Pledge Limits Evaluation for Decarbonization: Goals of the EU27 Strategy

This research aims to develop a new climate policy modelling tool - PLEDGES - which manages, for the first time, carbon budget targets for EU-27 countries. Each EU country has different barriers and opportunities for decarbonization.

However, these potentialities are not exploited nor explored by the EU Green Deal or by the long-term mitigation targets established under the United Nations Conference of the Parties Agreements, which pledged to keep the temperature increase below 2°C.

Current EU policies mainly focus on emission reduction targets and do not take into account cumulative emissions or the speed at which the transition to lower carbon can be achieved. Considering these factors is critical to the success of policies that can achieve the temperature goal.

PLEDGES model will fill this gap, providing EU policy-makers with a tool able to downscale EU and world climate mitigation policy to national levels.

It will set a European carbon budget and allocate an allowance of carbon emissions to each EU region, country, or even person according to a set of eligibility criteria based on an effort-sharing approach.

Once a potential carbon budget for each member state is calculated, the PLEDGES tool will be able to simulate necessary deviations from the assumed national quotas and to evaluate how those deviations impact on the other member states.

PLEDGES will help policy-makers evaluate accurately the shared effort needed to mitigate climate change; it configures as a high interdisciplinary tool, helping in designing mitigation actions under a holistic view that considers topics in scientific, economic and social spheres, including the role of gender.