Energy-Climate-Poverty-Equity Nexus

IIASA's research is interdisciplinary, integrated and cross cutting, therefore many of our activities focus on more than one of the areas as identified in the Strategic Plan. The below details research that addresses both Energy and Climate, and Poverty and Equity issues.

Africa


teaserimage

Risk management and climate adaptation

Managing the risks of climate change is part of a more generalized approach to promoting sustainable development by reducing the vulnerability associated with climate risk. In 2013 the Risk, Poverty and Vulnerability Program (RPV) looked at various aspects of minimizing risk ahead of adverse weather-related impacts, including extreme events.   more

teaserimage

Solar energy systems

Risk, Policy and Vulnerability (RPV) analysts in 2013 looked at how the energy transition might be constrained by the vulnerability of solar energy systems to extreme event risks in a changing climate. more

Arctic


teaserimage

Risk management and climate adaptation

Managing the risks of climate change is part of a more generalized approach to promoting sustainable development by reducing the vulnerability associated with climate risk. In 2013 the Risk, Poverty and Vulnerability Program (RPV) looked at various aspects of minimizing risk ahead of adverse weather-related impacts, including extreme events.   more

Asia


teaserimage

Education and environmental vulnerability

As part of a larger project, Forecasting Societies’ Adaptive Capacity to Climate Change, a Special Feature entitled Education and Differential Vulnerability to Natural Disasters was published in the journal, Ecology & Society. more

teaserimage

Integrated modeling and qualitative analysis

As environmental problems do not respect disciplinary boundaries, integrated assessment modeling, pioneered by IIASA, is a useful adjunct to environmental policy analysis, integrating knowledge from more than one domain into a single framework. more

teaserimage

Integrating physical and socio-economic modeling

In collaboration with IIASA’s Population Program, the Mitigation of Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gases (MAG) Program produced an innovative model of the interactions between population dynamics, economic growth and investments into environmental protection and the consequences on human well-being. more

teaserimage

Risk management and climate adaptation

Managing the risks of climate change is part of a more generalized approach to promoting sustainable development by reducing the vulnerability associated with climate risk. In 2013 the Risk, Poverty and Vulnerability Program (RPV) looked at various aspects of minimizing risk ahead of adverse weather-related impacts, including extreme events.   more

Europe


teaserimage

Advanced techniques for extreme event risk

Risk, Policy and Vulnerability (RPV) staff introduced a new method to up-scale dependent loss distributions from natural hazards to higher spatial levels, explicitly incorporating their dependency structure over the aggregation process. more

teaserimage

Ecosystem services and bio-energy potential in the Alpine Space

In 2013 the Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program's Policy Science Interface (PSI) group together with ESM Forest Ecosystems Management (FEM) continued their involvement in the recharge.green project that aims to analyze bio-energy potential and impacts in the Alps from biomass, solar, wind, and hydro. more

teaserimage

Education and environmental vulnerability

As part of a larger project, Forecasting Societies’ Adaptive Capacity to Climate Change, a Special Feature entitled Education and Differential Vulnerability to Natural Disasters was published in the journal, Ecology & Society. more

teaserimage

Integrated modeling and qualitative analysis

As environmental problems do not respect disciplinary boundaries, integrated assessment modeling, pioneered by IIASA, is a useful adjunct to environmental policy analysis, integrating knowledge from more than one domain into a single framework. more

teaserimage

Resilience of social systems

Similarly to ecosystems, social systems – from firms to countries – are becoming more and more subject to various stressors whose effects penetrate throughout the system by means of social ties and economic links. The external disturbances here may be of political, economic, financial and even environmental nature. more

teaserimage

Risk management and climate adaptation

Managing the risks of climate change is part of a more generalized approach to promoting sustainable development by reducing the vulnerability associated with climate risk. In 2013 the Risk, Poverty and Vulnerability Program (RPV) looked at various aspects of minimizing risk ahead of adverse weather-related impacts, including extreme events.   more

teaserimage

Solar energy systems

Risk, Policy and Vulnerability (RPV) analysts in 2013 looked at how the energy transition might be constrained by the vulnerability of solar energy systems to extreme event risks in a changing climate. more

