PRISMA – Net zero Pathway Research through Integrated Assessment Model Advancements

Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) have played a critical role in supporting climate policy at national, European, and global levels over the last decade. With the rise of quantified policy targets (e.g., the recent wave of net-zero targets), policy packages, and consideration of multiple dimensions and sectors, the role of IAMs with their ability to consider complex inter-relationships between the economy and the environment and to provide robust numerical results has become ever more important. However, existing modelling frameworks –even those developed over the years in what
have become large-scale and detailed models- need to be ramped up to effectively respond to the new challenges
posed by ambitious decarbonization targets (especially the recent wave of net zero strategies), disruptive
events (like COVID-19 or climate change) and broad societal trends such as digitalisation, technological
change, and circularity and their links to climate policy.

PRISMA brings together the leading modelling teams in Europe, creating an ensemble of 14 diverse IAMs that span a large set of theoretical frameworks, process detail, spatial, temporal and technology granularity, and policy relevance. Moreover, it integrates a leading team in empirical assessment and a stakeholder engagement partner with strong ties to large networks of stakeholders, including the European Institutions. PRISMA has three main goals:

1. To advance the science of integrated assessment modelling towards more societally relevant process representation and evaluation.
2. To strengthen the empirical basis of modelling through exploitation of new data sources and empirical research.
3. To make models more policy-relevant and trustworthy through an active engagement with relevant stakeholders, policy makers, and an open-science approach

PRISMA aims to achieve significant advances in the state of the art of Integrated Assessment Modelling (IAM) to provide an improved set of tools for the analysis of environment-economy-society interactions and decarbonisation policies in the EU and beyond. These tools will all be made open-access during the project in order to provide the possibility for other models (within and outside the consortium) to integrate them and further use and develop them. Together with the main modelling frameworks participating in PRISMA, the project teams will apply these updated models together with the modules and tools to perform policy analysis of the main EU climate policies and develop Net-zero pathways and scenarios.