International assessments

IIASA’s participation in large integrated assessments has always had numerous beneficial “spin-off”
effects, not only enlarging the body of data and knowledge available to scientists generally but
opening up new research pathways for the Institute itself.

International collaborations also foster working relationships between IIASA and other research organizations and create the potential for future partnerships.

International-scale projects in the Energy and Climate Change area continued or were consolidated in 2011:

IPCC Fifth Assessment Report

IIASA continued to play a leading role in 2011 in developing a new international policy framework for the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR5), which will update knowledge on the scientific, technical, and socioeconomic aspects of climate change for the scientific community and for policymakers. In 2011 the methodological backbone of IPCC AR5  – the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) – were finalized and IIASA's Energy Program (ENE) began work with the World Population Program (POP) and Ecosystems Services and Management Program (ESM) on one of IPCC AR5's new Socioeconomic Pathways. 

Global Energy Assessment

The Global Energy Assessment (GEA) was finalized for publication by Cambridge University Press in 2011 and launched at Rio+20. The GEA, which comprises 25 peer-reviewed chapters and took five years to complete, aims to transform the global energy debate. It urges radically improved energy efficiency, a major shift to sustainable energy sources, an end to the energy poverty of 3 billion people in developing countries, and promotion of new technologies and investment to support the transition from fossil fuels to renewables by 2050.

Gothenburg Protocol Renegotiation

The Mitigation of Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gases Program (MAG) in 2011 continued to develop a new series of emission control scenarios, using the GAINS model, to inform negotiations to revise the 1999 Gothenburg Protocol to the Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution, which set 2010 emission ceilings for sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, and ammonia. MAG was appointed as Centre for Integrated Assessment Modelling (CIAM) for the negotiations in 2007 and will make presentations to negotiators in 2012. The new Protocol will be the first
international agreement to address reduction of short-lived climate forcers, like black carbon.

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Last edited: 19 July 2013