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In October 2022, the Austrian government has introduced a national price for CO2 emissions from energy use in the sectors not covered by the EU Emission Trading System. The carbon price has been introduced in the context of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) and represents the core of an ecological tax reform (so-called "eco-social tax reform"), with tax revenues being recycled to households via regionally differentiated lump-sum payments ("climate bonus payments") and to firms via compensation measures for exposed industry as well as for agriculture and forestry. The project aims at assessing the impact of this carbon price and the related climate bonus and firm compensation payments at the level of Austrian federal provinces. The envisaged analysis with the macroeconomic model ASCANIO will deliver insights into the effects on regional CO2 emissions, GRP, employment, and income distribution.

Für die Erreichung der Klimaziele ist eine umfassende Transformation in Richtung einer klimaneutralen Wirtschafts- und Lebensweise unerlässlich. Als Grundlage für diese Transformation ist ein breites Verständnis der kumulierten Emissionen entlang von Wertschöpfungsketten erforderlich. Dadurch wird sichergestellt, dass Emissionsreduktionsmaßnahmen einzelner Branchen und Sektoren im Gesamtkontext mit den Klimazielen vereinbar sind, unter Berücksichtigung der verfügbaren Potenziale für eine erneuerbare Energieversorgung und des verbleibenden Treibhausgasbudgets. Im vorliegenden Projekt sollen die kumulierten Treibhausgasemissionen ausgewählter österreichischer Gütergruppen entlang ihrer Wertschöpfungsketten abgeschätzt werden. Dabei werden sowohl die vorleistungsbezogenen Emissionen ("embedded emissions") im In- und Ausland als auch die direkt bei der Produktion anfallenden Treibhausgasemissionen berücksichtigt, wobei bei Letzteren zwischen energie- und prozessbedingten Emissionen unterschieden wird.

Q2-PATHWAYS improves the understanding of deep-structural transformational change by innovatively enriching quantitative with qualitative analyses. The policy objective is to elaborate transformation pathways that are equitable, responsible, resilient, environmentally friendly and socially inclusive by transdisciplinary visioning and strategising with practitioners from policymaking, business and civil society. This aims at broadening the objectives of and the visions for climate policies by advancing from striving for a net-zero economy to aiming at climate-friendly living defined as a good life for all within planetary boundaries and overcoming climate-only policies that remain in a policy silo and putting climate politics at centre stage in a broader societal transformation towards sustainability. The scientific objective is to elaborate a holistic approach to societal transformations by integrating quantitative and qualitative climate research. This endeavour combines inter- and transdisciplinary research: first, Q2-PATHWAYS calibrates existing narratives and transformation pathways based on contemporary research and its transdisciplinary visioning and strategising approach. Second, it calibrates an integrated model of the electricity sector and the macroeconomy with the help of high-level experts mainly from the Second Austrian Assessment Report. Third, three transformation pathways will be modelled with the aim of analysing the effects of integrating diverse pragmatic and radical measures, thereby contributing to climate policies that have a higher potential to be not only effective, but also feasible.

The proposed project "FutuRes-PV" aims for deriving policy recommendations how to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of PV (photovoltaic) support in Austria, allowing for a socially inclusive uptake of PV systems at household level. It therefore investigates the impact of increasing household PV electricity generation in Austria until 2040, analysrescing different policy scenarios regarding their impact on the development of prosumer activities related to PV systems ("prosumer scenarios").

The Austrian government strives for achieving greenhouse gas neutrality in the transport and the buildings sector by 2040. Achieving a complete decarbonisation within such a short time period will be challenging for both sectors: in the transport sector the trend of rising emissions must be reversed; in the building sector the building stock must be thermally improved and heating systems must completely shift towards renewable energy sources. The introduction of policy instruments to decarbonise the housing and mobility sectors will entail different effects for different household groups depending on several (socio-economic) aspects. The (presumed) regressivity of policy instruments (most notably fiscal measures) in these areas very often impedes an evidence-based discussion on the political level and is used as an argument against the implementation of respective measures. By linking a macroeconomic model with a vehicle choice model, a transport demand model and a building stock model, in TransFair-AT we will analyse policy scenarios achieving a full decarbonisation of housing and mobility in Austria by 2040. We will assess the emission impacts as well as the macroeconomic and distributional effects of policy sets on different household types and develop measures to compensate vulnerable groups ensuring that the disposable income of disadvantaged household groups is not reduced.

Climate change is one of today's grand challenges. The EU has committed itself to ambitious emission reduction targets: for 2020 and 2030, the EU aims at reducing its greenhouse gas emissions compared to 1990 by 20 percent and 40 percent, respectively, for 2050 an emission reduction by at least 80 percent is strived for. For large emitters in industry and energy generation the EU has established the European Emission Trading System (EU ETS) in 2005 defining an EU-wide reduction target. Emissions from other sources, most notably from the household and transport sectors, are instead regulated at EU member countries level and should be reduced by 30 percent by 2030, with differentiated reduction targets for the individual EU member countries. To achieve the emission reduction targets in the Non-ETS sectors the issue of carbon pricing has recently gained in momentum in the political discussion at EU as well as at EU member countries level. The project SoMBI focuses on two research questions: What are the effects of an EU-wide carbon price for the Non-ETS sectors that allows achieving the 30 percent reduction target in different EU member countries? What are the effects of different revenue recycling options in the EU member countries? To answer these questions, we perform a model-based analysis with the new ADAGIO-DYNK model. The CO₂ price necessary to achieve the 30 percent EU-wide reduction target for the Non-ETS sectors is estimated. Also, detailed results for two case study countries are discussed. The countries (Austria and Poland) differ considerably in terms of the structure of their energy systems and economies. First, we focus on the macroeconomic, emission and distributional impacts of the tax. Then, the effects of different revenue recycling options are assessed and policy recommendations for the introduction of a carbon tax are developed.