Research

Universities are also required to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions significantly in order to contribute to achieving the Paris climate targets. Regular greenhouse gas balancing is indispensable for this: It makes it possible to identify the largest emission drivers, to derive the most effective climate protection measures from them and to measure the effectiveness of climate protection measures. Against this background, the project proposed herewith aims at ensuring that as many Austrian universities as possible... - balance their own GHG emissions. The practice of GHG accounting should be made "state of the art" at Austrian universities and should also be introduced more widely at institutions of tertiary education (especially colleges). - set a concrete emissions reduction or climate neutrality target. - develop a "roadmap" for achieving these goals. - implement concrete climate protection measures. To achieve these goals, the following activities are planned in the project: - WP 1: Further development of the GHG balancing tool "ClimCalc", which is tailor-made for educational institutions and which the project consortium had developed within the framework of two predecessor projects funded by the Austrian Climate and Energy Fund. - WP 2: Periodic update of the emission factors on which the accounting tool is based for the years 2020-2022 to ensure the timeliness and correctness of the emission calculations. - WP 3: Comprehensive training and consulting for universities on GHG balancing using the ClimCalc tool as well as on climate protection in university operations (setting climate protection targets, developing a roadmap for achieving targets, implementing climate protection measures). The consortium consists of BOKU, TU Graz and the Austrian Federal Environment Agency. The project builds on two predecessor projects funded by the Austrian Climate and Energy Fund, is expected to last two years (24 months) and has a total budget of € 58,000.

SDGVisionPath wants to co-create transformation pathways for future visions regarding the achievement of the SDG goals climate action, inequality and decent work and economic growth. It will apply and connect stakeholder knowledge integration processes with qualitative and quantitative modelling approaches. Four stakeholder workshops will take place: First, to establish a common systems and problem understanding. Second, to develop a future vision. Third, to identify transformation pathways to achieve the future vision. Fourth, to identify robust policy recommendations. This will be aided by the application of (1) the a qualitative Inequality and Poverty Assessment Model (IPAM) to screen both analysis and generated future visions and ideas for five dimensions of social and environmental justice and (2) the system dynamics model iSDG to provide a quantitative simulation of the transformation pathways. Such an integrated systems approach, considering stake-holder perspectives and values and complementary modelling approaches, can help identifying robust transformation path-ways.

This proposal will address area b of the call "Maximizing the synergy of climate change research and innovation in Europe ". MAGICA maximizes the synergies between infrastructure investmentsand initiatives of climate change research and innovation across the European Research Area (ERA) by building upon and further implementing the Mission of JPI Climate in support to the international and European climate agenda (including the European Green Deal and Adaptation Strategy). MAGICA aims to accelerate the development, provision and exchange of knowledge from research and innovation to inform and support policy-making and climate actions via a better coordination of on-going and future initiatives and a more efficient use of resources. MAGICA will be based on a circular and iterative interactionsamong the strategic, scientific and societal components of climate change research and innovation. A scientific arena will be created to enhance the debate and discussion within the scientific community on climate R&I priorities, that will be synthesized in a Joint Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda on climate change for ERA 2025-2034. In addition, the creation of a regular forum with European Ministries of Research and Climate and other funding bodies will foster the coordination of the different national research policies in order to meet the ERA-wide priorities and needs identified by the scientific community. Finally, a multi-directional dialogue with different relevant social actors (from policy-makers to the younger generation) will be enhanced through different international conferences (e.g.ECCA, Climate Neutrality Forum), workshops and other innovative formats in order to inform citizens but also to detect the social needs concerning the transition to climate-neutrality and climate science. They will be incorporated into scientific community’s priorities for research, thus closing the feedback loop.