Global excellence in modeling climate and energy policies
The global GEOCEP project provides an innovative economic modelling framework supporting the energy transition to a zero-carbon economy and integrating new challenges posed by this transition, including social and technological innovations, the need for flexibility, and new business and services models. GEOCEP brings together leading global and regional think tanks and universities and connects the frontiers of climate change and energy economics with state-of-the-art natural and social sciences utilized in the complex GEOCEP modelling framework. GEOCEP research secondments support a world-wide knowledge transfer aimed to achieve scientific breakthroughs in creating new generations of models enabling complex economic analysis of the anthropogenic drivers and the impacts of and responses to climate change. GEOCEP recognizes that the first best policy in solving the global externality of greenhouse gases as a major driving force of climate change is the imposition of a global price on carbon emissions. Therefore, GEOCEP aims at advancements in modelling techniques related to carbon pricing and impact assessment, including Integrated Assessment Models, hybrid modelling platforms and related theoretical and empirical models. GEOCEP clearly identifies institutional and political obstacles to implementing the first-best solutions to control for the global carbon externality and, consequently, investigates an array of second-best energy and climate mitigation policies focused on increasing energy efficiency, on reducing emissions and related environmental and health externalities and on promoting renewable energy. An understanding of the public impact of energy transition and climate change requires intensive communication of innovative research results to policy-makers and active dissemination to the public at large. This communication and dissemination effort enables formulation of evidence–based and publicly supported policies on both global and regional levels.