Linking Global and Regional Energy Strategies (LinkS)

Abstract

The LinkS project was designed to analyse how global long-term strategies can be used as guidelines for the development of energy supply and technology deployment in regional energy systems. In order to produce recommendations for policy development and regional energy investment strategies, both quantitative and qualitative research were applied. Until an international climate change mitigation agreement with binding targets is established, the states and regions that implement mitigation strategies on their own initiative represent key actors for significant emissions reductions. This report therefore introduces a novel scenario "Global-20-20-20", where a hypothetical protocol based on the EU 20-20-20 policies is extended in time and space to a global scenario where an increasing number of the world’s regions gradually adopt the EU approach. This hypothetical protocol illustrates the aggregated potential of "globalizing" individual regional climate policy efforts, and is a major reference for much of the work presented in this report. Furthermore, in-depth studies of the European and Chinese regions under several global policy scenarios are presented.