LOCALISED achieved an important milestone with the simulation of three country-level decarbonization pathways – see Costa (2022). The results will now feed into developing and testing our downscaling methodology.

Using the EUCalculator model the demand for services, production and energy technology deployment previously published in decarbonization pathways for Portugal, France and Germany were closely matched for their evolution by 2050 – see example in Table 1. This allows the project to estimate in a consistent manner – across the countries – the material, resources and technical challenges associated with decarbonization. With intra-country comparison achieved by the usage of a common energy model, the project will now move forward on building and testing a downscalling methodology that translates the national-level results to the municipality scale.

Why is downscalling important? Because the practical challenges of implementing mitigation actions and technology deployment truly materializes at spatial levels much lower than those considered in energy models defining national pathways. A case in  point is the transformation needed in the building sector. To be aligned with the evaluated national pathway (see  ARIADNE 2045), by 2050 circa 80% of the current standing building stock in Germany needs to undergo on substantial energy renovations – see Figure 1 derived from results in Costa (2022).

While this trajectory is indicative of national effort, local efforts for building renovation across Germany will be heterogenous and shaped by local aspects influencing cost-effectivnes of renovation such as building age, building type or usage (Staniaszek et al. 2015). 

A more spatially-dissagregated view on the renovation effort will enable municipalities to have a frist-order approximation of the local effort in building renovation with the guarantee that it is aligned with the national pathway. Keep tuned as details on the downscalling methodology will follow soon.

(1) In the EUCalculator model these refer to the choices of ambition levels from 1 to 4 equating to past trends to transformational change, more details on model and ambition description please refer to Costa et al, 2021.

Educational campaign and green & blue investments in schools. 

“Climate in the Schools of Metropolis” is the biggest educational project carried out in the Metropolitan Area Gdańsk-Gdynia-Sopot regions (MAGGS), project partner of LOCALISED. As many as 40 schools participate in it, both from large cities such as Gdynia, Gdańsk, Tczew, Malbork, Rumia, and small towns like  Kłodawa, Bielkówko, Dębogórze czy Linia. Green and blue investments will be built on the premises of each of the schools submitted for the project. Schools can choose from: a box rain garden, a ground rain garden, an infiltration basin, a composter or a green wall.

“Small retention facilities mimic nature in collecting, clearing and delaying rainwater runoff. They are an important element of counteracting the effects of climate change, so their creation in schools will not only be functional, but also educational” says dr Wojciech Szpakowski, technical director at the municipal company Gdańskie Wody, which is the project partner.

As part of the projects teachers of nature, biology or geography will be trained, they will also receive necessary teaching materials. Each school will also receive seedlings and tools for additional planting. We will also invite students to participate in the competition “Let’s protect the metropolitan environment”. Activities in schools are complemented by a social campaign aimed at informing about climate change and sudden weather phenomena (torrential rains, droughts).

As part of the information and education activities, the LOCALISED partner MAGGS will organize press conferences and educational films, advertising spots, brochures and information leaflets will also be created. Project “Climate in the Schools of Metropolis” will last three years. MAGGS implements it in cooperation with the content partner Gdańskie Wody and the foreign partner International Development Norway.

Empowering all: Gender in policy and implementation for achieving transitions to sustainable energy

When it comes to energy infrastructures and energy use, the role of gender has been highly underestimated. Despite the evidence that social values, norms, and practices directly impact policy developments, energy innovations and use, there is insufficient research as well as solutions addressing gender biases in energy. While some argue that energy and climate policies are gender-neutral, studies highlight that they are relatively gender-blind (Clancy & Roehr, 2003; Khamati-Njenga & Clancy, 2002; Terry, 2009). 

Through international collaboration with researchers from the field of gender and energy from 7 Countries, the UsersTCP Annex – Empowering all gathers state-of-the-art research on gender and energy use, identifies best practices, analyzes energy policies and technologies from gender perspectives, provides recommendations for a more efficient and inclusive policy design and implementation, supports ongoing efforts to design inclusive and gender-sensitive energy technologies. The duration of this project is three years, from 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2023.

This Annex is divided into the following three subtasks, and ÖGUT is involved in all of them. 

1. For researchers – Subtask 1 aims to fill the knowledge gap. It deals with gathering existing research on energy, gender, and energy use, and reviews the state-of-the-art to identify best practices. Additionally, the literature is examined to further understand the ways energy policy and planning, grant directives, and interventions shape energy consumption in different countries. ÖGUT contributes to this subtask by focusing on literature and documents, particularly from the German-speaking countries.
2. For policy makers and regulators – Subtask 2 analyzes the values and norms embedded in energy policies, their implementation by different governments, as well as the rationale behind the energy interventions by the private sector. The goal is to grasp how these diverse value systems and norms interact and counter each other. Furthermore, a comparative policy assessment tool is developed and tested for the evaluation of national policies on energy use and gender. Within this framework, ÖGUT is conducting intersectional policy analysis on the Austrian Energy and Climate Action Plan as well as evaluating the policy tool and supporting its adaptation.
3. For businesses – Subtask 3 is centered on the collaboration with designers and developers within the energy sector, and user organizations to develop guidelines and prototypes for inclusive, gender-sensitive and efficient energy interventions at different stages such as early steps of technology development, data collection methods, user interfaces, user management, etc. The deliverables of this subtask will be factsheets, new templates for gathering user data, and prototypes for inclusive design. For this subtask, ÖGUT is responsible for developing and testing factsheets on inclusive and participatory design targeted at energy technology developers and carrying out a case study on the inclusiveness of an Austrian Energy Platform.

