Introducing DeepDCarb

‘DeepDCarb - Deep Decarbonisation: The Democratic Challenge of Navigating Governance Traps’ is a project that seeks to improve understanding of the ‘traps’ holding back society’s attempts at climate change mitigation and contribute to understanding the scope for unlocking the impasse in society’s struggle to deliver deep decarbonisation.

The project - which runs from 2021 until 2026 - was awarded €2.4 million of funding by the European Research Council (ERC) as part of €450 million of new funding for Europe’s most innovative research in physical sciences and engineering, life sciences, and social sciences and humanities. Only 185 scientists across all EU member states and countries have won funding as part of the 2020 Advanced Grant competition.

Principal investigator Prof Andy Jordan, from UEA’s School of Environmental Sciences and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research notes: “This project aims to significantly advance society’s understanding of what is holding back deep, society-wide decarbonisation by examining the relationship between politicians, citizens/voters and other actors in a uniquely detailed and comparative manner.

​Existing studies generally take a brief snap shot of events in a single country. Our project will examine all countries of the world over a 30 year period, paying particular attention to the 41 biggest emitters in the world and using an unconventional combination of different methods and unrivalled new data sets.”

The project is being conducted in collaboration with the University of Heidelberg in Germany. Co-investigator Prof Jale Tosun, from its Institute of Political Science, said: “This research will understand how policies for climate change mitigation are formulated around the world with a specific focus on the world’s largest emitters.”

The ERC, set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European organisation funding excellent research. Each year it selects and funds the very best researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based in Europe. Applicants for Advanced Grants are expected to be exceptional leaders in terms of the originality and significance of their research contributions. Of the 1,881 research proposals submitted to this year’s competition, only 185 (10%) were selected for funding.

The funding is part of the EU research and innovation programme, Horizon 2020. The new grantees will carry out their projects across 20 EU Member States and associated countries with Germany (35), UK (34) and France (21) hosting the most grants.