New DeepDCarb Publications - September 2021

This month, two new peer-reviewed papers were published from the DeepDCarb project.

The first of these 'The Challenging Paths to Net-Zero Emissions: Insights from the Monitoring of National Policy Mixes' features in a special issue of The International Spectator focusing on Europe’s transition to sustainability. Examining data from the last 10 years that member states have reported to the EU on the climate policies that they have or will put in place to achieve collectively agreed EU targets, the analysis reveals that the average expected per-policy-instrument emission reduction has declined, while national policy mixes have remained generally stable over time.

The second paper 'Transformations for climate change mitigation: A systematic review of terminology, concepts, and characteristics'  is published in Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change. It undertakes a systematic review of articles that use transformation-related terms in the social science literature on climate change mitigation and finds this to be a diverse, fragmented research field that strongly focuses on the national, city, and international levels, the energy sector, and high-income countries. Although the use of transformation terminology has increased rapidly, there are few shared definitions, which arguably constitutes a serious challenge to scholarship and evidence-based policy making. To facilitate a more cumulative and impactful approach to research, it proposes transformational climate change mitigation as a new umbrella term for the varied mitigation-related societal transformations required to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement