Patrick develops and implements technical assistance interventions in developing countries in the area of sustainable energy, environmental management, and climate technologies. Prior to joining UNIDO, he worked several years on energy issues in academia, as well as in the private sector. His background is in engineering, and is complemented by a PhD in Environmental Science and Technology.

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Wednesday, 16 August 2017 – 13.30 – 15.00

Understanding country contexts for climate policy making

Andreas Türk and Keith Williges

Outline

Policy-makers have to make complex decisions in order to design, adopt and implement a policy instrument that really works in terms of effectiveness and efficiency. There is a strong need for robust and adaptive policy instruments that remain effective and efficient even if external contexts and frameworks change.

For climate change mitigation, this is particularly important because of the systemic nature of the required transition, the long time frame over which this transition needs to be made and the profound impacts of the mitigation policies on all parts of society, including households and citizens. Institutions and infrastructure have longlasting effects. In many cases, today’s decisions determine the shape of our energy and industrial systems for the next 20-30 years, or even longer.

These desicions are highly influenced by Institutional, economic and social contexts, both in the formulation as well as the implementation of climate policy instruments. Although they are highly complex, better awareness and understanding of these contexts could enable policy-makers to design policy instruments to be more robust and adaptive to changes in contextual frameworks.

In this presentation, we will discuss these contextual factors which are outside of the policymaking process, yet may have a significant contribution towards an instrument’s success or failure. After a discussion of a framework for contextual factors, we will present an example from our research on EU mitigation efforts, before breaking into groups and discussing how the identified factors may or may not differ from possible factors in each group’s country of study, for a common policy goal. This understanding of the broader context surrounding the creation and implementation of policy instruments can be taken forward into further group work in creating your country action plans.

Preparatory work:

Participants are requested to consult the CARISMA Discussion Paper, “Contextual factors affecting EU climate policies and outcomes” and their country’s (I)NDC.

Reading List:

Fujiwara, N., Tuerk, A., Spyridaki, N., Williges, K. 2017. Contextual factors affecting EU climate policies and outcomes. CARISMA Project Discussion Paper No. 1, February 2017. Available online at: http://carisma-project.eu/Portals/0/Documents/CARISMA%20Discussion%20Paper%20No.%201%20-%20Contextual%20factors%20affecting%20EU%20climate%20policies%20and%20their%20outcomes.pdf

Andreas Türk

University of Graz, Austria

Andreas works for the Wegener Center for Climate Change of the University of Graz. He has expertise in international and national energy and climate policy, including the regulatory frameworks of electricity markets, as well as energy efficiency policies related to economic evaluation and policy design. Andreas was involved in many EU projects as well as projects funded by the Austrian government or by international organisations. He is involved in international research networks, such as Climate Strategies and the EU Bridge working group (sub-group on regulatory issues related to storage) and has a significant track record regarding academic publications.

Keith Williges

Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change at Graz University, Austria

Keith’s current area of research deals with climate change mitigation options and transitions to a low carbon economy, where he focuses on the costs and impacts of both renewable electricity and net negative emissions technologies, assessing feasible scenarios of future capacity growth and quantifying economy-wide impacts with computable general equilibrium modeling.

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Thursday, 17 August 2017 – 11.00 – 12.00

Policy instruments and evaluation

Emilie Alberola

Outline

The lecture will focus on the use of policy instruments available for policy makers to support a transition towards a low emission development. It will start with an overview of different policy and measures that government can use to provide policy and economic incentives to shift towards a low emission development pathway. The lecture will touch upon instruments’ effectiveness and efficiency, in particular it will discuss benefits, challenges and limits of their implementation according to targeted technologies, greenhouse gas emissions or sectors. Finally, few interesting and relevant experiences from developed and developing countries will be briefly introduce as illustrative examples of efforts to implement low-carbon support instrument.

Emilie Alberola

Programme Director – Industry, Energy and Climate at the Institute for Climate Economics (I4CE), Paris, France

Emilie oversees research on carbon pricing policies in the sectors of industry and energy at I4CE. For 10 years, Emily has developed expertise on the formation of carbon prices which are established by emissions trading schemes or carbon taxes, in Europe and in the rest of the world. Since 2015, Emily is a member of the Economic Council for Sustainable Development (ECSD). Emilie is a doctor of economic sciences at the University Paris I Sorbonne.

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Wednesday-Friday, 16-18 August 2017

CTCN Group Assignment

Wed 16 August / 11:00 - 12:00

Task 1: Presentation of (I)NDC case studies

The LDC participants whose attendance has been supported by CTCN will present their respective (I)NDC as case studies for the rest of the week in 3 slides (template to be provided ahead of the summer school) and 5 minutes maximum.

On that basis, participants will be divided in 8groups. Each group will consist of one LDC country participant and 1-3 other participants whose own NDCs has similarities or based on personal interest. The topical focus of the group assignment will be around the NDC case studies.

Wed 16 August / 15:30-17:00

Task 2: Discussion identified INDC priority areas

Each group will analyse (I)NDCs focusing on mitigation aspects of the relevant country and create a mind-map of priority sectors, focus areas, policies and measures. The groups will identify potential transformational technologies under the sectors included in the INDCs.

Those can also stem from the country’s a) Technology Needs Assessment (TNA), b) other key strategic/planning documents selected in advance c) participants’ own research, d) other innovative RD&D related technologies. The mind-maps of INDC priorities will be displayed on flipcharts. (1h)

The INDC mind maps will be presented in the format of “say it in a minute”. All participants will engage in a discussion and constructively challenge the mind -maps. (30 min)

Wed 17 August / 9.00 – 10.30

Task 3: Selecting technologies for INDC priority areas

Each will prioritise, within the areas identified in Task 2, technologies for mitigation. This will be done by assessing technologies against several climate and non-climate criteria within the context of the relevant country.

Thu 17 August / 13:30-15:00

Introductory presentation on theory of change, barriers and problem analysis and articulation of possible interventions (30 min).

Task 4: Design an action plan for a specific technology

The groups will select one promising technology which will be instrumental in the implementation of the (I)NDC and develop a possible intervention to support its uptake by addressing various barriers identified. This task will include a more in-depth analysis of the best-practice regarding this technology and potential customization needs to the specific context.

The expected product of the exercise is a sound intervention draft pilot (demonstrate) the selected technology in the specific country and to scale up its use (deployment). The groups will develop the plan in a logical framework (supporting template provided) with activities, outputs, outcomes including climate benefits and INDC targets of the specific country. Notions to consider are potential financing, links to policy making, capacity building needs, market development, access to hardware and materials, etc.

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