Description: This paper analyses and compares industry sector transformation strategies as envisioned in recent German, European and global deep decarbonisation scenarios. The first part of the paper identifies and categorises ten key strategies for deep emission reductions in the industry sector. These ten key strategies are energy efficiency, direct electrification, use of climateneutral hydrogen and/or synthetic fuels, use of biomass, use of CCS, use of CCU, increases in material efficiency, circular economy, material substitution and end-use demand reductions. The second part of the paper presents a meta-analysis of selected scenarios, focusing on the question of which scenario relies to what extent on the respective mitigation strategies. The key findings of the meta-analysis are discussed, with an emphasis on identifying those strategies that are commonly pursued in all or the vast majority of the scenarios and those strategies that are only pursued in a limited number of the scenarios. Possible reasons for differences in the choice of strategies are investigated. The paper concludes by deriving key insights from the analysis, including identifying the main uncertainties that are still apparent with regard to the future steps necessary to achieve deep emission reductions in the industry sector and how future research can address these uncertainties.

Description: The aim of this study is to contribute to a learning process about innovative and successful approaches to overcoming problems and challenges of urban environmental protection. To this end, a detailed overview of the importance of environmental challenges, political priorities and successful solutions in selected countries and cities is given. Based on this, the study analyzes specific success factors and discusses the extent to which these can be transferred and replicated to other cities. Finally, recommendations are made for cities, countries and the international community on how environmental protection at the urban level can be further strengthened. The role of German cities and institutions will also be discussed. The case studies analyzed include Belo Horizonte in Brazil, Moscow in Russia, Kochi in India, Beijing in China, Cape Town in South Africa and Jakarta in Indonesia. These cities were selected because they have already implemented successful policies, measures and other initiatives in the past. For each city, the study analyzes relevant policy documents in order to present the respective challenges and political priorities. The analysis aims to understand the effectiveness of the plans and instruments taking into account the national political environment. Despite the cross-sectoral approach, the analysis of each case study focuses on specific sectors in order to produce well-founded results. The success factors that are worked out based on this sectoral analysis are placed in a holistic context in order to be able to make generalizable statements about success factors.

Description: The objective of this report is to use historical analysis to identify conditions that determine when offsets add value to compliance schemes while upholding environmental integrity. The indicators of success include: increased acceptance of introducing compliance schemes; raising ambition in subsequent compliance periods; the possibility to drive emission reductions outside the compliance sectors; promoting investments in sustainable development; and avoiding perverse incentives that undermine the stringency of the compliance scheme or compliance actors’ efforts in reducing their own emissions. Through undertaking in-depth case study analyzes on the effects of offsets in the European Union, Alberta, Australia, Colombia and Japan, the report identifies common conditions that explain why offsets were successful (or not) in achieving individual indicators. The report further identifies two common conditions that can help explain when offsets achieve all five indicators of success. The first is that policymakers need to be willing to design the compliance scheme to set and maintain a strong compliance price signal that justifies the need for incorporating cost containment measures, such as offsets, to avert negative political and economic ramifications. Relatedly, the second condition requires institutions, processes and infrastructure that govern both the compliance scheme and offsets to be well developed so that they can ensure offsets uphold the principles of environmental integrity, achieve sustainable development benefits, and act as a reliable cost containment measure to high compliance prices. The findings also highlight how difficult it is to achieve both conditions, as both domestic and international political economy factors determine whether policymakers and voters are willing to introduce and maintain compliance schemes that deliver effective action on climate.

Description: The Paris Agreement combines collective goals with individual countries' contributions. This hybrid approach does not guarantee that the individual contributions add up to what is required to meet the collective goals. The Paris Agreement therefore established the Global Stocktake. Its task is to "assess collective progress" towards achieving the long-term goals of the agreement as of 2023 and every five years thereafter. Corresponding to this role, this report addresses three questions: What should an effective Global Stocktake look like? What information and data are needed? Is it possible to execute an effective Global Stocktake within the mandate of the Paris Agreement?

Description: Effective policies to mitigate climate change need to be accompanied by a socially just transition. Based on experiences of past and ongoing transition policies in coal regions in Europe and with indications to the specificity of framework conditions and challenges and to the potential effectiveness and transferability of approaches, this paper presents lessons learnt which can be inspirational for similar transitions in other coal regions and for transitions in other sectors.

Description: Offsetting enables countries and companies to meet part of their climate change mitigation obligations by using mitigation outcomes generated elsewhere - in lieu of own emission reductions. This report explores the future role of offset approaches and how they could be successfully integrated into a post-2020 climate regime by focusing both the supply and demand side. For this purpose, the report develops a conceptual approach that derives a normative vision of what should be considered a successful offset use in a top-down manner to then link this vision to specific factors on the ground in sectors and jurisdictions where offsets will be generated and used. It explores how these factors influence the successful operationalisation of the offset approach and how they can inform its design. In addition, the report also explores six conceptual design aspects to providing recommendations on how to take these factors into account during the design of the offset approach. Based on these findings, the authors derive overarching policy recommendations on the integration of offsets into carbon pricing schemes.

