Documents Le Gallic, Thomas 2 results

"Lifestyle changes are key factors of the climate mitigation challenge because they drive the demand for energy, goods and food. They have received growing attention in the development and assessment of mitigation pathways, one of the key approaches used to inform mitigation policies. This paper contributes to this emerging literature by examining the political and scientific implications of integrating lifestyle changes into mitigation pathways. We analyse a large sample of pathways, supplemented by interviews with practitioners, to provide a perspective relevant to both scenario production practices themselves and the science-policy process in which they are included. We use three illustrative pathways to describe what it means to explore lifestyle changes and how this exploration can be conducted (indicators, dimensions, precision). We summarize the observed benefits of the explorations of lifestyle changes in scenario production by considering three main contributions of scenarios to policy decision-making: explicit knowledge, mediation tools and framing power. We also discuss why the integration of lifestyle changes poses a potential challenge to the robustness and reliability of pathway production methodologies, which is a condition for their policy-relevance. We therefore argue that the implications of this integration need to be carefully characterized in order to maximize the policy relevance of the analysis without compromising the robustness of the scenario development and assessment process. The nature of lifestyles, which reflect values and preferences and require a multidisciplinary approach, raises significant policy neutrality challenges and scientific challenges. Overcoming these challenges can lead to more policy-relevant pathways: we describe existing approaches in the literature and analyse their contributions and limitations."

"This paper analyses structural change in the economy as a key but largely unexplored aspect of global socio-economic and climate change mitigation scenarios. Structural change can actually drive energy and land use as much as economic growth and influence mitigation opportunities and barriers. Conversely, stringent climate policy is bound to induce specific structural and socio-economic transformations that are still insufficiently understood. We introduce Multi-Sectoral macroeconomic Integrated Assessment Models as tools to capture the key drivers of structural change and we conduct a multi-model study to assess main structural effects – changes of the sectoral composition and intensity of trade of global and regional economies – in a baseline and 2°C policy scenario by 2050. First, the range of baseline projections across models, for which we identify the main drivers, illustrates the uncertainty on future economic pathways – in emerging economies especially – and inform on plausible alternative futures with implications for energy use and emissions. Second, in all models, climate policy in the 2°C scenario imposes only a second-order impact on the economic structure at the macro-sectoral level – agriculture, manufacturing and services - compared to changes modelled in the baseline. However, this hides more radical changes for individual industries – within the energy sector especially. The study, which adopts a top-down framing of global structural change, represents a starting point to kick-start a conversation and propose a new research agenda seeking to improve understanding of the structural change effects in socio-economic and mitigation scenarios, and better inform policy assessments."