Climate Science Innovations

𝗧𝘄𝗼 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗽𝗮𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗽𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗵𝗲𝗱. 𝗦𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝗱𝗲𝗹. 𝗧𝘄𝗼 𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝗢𝗻𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗮𝗻𝘀𝘄𝗲𝗿. Lauer & Llases ran 120 simulations of global economic development until 2100, using a system dynamics model (MORDRED) that tracks population, energy, climate, labor, and consumption across income classes and world regions. What they found: 🟧 𝗪𝗲 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗼𝗻 𝗮 𝗟𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗚𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵 (LtG) 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 In 92% of business-as-usual scenarios, global output peaks and then declines persistently. Not primarily because resources run out (As in LtG scenarios), but because climate damage erodes labor productivity, creating a self-reinforcing downward spiral. By 2100, output is 15–70% below 2019 levels. Poverty reduction in poorer regions ends the moment global output peaks. This is Meadows updated. The mechanism is different. The conclusion is not. 🟧 𝗚𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺 The second paper compares two deliberate transition scenarios. FST1 ( Greener Growth) assumes rapid decarbonization, full green electricity by 2100, and continued economic expansion. It still reaches 2.6°C of warming. It misses every Paris target. Land, water, and minerals become the new constraints while CO2 falls. And consumption in rich countries eventually declines anyway involuntarily. Grows greener. Not green enough. 🟩 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝗶𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗱 FST5, Sufficiency Economies, limits warming to 1.9°C, converges global consumption, and reduces material extraction. It works in the model. But it requires a Planetary Confederation, radical redistribution, and consumption cuts in the center within a decade. Institutionally implausible under current conditions. Biophysically, it is the only path that holds. These are not predictions, but risk assessments. But they shift the burden of proof. If you believe green growth is sufficient, you now have more to explain. If you believe system change is inevitable, you have the risk assessment, but (still) not the plan. Paper 1 (Ecological Economics): Lauer & Llases (2026) Limits to growth revisited: System dynamics simulations of global economic developments and distributional implications in the 21st century ( 👉 https://lnkd.in/eknByvRs) Paper 2 (Environmental Innovation & Societal Transitions): Lauer & Llases (2026) From Greener growth to sufficiency: Modeling alternative global sustainability pathways ( 👉https://lnkd.in/e7ypCXgz)

Understanding Blue, Green, and Gold Carbon Credits & Global Trading Models As the world accelerates its net-zero transition, carbon credits have evolved to address different ecosystems and emission sources. But what are Blue, Green, and Gold Carbon Credits, and how are they traded globally? Types of Carbon Credits: 🔵 Blue Carbon Credits • Derived from coastal and marine ecosystems like mangroves, seagrass meadows, and salt marshes. • These ecosystems absorb and store large amounts of CO₂, making them crucial for climate mitigation. • Projects focus on restoration and conservation, backed by standards like Verra’s Blue Carbon Initiative. • Example: Indonesia’s Blue Carbon Project supporting mangrove restoration. 🌿 Green Carbon Credits • Linked to land-based natural ecosystems such as forests, grasslands, and regenerative agriculture. • Generated from reforestation, afforestation, and soil carbon sequestration projects. • Commonly traded in Voluntary Carbon Markets (VCMs) using standards like Gold Standard and Verified Carbon Standard (VCS). • Example: REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) projects in the Amazon rainforest. 🏅 Gold Carbon Credits • Considered high-quality offsets with added social and environmental benefits beyond carbon reduction. • Often certified under premium standards such as Gold Standard and Climate, Community & Biodiversity (CCB) Standards. • Support biodiversity protection, water security, and community development. • Example: Cookstove projects in Africa, reducing deforestation while improving public health. Major Carbon Trading Models Worldwide: 🌍 Compliance Carbon Markets (CCMs) • Government-regulated cap-and-trade systems. • Companies must purchase allowances if they exceed emissions limits. • Key Examples: ✅ EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) – Largest and most established carbon market. ✅ China’s National ETS – The world’s biggest by volume. ✅ California Cap-and-Trade – A leading market in North America. 💡 Voluntary Carbon Markets (VCMs) • Companies buy offsets to neutralize their carbon footprint beyond legal requirements. • Key Platforms: ✅ Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard (VCS) – The largest voluntary carbon credit registry. ✅ Gold Standard – Ensures social and environmental co-benefits. ✅ American Carbon Registry (ACR) – Recognized for its rigorous methodology. Both compliance and voluntary markets play a vital role in driving global carbon finance and climate action. 🌱 Is your company leveraging these credits in its net-zero strategy? Let’s connect and discuss! #CarbonMarkets #Sustainability #NetZero #ClimateAction #BlueCarbon #GreenCarbon #GoldCarbon

