Using powerful simulation tools to understand what it takes to meet climate goals

Extending and diffusing a powerful simulation exercise to drive climate action
Organisation
Climate Interactive
Grant
DKK 1,500,000
Programme Area
Sustainable Finance
Year
2019-2021

In collaboration with MIT Sloan’s Sustainability Initiative, Climate Interactive has created the En-ROADS energy policy and investment simulator, which helps leaders, governments and NGOs test and understand which policies, initiatives and investments are needed to meet the Paris Agreement. The simulator runs in less than a second and focuses on how changes in global GDP, energy efficiency, technological innovation, deforestation, carbon pricing and many other factors can impact carbon emissions and global temperature.

Using more than 38,000 equations, the En-ROADS simulator can be used to explore questions such as:

  • Can cheap renewable energy alone limit global temperature rise to below 2°C?
  • To what extent would a carbon price help?
  • Can carbon sequestration allow us to continue on our current path of fossil fuel use?
  • What will it take to limit globaltemperature rise to below 1.5°C?
  • What would we have to assume about technology and the economy to scale climate solutions at the speed necessary to achieve our climate goals?
  • What are the likely dynamics of the emergence of a new energy supply? How fast could it grow and displace high-carbon sources and, thus, reduce carbon emissions? 
Climate Interactive
Climate Interactive is a non-profit organisation with an established track record of developing trusted and easily accessible simulation tools
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About the simulator

En-ROADS is a transparent, freely-available policy simulation model that gives everyone the chance to design their own scenarios to limit future global warming.  You can try your own experiments and assumptions, and get immediate feedback on the likely impacts. The simulation runs on an ordinary laptop in a fraction of a second, is available online, offers an intuitive interface, has been carefully grounded in the best available science, and has been calibrated against a wide range of existing integrated assessment, climate and energy models. Climate Interactive offers highly interactive, free online trainings and workshops for organisations, government officials, students, university professors and other individuals to learn more about climate solutions.

Try the simulator here
“Limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”
Summary for Policymakers of IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, 2018