Global


teaserimage

A global perspective on air pollution

In 2013, the Mitigation of Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gases (MAG) Program achieved global coverage of its GAINS (Greenhouse gas – Air pollution Interactions and Synergies) tool for the systematic assessment of co-benefits strategies, in close collaboration with a large number of national teams. more

teaserimage

A wider perspective on potential co-benefits

In a review paper, developed in cooperation with colleagues from the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies of Japan, scientists of the Mitigation of Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gases (MAG) Program argued that a multidisciplinary approach, involving the interplay with other policy objectives beyond air quality and climate, is needed to bring policies into line with current research on co-benefits. more

teaserimage

Advances in solving optimal control problems

In 2013 the Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program made several new contributions to the development of optimal control theory for managing socio-environmental systems within a modeling framework. more

teaserimage

Air pollution and health

In the area of air pollution and health, the Energy (ENE) Program intensified collaboration with the Mitigation of Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gases (MAG) Program at IIASA, the Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy (part of the European Commission), and Columbia University in the USA to explore the health benefits of climate and pollution control scenarios. more

teaserimage

Climate mitigation, negative emissions technology, and BECCS

The Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program's Policy and Science Interface (PSI) team has been considering how to mitigate climate change through the use of carbon-neutral bio-energy (BE), combined with carbon capture and storage (CCS), to produce negative-emissions conditions. more

teaserimage

Energy policy analysis

In 2013 the Energy (ENE) Program conducted policy analyses in areas where the energy related challenges were greatest, for example, universal energy access. more

teaserimage

Environmental resources and development (ERD)

The Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program group on environmental resources and development (ERD) tackles the multiple interrelationships that exist between the natural environment and the human systems that actually or potentially affect it - population, land use, soil, water, chemicals, climate, crop management systems, and global trade. more

teaserimage

Model performance

The Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program reviewed techniques available across various fields for characterizing the performance of environmental models with a focus on numerical, graphical, and qualitative methods. more

teaserimage

New studies map future climate impacts across sectors

The Methods for Economic Decision making under Uncertainty (MEDU) group contributed to the first results of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISI-MIP), a pioneering collaboration within the international scientific community. more

teaserimage

Nitrogen management offers potential for win-win solutions

The Mitigation of Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gases (MAG) Program contributed to papers that highlight how the global nitrogen cycle could change in the 21st century and the extent to which this is reflected in the current set of global emission scenarios. more

teaserimage

Optimal economic growth

The Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) researchers in 2013 worked on developing new economic growth models capable of generating “green growth” and sustainable development solutions. more

teaserimage

Policy and science interface (PSI)

The Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program’s Policy and Science Interface (PSI) group aims to strengthen various aspects of the role played by the ESM research program in the climate and land use change-relevant community. more

teaserimage

Progress on the SSPs

The joint work with IIASA’s Energy Program on the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) was completed at the beginning of 2013 and all the data was made available in the SSP Database on the IIASA website. more

teaserimage

Research into energy poverty

In 2013 the work of the Energy (ENE) Program on energy poverty and access to clean modern forms of energy examined the broader linkages between energy services and economic development. more

teaserimage

Risk modeling

Comprehensive modeling of the effects of climate change, including extreme events, by RPV  involves advanced techniques and takes into account stakeholder requests and needs.  more

teaserimage

Sustainable Forest Management - Certification

The Policy Science Interface (PSI) group of the Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program worked with ESM's Earth Observation Systems (EOS) to develop a new methodology to support assessment of, and decision making for, future forest management certification. more

teaserimage

Systemic risks and networks

The Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program in 2013 looked at systems marked by interlinkages and interdependencies, where failure of one entity or a cluster of entities can cause a cascading failure capable of bringing down an entire system. more

teaserimage

The importance of governance

New global emission scenarios enable a fresh perspective on air pollution trends in different world regions, and in particular on the importance of proper governance for future air quality. more

teaserimage

Woody biomass availability and sectoral competition

A new study, which analyzed future woody biomass resource availability plus sectoral competition for biomass for energy and material use, showed the key question for biomass energy use not to be the amount of resources available but rather their accessibility and thus their price. more

North America


teaserimage

Education and environmental vulnerability

As part of a larger project, Forecasting Societies’ Adaptive Capacity to Climate Change, a Special Feature entitled Education and Differential Vulnerability to Natural Disasters was published in the journal, Ecology & Society. more

Africa


Asia


Europe


North America


 


Print this page

Last edited: 10 April 2014

International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
Schlossplatz 1, A-2361 Laxenburg, Austria
Phone: (+43 2236) 807 0 Fax:(+43 2236) 71 313