To achieve climate neutrality by 2050, EU policy will have to be reoriented – from incremental towards structural change. As expressed in the European Green Deal, the challenge is to initiate the necessary transformation to climate neutrality in the coming years, while enhancing competitiveness, productivity, employment. To mobilise the creative, financial and political resources, the EU also needs a governance framework that facilitates cross-sectoral policy integration and that allows citizens, public and private stakeholders to participate in the process and to own the results.

The project "Capacity Building Emissions Trading to Support Bilateral Cooperation" aims to disseminate knowledge on emissions trading internationally and to support partner countries in setting up national emissions trading systems. The consortium supports the Federal Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety's bilateral activities in the field of capacity development and training on emissions trading. Former and current cooperation partners include Brazil, China, Chile, Kazakhstan, Mexico, South Korea, Thailand, Turkey and Ukraine.

Photovoltaic technology is a key lever for decarbonising Berlin's power consumption and for social participation in the transformation process, especially for tenants. Therefore, solar energy and projects on rental apartment blocks are key elements of the Berlin Senate's Energy and Climate Protection Programme. In the research project "ElectricityNeighbours", Ecologic Institute and IÖW evaluate the experience gained so far in implementing such prosumer projects in Berlin, outline innovation potentials for the field and develop ideas on how the regulatory framework can be further developed. In doing so, the team looks beyond pure tenant electricity projects to the potentials of sector coupling.

The H2020 EU-funded PONDERFUL project will investigate how ponds can be used as nature-based solutions (NBS) for climate change. It will evaluate the interaction and feedback between biodiversity, ecosystem services and climate in pondscapes.

This project supports the EU Commission's DG CLIMA to develop and evaluate different options for certifying carbon removal solutions. Carbon removals, also known as negative emissions, include nature-based technologies such as afforestation and soil carbon, and technology-based approaches, including carbon capture and storage from direct air or bioenergy. To reach the EU's 2050 goal of climate neutrality, alongside mitigation of GHG emissions, the EU must remove substantial amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. This project assesses existing knowledge and identifies policy options to increase carbon removals across Europe.

To fulfill its commitments under the Paris Agreement, the European Union plans to increase the ambition of its 2030 greenhouse gas emissions reduction target. As a basis for this debate, in December 2020, the EU Commission published the communication "Stepping up Europe's 2030 climate ambition" and a related Impact Assessment (IA) on raising the 2030 target in September 2019. In the communication, the Commission proposed to increase the EU target to -55% compared to 1990 and presents different policy approaches to reach this target.

The aim of this project is to assess – for a selection of EU Member States – the impacts of policies and measures (PaMs) as described in their National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs). To this end, the project team identifies specific policy instruments and related ex-ante and ex-post evaluations, to collect and compare impact estimates and analyze the implications for achieving the energy and climate goals. The assessment also provides insights into the methodological uncertainties of evaluations in different policy areas. The considered policy areas are energy efficiency, renewable energy, cross-cutting instruments and agriculture and the NECPs from the following Member States are included; Germany, Denmark, France, Slovenia and Sweden.

This project assesses a selection of climate-change adaptation measures for the agriculture sector and gathers quantitative evidence on their potential to compensate for climate-change induced productivity losses. The results feed into the parent project "Climate change and bioeconomy – Sustainability gap analysis for the agricultural sector".

Together with FutureCamp, Ecologic Institute examines in detail the design options of climate protection contracts. The focus is on the practical implementation of the instrument, such as the design in compliance with EU state aid law as well as overlap and demarcation with other (funding) instruments.

The project provides an overview of the current water availability in Germany, as well as its future development under climate change conditions. It predicts emerging conflicts of use and develops possible solution strategies. For example, a concept for regional water advisory councils will be developed. These are intended to avoid water conflicts by enabling representatives of water-relevant sectors to exchange information. In addition, options for reusing water for irrigation in urban areas are being examined.

The EU has agreed to become climate neutral by 2050. Achieving climate neutrality in the next 30 years is a great societal, economic and political undertaking, presenting many challenges and opportunities. The Climate Recon 2050 project addresses the central process of the development and implementation of national long-term climate strategies in EU Member States. The project combines analysis with dialogue to inform political debate.

Modernizing the EU's building stock is essential to meet the twin goals of the reduction of GHG emissions and green recovery. This short project therefore focuses on the two goals and argues for spending a specific share of the national Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) funds on building renovation. The recommendation is to allocate RRF funds according to the building sector's share of total GHG emissions, in line with the EU's green recovery commitments and the requirement to spend 37 % of the Recovery and Resilience Facility grants and loans on climate-related investments. For full results check out the related think piece.

In this project, Clean Energy Wire (CLEW) and Ecologic Institute organised a series of 10 online briefing events (webinars) to inform journalists about the key elements and topics of European energy and climate policy. In total, more than 130 journalists from 30 countries participated in the ten events, dissecting topics like the 2030 EU climate target, the UN climate change conference COP26 and the EU's carbon border levy plans. The attendees ranged from journalists representing smaller local publications to those from established media such as Bloomberg, NY Times, the Guardian, Euractiv and Die Welt.

In this project, Climact and Ecologic Institute analysed the impact assessment for the new EU climate target proposed by the Commission in September 2020. After examining policy options and modelling results, they were compared with recent studies, in particular with Climact's modelling results for 2030. A policy brief highlights key points where the Commission differs from other studies and identifies climate change potentials that deserve more attention in future analyses.

In order to reduce air pollution, especially in large cities, Vietnam is discussing the introduction of air quality planning and an integrated permit system as part of the revision of its Law on Environmental Protection. Together with the Independent Institute for Environmental Issues, Ecologic Institute supports the legislative process and develops guidelines for the subsequent implementation of the two instruments.