Research

Recently published pathways on Austrian climate neutrality ([BMF 2022], [Anderl et. al. 2023], [Schmidt et al. 2023], [Steininger et al. 2021], [BMK 2024b]) highly agree on short term requirements: significant expansion of renewables, conversion to electric drives, switching to renewable based heating systems (esp. heat pumps), and to renewable production technologies in industry. The former three are the lower-hanging fruits to be harvested by 2030 to keep Austria on track for achieving its climate goals. For the longer term – beyond 2030 –, however, these studies diverge – implying crucial uncertainties – and leave blind spots. INFRA-ENSURE is to fill these gaps, will identify no-regret actions and derive policy implications. In particular, the lengthy planning and construction timelines for infrastructure necessitate early decision-making to ensure its timely availability and alignment with climate neutrality goals. INFRA-ENSURE will distill the shared infrastructure demands across different pathways and thus deliver a robust decision basis and explore the relative advantages, plausible scales and order of investment requirements of major alternatives. Improving our understanding of post 2030 pathways and respective infrastructure needs therefore requires a systematic and comprehensive assessment of all involved energy consumption sectors, which in turn requires advancing state-of-the-art energy system models in combination with tools that are able to capture economy-wide effects. This is the assessment that INFRA-ENSURE will carry out.

Austria’s National energy and climate plan (NECP) states the target of climate neutrality by 2040. While emissions from fossil fuels have declined over the last two decades, net emissions have stagnated since 1990 due to a reduction in carbon sinks from the Land Use, Land-Use Change, and Forestry (LULUCF) sector. Achieving climate neutrality therefore will require a comprehensive understanding of interactions among all sectors – not only among those emitting fossil fuels. However, integrated climate neutrality scenarios that account for all sectors are currently lacking in Austria, which significantly limits the understanding of available options. To address this research gap, CROSS-SEC aims to provide the first set of scenarios for achieving full climate neutrality across all sectors by 2040. Our approach develops integrated scenarios that capture the interlinkages between all greenhouse gas (GHG) emitting sectors and harmonizes relevant assumptions, accounting for sector linkages such as biomass use for energy and expansion of renewable energy facilities on agricultural land. Building on previous research within the Austrian Climate Research Program (ACRP) and other initiatives, we combine sectoral models to address the complex interactions, trade-offs, and synergies crucial to achieving climate neutrality. A key tool in our approach is the state-of-the-art energy system model, PyPSA-EUR, which enables detailed modelling of the Austrian Energy system with high temporal resolution, incorporating energy carrier trade with European neighbours. PyPSA-EUR also includes industrial emissions, providing full insights into the investment and operational costs required for decarbonization in the energy system. This model is coupled with FAMOS, a spatially resolved model of Austrian agriculture, and the forestry model 3WME that evaluates biomass growth and carbon stocks in Austrian forests. The FAMOS model is adapted to reflect detailed investment costs for various mitigation options. The models PyPSA-EUR and FAMOS consider the adaptation costs driven by climate change impacts until 2040. Our research advances previous work in two key aspects: first, by providing a detailed assessment of the investments needed across all sectors to achieve climate neutrality, optimizing mitigation costs comprehensively. Second, through our integrated analysis, we quantify the scale of negative emissions required to offset residual emissions from hard-to-abate sectors, such as agriculture and industry, identifying which sectors can most cost-effectively generate these negative emissions.

The strategic plan of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reformed in 2022 has been implemented in Austria since January 2023. The aim is to achieve three general and ten specific objectives. The extent to which the objectives set will be achieved will be assessed in the course of an accompanying (expected from mid-2025) and final evaluation (from 2030). Several studies will be carried out for this purpose. According to the evaluation plan, a land use study is to be prepared by the end of 2025. This will compare the observed situation with a situation without GSP and quantify the effects. To this end, a model of Austrian agriculture will be used to quantify the land use changes resulting from the implementation of the GSP. A key objective of this study is to describe a counterfactual situation in which no GSP interventions are implemented. Specifically, the following evaluation question is to be answered: “What would the counterfactual situation look like without GSP in terms of land use, greenhouse gas emissions and possibly other indicators, e.g. security of supply?” The results are particularly relevant with regard to the distribution of crop types and crops as well as the intensity of cultivation, but also as a basis for answering further questions.The following offer presents the motives and motivations for this study and explains how it fits into the plan for evaluating the Austrian GSP.Furthermore, detailed evaluation questions are proposed and suitable methodological approaches and requirements are described.The work is divided into several work packages.These include the definition of the reference situation in coordination with the client, the implementation of an accompanying stakeholder process and the quantitative description of the situation without the GSP.In addition, an economic evaluation is proposed as a comparison of the reference situation with alternative scenarios.