Climate strategy, policy and economics

Research projects

Bridging Climate Action and Sustainable Development: Advanced Assessment Tools for Global Infrastructure Projects, a KTH and UNOPS collaboration

Climate action infrastructure projects (comprising mitigation and adaptation objectives) to achieve the Paris agreement have a wide range of synergies and trade-offs with the Sustainable Development Goals. However, stakeholders have limited access to the knowledge for mitigating those impacts, including on the impacts of relevant climate risks. This myopic approach means that siloed-planned climate action may cause a variety of detrimental tradeoffs, from social unrest or inequality to other environmental and economic issues. In response, KTH researchers have developed leading tools to assess the sustainability of infrastructure projects using detailed analysis of interlinkages between the characteristics of various types of energy and infrastructure projects and all social, economic and environmental targets of the SDGs.

Our project partner (United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS)) supports 2.3 billion USD/year of infrastructure projects in more than 80 countries and has similarly developed tools tailored to infrastructure project managers in various contexts around the world to ensure sustainability across project lifecycles. Within the scope of this proposed project, KTH and UNOPS will work together to shape and further develop these tools, improving them with years of rigorous academic research and analysis, and will test and make them available for implementation through thousands of project managers across the wider UNOPS community.

Capturing carbon emissions and costs in the World Bank Global Electrification Platform

Meeting sustainable development target 7.1 on ensuring universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services, is fundamental for improving the livelihoods of people. Nonetheless, around 750 million people still lack electricity access today. To breach this gap, the Global Electrification Platform (GEP) (https://electrifynow.energydata.info/) has developed pathways to achieve universal electricity access across selected countries. To date, GEP has presented its pathways in the form of investment scenarios composed of different combinations of "levers" as costing parameters, demand targets and uses, and technical constraints of the system. However, as socio-economic development historically has been coupled with increasing emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG), expanding access to electricity services may increase the reliance on fossil fuels for power generation (depending on the fuel-technology mixes), causing an increase in carbon emissions to the atmosphere. Therefore, there is a need to account for emissions when developing electrification pathways. This is especially important now, as global climate agreements advance, and considerable climate finance flows can be leveraged for advancing low-carbon energy access efforts.

In this project we investigated how electrification can affect greenhouse gases emissions, given a set of assumptions about how the power generation system of the countries may change in the future. Including such parameters as "levers" would also affect the outcomes, i.e. aligning electrification targets with the Climate Action Agenda.

Accelerating progress on the Sustainable Development Goals at the local level

A project and strategy as part of a UN-led effort to support and accelerate action on the Sustainable Development Goals at the local level. Learn more about the project: Accelerating progress on the Sustainable Development Goals at the local level (sei.org)

European Climate and Energy Modelling Forum (ECEMF)

A Horizon 2020 project whose aim is to establish a European forum to support energy and climate researchers and policy makers in achieving climate neutrality.
More info about ECEMF

Personal carbon allowances revisited

This research presents design principles based on the Sustainable Development Goals for the future adoption of PCAs. Read the whole article in Nature Sustainability:

Industry Transition Roadmap Planner

An interactive tool that supports decision-makers in public and private sectors to design, develop, and implement industry transition roadmaps. Learn more about the project: Industry Transition Roadmap Planner (industrytransition.org)

Welfare-maximizing dispatch and pricing water in the water network

Characterises the profile of water injections and extractions, and the corresponding path of prices, that maximises overall economic welfare, subject to the hydrology of a stylised river network.

Windpower and sustainability – Systematic assessments to support fruitful windpower dialogues

Aims to provide better sustainability knowledge on land-based wind power, using environmental and social life cycle analysis and with cases in Sweden.

The impact of corporate governance on carbon emissions

This research programme will empirically examine how ownership form affects firm carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions abatement activities using Swedish data from 1990-2018 as our experimental setting. More info .

Let's do it! Moving forward in the methodological development of Social Lifecycle Assessment in some challenging areas

Development of a methodology to complement environmental assessments with systematic assessments of social sustainability (social life cycle assessment), thus enabling comprehensive sustainability analysis.

Urban Circular Economy Assessment Framework project

Supports cities in adopting circular pathways, thereby reducing dependency on continued natural resource extraction and alleviating environmental pressures.

S.O.S. Sustainable Open Solutions for European urban waterfronts

SOS Climate Waterfront is an interdisciplinary project that aims at exchanging experiences across Europe about new solutions and strategies that can reverse the vulnerability of urban waterfronts.