🇪🇺 A Proud European Moment! 🇪🇺 Emissions are going down. The EU continues to demonstrate that sustainability and economic growth can go hand in hand. In the second quarter of 2024, our greenhouse gas emissions fell by 2.6% compared to the same period last year, marking a significant step towards reducing our carbon footprint while boosting economic progress. Five out of nine economic sectors have reduced their emissions, with the biggest impact seen in: Electricity and gas supply: -12.1% Households: -4.2% What drove the change? ⚉Renewable Energy Expansion →In 2023, 37% of EU electricity came from renewables, up from 35% in 2022, leading to a 5% reduction in emissions from the energy sector. →The renewable energy sector created over 300,000 jobs and saw €100 billion in investments in 2023. →The clean energy transition contributed to a 1.5% GDP growth in 2023, showing the economic benefits of green energy. ⚉Energy Efficiency Measures →Energy efficiency improvements in buildings saved the EU €80 billion in energy costs annually. →The Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) led to a 20% reduction in energy consumption, benefiting both the environment and the economy. →The energy efficiency sector added €30 billion to EU GDP in 2023, proving the economic value of sustainable investments. ⚉Decarbonisation of the Industrial Sector →The industrial sector reduced emissions by 5.8% since 2020, driven by low-carbon technologies and cleaner processes. →The circular economy initiative saved €7 billion and reduced industrial waste by 4%. →The sector’s green transition helped spur 3% GDP growth in 2023, as businesses embraced sustainable manufacturing practices. ⚉Sustainable Mobility →Electric vehicle (EV) sales grew by 40% in 2023, with EVs now accounting for 12% of total car sales, contributing to a 6.5% reduction in transport emissions. →The EU invested €10 billion in green transport infrastructure, creating jobs and reducing emissions. →The green transport sector contributed €15 billion to the economy in 2023, driving growth and innovation in sustainable mobility. ⚉Green Innovation in Households →The adoption of energy-efficient appliances resulted in a 15% reduction in household energy consumption over the past decade. →4 million households upgraded to smart energy systems, reducing energy bills by €300 per year on average, while also lowering their carbon footprint. →The green technology boom in households generated €5 billion in economic activity. The EU’s ability to decouple economic growth from carbon emissions highlights that sustainability and prosperity can coexist. Check out the full results here: https://lnkd.in/dh3vrhn9 European Commission #climateaction #sustainablegrowth #cleanair #renewableenergy #energyefficiency #sustainablemobility #decarbonisation Eurostat

