PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
Climate change is an urgent and major threat to human society, requiring the widest possible cooperation and participation to accelerate the reduction of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. At the start of the project, Slovenia’s main policy framework relating to climate change was its ‘Operational programme of GHG reduction measures until 2020’.
OBJECTIVES
The goal of LIFE ClimatePath2050 was to contribute to climate change mitigation by setting up a decision-support system to help Slovenian national authorities better shape actions by 2030, so as to achieve the 2050 targets for GHG reductions set out in the Paris Agreement.
The project’s objective was to enhance the use of quantitative GHG projections to support the development of the national mid-century climate strategy. It would carry out multi-criteria assessment of the impacts of GHG mitigation scenarios, including sectoral criteria and macroeconomic impact assessment. It would also support enhanced implementation of climate policies by improving monitoring of the implementation of, access to, and use of monitoring results to support the preparation of corrective measures.
The specific project objectives were to:
- Prepare long-term GHG projections up to 2050 for various sectors and alternative scenarios with additional climate mitigation measures and their impacts;
- Upgrade and complement the existing set of models and methodologies for the preparation of GHG projections and impact assessments;
- Set up a coordination process to facilitate the interaction of analysis (greenhouse projections and impact assessments) with policy-making processes so as to be fully aware of objectives, consequences of particular actions, problems, alternative solutions, and potential trade-offs;
- Establish a robust system for tracking the progress of climate mitigation actions through an enhanced monitoring, reporting, and evaluation system, while at the same time reducing the administrative burden of monitoring and reporting;
- Achieve a higher level of knowledge and the capacity to use quantitative modelling tools among decision-makers and stakeholders; and
- Promote the transfer of the approaches, methods and results of the project for use in other sectors and countries, and in local climate action planning and implementation.
RESULTS
The LIFE ClimatePath2050 project prepared a comprehensive greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation analysis to 2050, covering GHG mitigation potential, GHG projections and impact assessment for various scenarios for all IPPC sectors. The project team also developed or upgraded several models, including two new models: macroeconomic and LULUCF models. These were all combined to create a decision-support system to help Slovenian authorities prepare climate policy until 2050.
The results of the project have been used in the preparation of several key strategic documents, including the Integrated National Energy and Climate Plan of the Republic of Slovenia and Slovenian climate tong-term strategy 2050, becoming Slovenia’s main policy framework relating to climate change. The same models and projections have been used to support National Air Pollution Control Programme.
Three annual comprehensive reporting packages, named Climate Action Mirrors, were published (2018-2020) within the project, as the main tool to support decision-making on the corrective actions needed for better implementation of the existing measures.
The project team developed a web-tool, Local Climate Action Scoreboard, which will be updated annually. This will help motivate municipalities (and citizens) to monitor the progress of local actions, and to compare them with those of other local communities in order to set more ambitious targets and actions in the future. A second tool for local communities was named Dashboard, helping local communities to prepare GHG and energy projections for buildings and cars.
Further information on the project can be found in the project's layman report (see "Read more" section).