Author

Austrian Society for Environment and Technology (ÖGUT), Azadeh Badieijaryani and Beatrix Hausner.

References

Clancy, J., & Roehr, U. (2003). Gender and energy: Is there a Northern perspective? Energy for Sustainable Development, 7(3), 44–49. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0973-0826(08)60364-6

Khamati-Njenga, B., & Clancy, J. (2002). Concepts and issues in gender and energy. ENERGIA. Leusden, The Netherlands: ENERGIA.

Terry, G. (Ed.). (2009). Climate change and gender justice. Practical Action Pub.

Photo credit

UsersTCP Newsletter

Further resources

• Visit the official webpage of the project: CLICK HERE 
• Read the Gender & Energy Task Newsletter: CLICK HERE
• Find out more about ÖGUT: CLICK HERE

The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its relevance for LOCALISED

Within the last two months the IPCC published two of its most recent assessment reports: The Working Group II Contribution on Impacts and Adaptation, and the Working Group III Contribution on Mitigation.

The WGII concludes that widespread disruption in nature already affects the lives of billions of people around the world, despite efforts to reduce the risks. People and ecosystems least able to cope are being hardest hit; “a dire warning about the consequences of inaction,” said Hoesung Lee, Chair of the IPCC.

The world faces unavoidable multiple climate hazards over the next two decades even if global warming is halted at 1.5°C. Temporarily exceeding this warming level will result in additional severe impacts, some of which irreversible. Risks for society will increase, including to infrastructure and low-lying coastal settlements. “The AR6 WGII Contribution emphasizes the urgency of immediate and more ambitious action to address climate risks. Half measures are no longer an option.” said Hoesung Lee.

Given that there is urgency for more action tools are needed to speed up mitigation and adaptation along a broad coalition of authorities, citizens and businesses. With that the IPCC has underlined the relevance of the LOCALISED objectives, which is to develop useful tools for a decarbonisation of the European regions and localities until 2050 and the remaining adaptation need.

Whereas the IPCC lists and reviews options to adapt to a changing climate, there is the recognition that current efforts are insufficient, uneven, or even detrimental—pointing to the need of focusing more on the effectiveness, feasibility, and side-effects of measures—all, sub-objectives of the LOCALISED project. Climate change further interacts in a complex interplay with global trends such as unsustainable use of natural resources, growing urbanization, social inequalities, losses and damages from extreme events and a pandemic, jeopardizing future development. This complexity is where LOCALISED can make an additional significant contribution, calculating regionally-relevant solutions to optimally reach net-zero  along with the remaining adaptation needs for European regions and localities, including authorities, businesses and individuals.

“Our assessment clearly shows that tackling all these different challenges involves everyone – governments, the private sector, civil society – working together to prioritize risk reduction, as well as equity and justice, in decision-making and investment,” said IPCC Working Group II Co-Chair Debra Roberts. “Cities bear the potential of having direct influence and jurisdictional power on their land in many countries, meaning that the complexity of decision-making for adaptation can be tested, and if need be course-corrected in a relative short period of time. Cities and regions are therefore perfect testbeds for climate action with the additional advantage of being showcases for their hinterlands”, said Diana Reckien, Coordinating Lead Author for Chapter 17, and a LOCALISED team member.

Providing detailed information for local and regional authorities on how they can best implement climate action to stay within the limits of warming of 1.5degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels is therefore more important than ever.

Authors of the article: Diana Reckien

Photo credit: Chuttersnap-04 on Unsplash

GridWatch – A disruptive tool to identify potential climate risks threatening the electrical grid.

Climate change is affecting both regional and global weather patterns, increasing the frequency and severity of extreme climate events such as floods and windstorms, or producing extreme temperatures and wildfires as a result. These events can therefore affect society causing disruption or damage to the essential services provided by critical infrastructures.

The electrical sector is one of the most relevant critical infrastructures where almost all the other services depend on. That is why the increase of knowledge of potential disruptions through long and short-term forecasting is vital to keep safe all the other infrastructures while increasing the general resilience.

How these steps can be integrated in one single solution?

IREC has carefully designed GridWatch, a stack composed of open source services, totally scalable and flexible for new integrations, that is capable of performing all the steps previously mentioned in one single flow, allowing the end-users to know about the risks they are subjected to, and if the system is protected from them.  

This tool has the capability of monitoring and analyzing weather-based risk on the grid. It offers the calculation of wind and flood risk of the assets according to weather information gathered from weather services such as sentinel-weather or ECMWF services. However, due to its flexibility, also allow the integration of fire detection and potential disruption provoked to the grid, or the sensor application for the real-time measure to feedback the algorithms responsible for prediction using machine learning, and even citizen interconnection to increase awareness.

So, what is the output to the end-users?

At the end of the day, what GridWatch provides to the end-user, is the capability to visualize the risk level per electrical asset through the use of suitable KPIs, timelines, and heatmaps in a user-friendly interface that manages all the information.

Also, the warning alarms for critical events detected help the power distribution control center can take decisions according to the information received, such as setting adaptive and/or corrective measures and reinforcing weak locations of the grid, or designing emergency plans to mitigate failure consequences.

GridWatch has the potential of increasing the electrical system resilience by using early warning systems for extreme events and increasing preparedness against those and increasing the level of awareness of the electrical control center and citizens about potential incoming grid risks. 

Authors of the article: Catalonian Energy Research Center, Daniel Sánchez, Jose Luis Dominguez.