Description: The unprecedented challenge of reaching carbon neutrality before mid-century and a large share of it within 2030 in order to keep under the 1.5 or 2 °C carbon budgets, requires broad and deep changes in production and consumption patterns which, together with a shift to renewables and reinforced efficiency, need to be addressed through energy sufficiency. However, inadequate representations and obstacles to characterising and identifying sufficiency potentials often lead to an underrepresentation of sufficiency in models, scenarios and policies. One way to tackle this issue is to work on the development of sufficiency assumptions at a concrete level where various implications such as social consequences, environmental co-benefits, conditions for implementation can be discussed. This approach has been developed as the backbone of a collaborative project, gathering partners in 20 European countries at present, aiming for the integration of harmonised national scenarios into an ambitious net-zero European vision. The approach combines a qualitative discussion on the role of energy sufficiency in a "systemic" merit order for global sustainability, and a quantitative discussion of the level of sufficiency to be set to contribute to meeting 100 % renewables supply and net-zero emissions goals by 2050 at the latest. The latter is based on the use of a dashboard, which serves as a common descriptive framework for all national scenario trajectories and their comparison, with a view to harmonising and strengthening them through an iterative process. A set of key sufficiency-related indicators have been selected to be included in the dashboard, while various interrelated infrastructural, economic, environmental, social or legal factors or drivers have been identified and mapped. This paves the way for strengthening assumptions through the elaboration of "sufficiency corridors" defining a convergent, acceptable and sustainable level of energy services in Europe. The process will eventually inform the potential for sufficiency policies through a better identification of leverages, impacts and co-benefits.

Description: Technological innovations in energy-intensive industries (EIIs) have traditionally emerged within the boundaries of a specific sector. Now that these industries are facing the challenges of deep decarbonisation and a significant reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is expected to be achieved across sectors, cross-industry collaboration is becoming increasingly relevant for low-carbon innovation. Accessing knowledge and other resources from other industrial sectors as well as co-developing innovative concepts around industrial symbiosis can be mutually beneficial in the search for fossil-free feedstocks and emissions reductions. In order to harness the potential of this type of innovation, it is important to understand not only the technical innovations themselves, but in particular the non-technical influencing factors that can drive the successful implementation of cross-industry collaborative innovation projects. The scientific state of the art does not provide much insight into this particular area of research. Therefore, this paper builds on three separate strands of innovation theory (cross-industry innovation, low-carbon innovation and innovation in EIIs) and takes an explorative case-study approach to identify key influencing factors for cross-industry collaboration for low-carbon innovation in EIIs. For this purpose, a broad empirical database built within the European joint research project REINVENT is analysed. The results from this project provide deep insights into the dynamics of low-carbon innovation projects of selected EIIs. Furthermore, the paper draws on insights from the research project SCI4Climate.NRW. This project serves as the scientific competence centre for IN4Climate.NRW, a unique initiative formed by politicians, industry and science to promote, among other activities, cross-industry collaboration for the implementation of a climate-neutral industry in the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). Based on the results of the case study analysis, five key influencing factors are identified that drive the implementation of cross-industry collaboration for low-carbon innovation in EIIs: Cross-industry innovation projects benefit from institutionalised cross-industry exchange and professional project management and coordination. Identifying opportunities for regional integration as well as the mitigation of financial risk can also foster collaboration. Lastly, clear political framework conditions across industrial sectors are a key driver.

Description: This case study examined the structural change in Lusatia caused by the system change from a centrally planned economy to a market economy in the period 1990-2015. It analysed the structural change process and the structural policies implemented as a reaction to this process with the objective to make this knowledge available for future structural change processes in other (coal) regions by deploying various qualitative and quantitative methods of empirical social and economic research. A discourse analysis helped to recognise who supported which structural policy approaches and why - and thus gives indications of the possible relevance of experiences for other regions.

Description: This report develops an evaluation framework that policymakers can use to identify whether offsets can add value and uphold environmental integrity of a compliance scheme. It uses a scoring framework on factors to: (1) identify which sectors have hard-to-abate emissions that can justify demanding offsets as cost-containment measures for ambitious climate policies; and (2) identify mitigation activities that are otherwise inaccessible, fosters sustainable development, and the extent to which it enables transformative sectoral action to be eligible to supply offsets. This evaluation framework identifies the optimal conditions that make factors successful in either having sectors demand offsets, or specific mitigation activities supply offsets. Sectoral emissions that are hard-to-abate are those that are technically unavoidable due to a lack and maturity of technologies, and therefore should be allowed to have cost-containment measures - such as offsets - to avoid adverse economic ramifications such as carbon leakage. Mitigation activities that can supply offsets are those that are currently inaccessible to local actor’s due to lack of access to technology, finance or capabilities. Allowing these mitigation activities to be eligible to supply offsets allows to pilot such activities and realize mitigation outcomes outside the original scope of the compliance scheme. This report has chosen selected sectors and mitigation activities to illustrate how this framework can be applied at the global level. It recognizes that country-specific factors can change the assessment of whether the offset approach will add value and uphold environmental integrity to proposed compliance schemes of a country. The report further proposes practical steps policymakers can do to undertake an evaluation at the national level.