Anticipating futures through models: the rise of Integrated Assessment Modelling in the climate science-policy interface since 1970

Boundary Work and Interpretations in the IPCC Review Process of the Role of Bioenergy With Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) in Limiting Global Warming to 1.5°C

“…They conclude that the consideration of the 1.5 • C aspirations made climate change as an object of governance more complicated, subjective, and multiple, not the least because of a lack of agreement from both a scientific and a political perspective on the suitability of actually including 1.5 • C in the Paris Agreement in 2015. Their interviews with IPCC authors reveal that the unexpected and unusual request from the UNFCCC to the scientific community, to investigate the novel more stringent targets, confirm the observation that these targets were considered unrealistic by many scientists (see also van Beek et al, 2020). This may illustrate an inverted process compared to first settling the science and then opening up for political deliberations.…”

“…A more optimistic interpretation of the role of IAMs, in line with van Beek et al (2020) argumentation, is that the IAM community has been able to adapt to new demands at the science-policy interface by remaining up-to-date and developing its provision of policy relevant knowledge while also anticipating, or even help shaping, the demands of policy makers. Since the IAM communities are populated by a relatively small group of researchers there is a risk attached to letting this group not only define the boundaries of relevant science but also influence how that science should be interpreted and translated to policies (see also Hughes and Paterson, 2017).…”

“…The IAM communities have reacted to such critique and the SR1.5 arguably acted as a trigger, and the main response has been to conclude that it is not fruitful to abandon IAMs since they have been proven to be useful tools and are highly demanded by policy-makers and other actors concerned with the transformation, distribution, costs, and use of energy resources. Instead, the IAM communities' recommendations seem to favor supplementing the IAMs with additional analytical models and methods, e.g., improve representation of behavioral and lifestyle changes, and include additional CDRs or minimize the use of BECCS (see e.g., Grubler et al, 2018;van Vuuren et al, 2018;van Beek et al, 2020).…”

“…Integrated assessment models (IAM) and their associated climate mitigation scenarios were key features in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) second assessment report, published in 1995, and their importance has increased in later years (Beck and Mahony, 2018;Gambhir et al, 2019;Hilaire et al, 2019;van Beek et al, 2020). As of 2015, the IAM community has responded to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change's (UNFCCC) Paris Agreement by forcing their models to resolve pathways capable of holding global warming well below 2 or 1.5 • C. This includes the massive deployment of negative emissions technologies (NETs) and, in particular, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) (on average 5-20 GtCO 2 /yr by mid century) (e.g., Fuhrman et al, 2019;Rogelj et al, 2019).…”

“…The nature of IAMs makes them particularly relevant for the IPCC report chapters that deal with mitigation and have a policy-or solutionoriented approach. Thus, these IAMs have an interpretative privilege at the interface between climate science, economics, and policymaking (Livingston, 2018;Haikola et al, 2019;Livingston and Rummukainen, 2020;Low and Schäfer, 2020), and have also gained an aligning role in the negotiation between science and policy (van Beek et al, 2020). van Beek's et al (2020) review of IAMs in the science and policy interface since the 1970s show that modelers have not only been reactive to societal demands and formulated responses, but have also anticipated and helped policy makers to formulate new goals, most prominently the 1.5 • C aspirational goal.…”