New research models the likelihoods of different climate scenarios. It shows that 3°C isn’t a worst-case. It’s the most likely. Up until now, climate scenarios have been treated as narrative pathways without assigned probabilities. Climate scientists have resisted giving scenarios a likelihood because of deep uncertainty. That is, the full range of outcomes due to physical, social, political and technological changes can't be known, and therefore, probabilities cannot be reliably estimated. Climate scenarios were described as exploratory tools, not forecasts and were designed to illuminate plausible pathways, not predict them. But... intuitively, we know that some climate futures are more likely than others. This information is helpful for business decision-making. This new paper from the EDHEC Climate Institute challenges the idea that probabilities can't be assigned to climate scenarios and provides two robust, data-driven methods to do it. The first is an 'informative method', which starts with economists’ views on the social cost of carbon (SCC). In effect, it converts wishful thinking into plausible expectations. The second is a 'maximum entropy method'. It makes as few assumptions as possible, using current carbon prices and basic policy constraints as the only inputs. What’s remarkable is that both approaches produce results that are very similar. Does this mean that some climate pathways are more locked in than we think? Model outputs: 🔸 The most likely temperature anomaly in 2100 is between 2.8–3.0ºC 🔸 There is a 35–40% chance of exceeding 3.0ºC 🔸 There is just a 1% chance of staying below 1.5ºC The model was also tested using Oxford Economics scenarios. The results were even more shocking. 🔸 The ‘Climate Catastrophe’ carries a likelihood of 57.5%. 🔸 The ‘Climate Distress’ scenario carries a likelihood of 35% 🔸 Together, they make up 92.5% of the total These high temperatures increase the likelihood of triggering irreversible tipping points, for which standard damage functions no longer apply. This is dangerous territory. 𝗠𝘆 𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲 Most companies use climate scenarios that treat all futures as exploratory scenarios. But this doesn't allocate future risk efficiently. Without probabilities, we cannot optimise capital allocation between mitigation (transition risk) and adaptation (physical risk). Assigning probabilities to scenarios changes the conversation. It equips firms to weigh investment in risk reduction not just by severity but also by likelihood. Personally, I believe this is a critical next step in climate risk planning. Assigned likelihoods should be accompanied by uncertainty bounds—so decision-makers can assess not just what’s likely, but how confident we can be in those estimates. Source: https://lnkd.in/exy5TDS8 _____________ 𝘍𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸 𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘯 𝘓𝘪𝘯𝘬𝘦𝘥𝘐𝘯: Scott Kelly

🚨New study on Climate and Inequality 🚨 Thrilled to share that our latest paper, "Climate Change and the Global Distribution of Wealth", has just been published in Nature Climate Change! In this work, we explore how climate change and climate policies are reshaping wealth inequality worldwide. Our findings reveal that climate impacts and investments could significantly alter the distribution of wealth, affecting everything from housing to financial assets. For instance, we show that the top 1% global wealth share could rise from around 38.5% today to 46% in 2050 if the wealthiest individuals own all the new low-carbon infrastructure. Conversely, if low-carbon investments are financed by a tax on the top 1% and then owned by governments or not-for-profit actors, the top 1% wealth share could drop to 26%. Climate change and climate investments have the potential to reshape global wealth inequalities on an unprecedented scale. It’s going to be critical to keep an eye on this. Thanks to our incredible team (Cornelia Mohren, Philip Bothe and Gregor Semieniuk) and all those who supported this work. Comments welcome! Published article : https://lnkd.in/ehQVkEQC Open-access preprint : https://lnkd.in/ePzdtCFQ

🌊 A common assumption is that sea-level rise and stronger hurricanes will simply lead to higher storm surges along our coasts. New science shows the reality is far more complex and more dangerous. A 2025 study published in Climatic Change (Danso et al.), analysing 20 historical hurricanes under future climate scenarios, reveals five critical insights that matter for coastal risk management and early warning systems: 🔹 Higher sea levels consistently lead to greater average surge heights and a much larger inundated area, pushing water far inland. In combined scenarios, flooded areas increase by up to 400%. 🔹 A 10% increase in hurricane intensity, consistent with upper-end climate projections, significantly raises surge levels and flood extent, even without sea-level rise. 🔹 Storm surge response varies strongly by coastal morphology. Wide, shallow shelves respond differently than steep, narrow ones, reinforcing the need for location-specific risk assessments. 🔹 In low-lying regions, the population affected by storm surge could be more than 25 times higher than in past events, based on today’s population alone. For the World Meteorological Organization, this underscores the urgency of: • strengthening impact-based forecasting • improving coastal and marine observations • advancing Early Warnings for All • translating climate science into actionable services for decision-makers 🌍 In a changing climate, protecting lives and livelihoods depends on understanding not just how high the water rises but how far it reaches. read the article here 👇 https://lnkd.in/enHPehCC

As the renewable energy sector grows, we face a hidden crisis: wind turbine blades are not recyclable like their metal counterparts. This leads to environmental concerns as thousands of tons of blades end up in landfills. However, innovative solutions are emerging. Companies like Vestas are developing chemical processes to break down epoxy resins into reusable materials, while Siemens Gamesa is creating fully recyclable blades using new thermoplastic resins. To tackle this issue, we must prioritize designing recyclable materials, developing efficient recycling technologies, and implementing stricter regulations against landfill disposal. #WindEnergy #Sustainability #Recycling #CircularEconomy #Innovation #CleanEnergy #GreenTechnology

The future of climate modelling? Global climate modelling - the type of modelling that the Coupled Model Intercomparison (CMIP) undertakes, and the type of modelling that underpins regional climate projections uses grid resolutions of roughly 100 x 100 km pixels. While you can downscale those in a variety of ways, there are always uncertainties, and these include the detail of how our large-scale climate responds to global warming. If we get that wrong it means the information fed into regional models is wrong and that is a problem to say the least. A summit held in Berlin recently explored ways forward, and there is a very nice report from that summit that proposes solution that is of order 3 billion euros ($5 billion Australian dollars) a year for each of 3-5 global modelling centres. This sounds a lot - but relative to the costs of climate change it is an investment with potentially large returns. The goal would be 3-5 modelling systems at kilometre resolution built with full-scale software engineering standards providing high quality projections for all countries This is not to replace the many existing modelling centres, rather it recognises that the requirements for kilometre resolution models are beyond the capability of most countries. There is a nice report on this at: https://lnkd.in/gmhjQZTb and the actual statement from the summit is available here: https://eve4climate.org/ As a footnote - if you are using kilometre resolution data sourced from climate models, ask why the community that builds our existing global models are arguing for large investment in creating tools to create kilometre resolution data. This rather opens up a question of how robust global modellers believe products purporting to provide kilometre resolution climate projections might be.

“Fifty years into the project of modeling Earth’s future climate, we still don’t really know what’s coming. Some places are warming with more ferocity than expected. Extreme events are taking scientists by surprise. Right now, as the bald reality of climate change bears down on human life, scientists are seeing more clearly the limits of our ability to predict the exact future we face. The coming decades may be far worse, and far weirder, than the best models anticipated… This is a problem. The world has warmed enough that city planners, public-health officials, insurance companies, farmers, and everyone else in the global economy want to know what’s coming next for their patch of the planet… Today’s climate models very accurately describe the broad strokes of Earth’s future. But warming has also now progressed enough that scientists are noticing unsettling mismatches between some of their predictions and real outcomes… Across places where a third of humanity lives, actual daily temperature records are outpacing model predictions… And a global jump in temperature that lasted from mid-2023 to this past June remains largely unexplained… Trees and land are major sinks for carbon emissions, and that this fact might change is not accounted for in climate models. But it is changing: Trees and land absorbed much less carbon than normal in 2023, according to research published last October… The interactions of the ice sheets with the oceans are also largely missing from models, Schmidt told me, despite the fact that melting ice could change ocean temperatures, which could have significant knock-on effects… The models may be underestimating future climate risks across several regions because of a yet-unclear limitation. And, Rohde said, underestimating risk is far more dangerous than overestimating it.” #ClimateRisk #TransitionRisk https://lnkd.in/eiSRvUeF

New: Two studies out today focus on the impact of human-driven climate change on sea levels and coastal flooding. Extreme sea level events that were once historically rare — those with a 1% chance of happening in a given year — are now, on average, about 12 times more likely, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. A separate study published in the journal Science Advances found that climate change has also, on average, nearly tripled the number of days exceeding extreme water level thresholds since the 1970s. “Essentially every coastal flood today has human fingerprints on it through climate change,” Benjamin Strauss, a co-author of the Science Advances study, tells me. More at The Associated Press: