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Integration of Climate Data in the SAVi Wastewater Model
The document details how climate indicators—specifically precipitation, runoff, and temperature—from the Copernicus Climate Data Store (CDS) are integrated into the SAVi Wastewater model. It provides a literature review on how these variables affect wastewater treatment facility (WWTF) capacity and efficiency, such as the impact of heavy rainfall on sewage overflows and the effect of temperature on nutrient removal. The report includes simulation results for Johannesburg, demonstrating that climate-induced sewage overflows and urban runoff increase energy use, energy costs, and the social cost of carbon, while also causing environmental damage through nitrogen leaching.
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Document type: Report
Sustainability Assessment of an Onshore Wind Portfolio in Germany
The report evaluates a 28.7 MW onshore wind portfolio in Germany against a gas-fired power plant of equivalent annual generation. Using the SAVi methodology, it integrates externalities (environmental, social, and economic) and climate change risks (physical and transitional) into a Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA), Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE), and financial analysis. The findings indicate that while both assets are viable under conventional metrics, the wind portfolio is significantly more resilient to climate risks and societal costs. The gas-fired plant's financial viability collapses if a carbon tax is introduced or if social costs of carbon are internalized, whereas the wind portfolio maintains positive internal rates of return (IRR) and lower societal LCOE.
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Document type: Report
HOURS OF SAFETY IN COLD WEATHER: A FRAMEWORK FOR CONSIDERING RESILIENCE IN BUILDING ENVELOPE DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION
The briefing introduces 'hours of safety' to measure building resilience during extreme cold events. Simulations in Duluth, Minnesota, show that high-performance envelopes, such as Passive House standards, maintain safe temperatures significantly longer than older or code-compliant homes, highlighting the potential for this metric to guide resilience planning and weatherization efforts.
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Document type: Briefing
How to play the gender and climate game
The guide outlines a simulation game where participants act as subsistence farmers managing assets (beans) against climate risks (droughts and floods). The game progresses from a gender-neutral phase to one that introduces systemic inequalities—such as lower starting assets for women and lower harvest payouts—to spark dialogue on climate vulnerability. An optional 'gender-smart programming' round demonstrates how targeted interventions can equalize outcomes by providing equal starting assets and harvest rewards regardless of gender.
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Document type: Guide
An Application of the Sustainable Asset Valuation (SAVi) Methodology in Sri Lanka
The report evaluates four scenarios for the restoration of South-West Beira Lake in Colombo: business-as-usual (BAU), wastewater treatment upgrades, dredging of lake deposits, and a combined approach. The analysis finds that while dredging alone provides limited benefits, upgrading wastewater treatment offers the highest benefit-to-cost ratio (39.67). The combined scenario of wastewater treatment and dredging produces the greatest absolute economic gains, increasing property values by over USD 43 million and recreational spending by USD 19.5 million by 2025. The document recommends recognizing the lake as a tangible capital asset to facilitate blended financing solutions involving public authorities and private investors.
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Document type: Report
Examining wood-energy systems with integrated assessment and landscape models
The paper argues that traditional Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) often fail to accurately capture the complexities of biomass energy and land cover, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. By linking the TIAM-ECN economic model with the MoFuSS geospatial model, the author demonstrates that projected woodfuel demand in Kenya exceeds the sustainable supply of woody biomass. The study highlights a gap in current modelling where economic optimization does not account for physical landscape constraints, suggesting that future models must better integrate market responses, such as price increases and fuel substitution, with spatial biomass availability.
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Document type: Research paper
Mänguraamat Valikutega seiklus säästva energia valdkonnas
The guide uses a series of realistic, simulated scenarios to explore the complexities of involving citizens in sustainable energy projects, such as wind farm siting and energy efficiency upgrades. It focuses on three primary dimensions of success: social legitimacy, institutional sustainability, and political effectiveness. Through 39 different sections, the document analyzes the trade-offs between different engagement models—participatory, deliberative, and hybrid—and provides strategies for managing conflicts, handling technical constraints, and navigating the influence of higher-level government bodies and political election cycles.
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Document type: Guide
Land-use options for staying within the Planetary Boundaries
The authors use a simulation-based multi-criteria land use optimization procedure to identify scenarios that balance terrestrial carbon storage, biodiversity conservation, land and water use, and food security. The analysis indicates that substantial increases in agricultural productivity are key to achieving better outcomes across these goals, with potential terrestrial carbon sequestration reaching 98 GtC and biodiversity risk reduction of 53%. The research also examines synergies and trade-offs between these global scenarios and local or national goals, such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
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Document type: Research paper
DEMAND FLEXIBILITY THE KEY TO ENABLING A LOW-COST, LOW-CARBON GRID
The document argues that demand flexibility—shifting electricity use to match renewable supply—can increase renewable energy revenues, reduce curtailment, and lower carbon emissions more cost-effectively than investing in new gas-fired generation.
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Document type: Briefing
The importance of socio-ecological system dynamics in understanding adaptation to global change in the forestry sector
The study uses the CRAFTY-Sweden agent-based model to simulate how the Swedish forestry sector adapts to various socio-economic and climatic scenarios up to 2100. It finds that while multi-objective management generally supports adaptation, a diverse combination of management strategies is most effective at meeting ecosystem service demands across large regions. The results indicate that adaptive capacity is dynamic, evolving through interactions between actors and external drivers, suggesting that process-based models are superior to indicator-based models for studying autonomous adaptation. Finally, the paper argues that combining planned and autonomous adaptation is more successful than either approach in isolation.
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Document type: Research paper
The effect of forest owner decision-making, climatic change and societal demands on land use change and ecosystem service provision in Sweden
The document presents the CRAFTY-Sweden model, which simulates future land use and ecosystem services in Sweden. Findings suggest that socio-economic changes and owner behavior have a greater influence on land-use change than climatic effects on productivity. The model predicts an increase in timber harvesting and a decoupling between the supply and demand of forest ecosystem services.
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Document type: Research paper
Climate change, irrigation and hydropower
The study finds that the combined impact of climate change and expanded irrigation will generally reduce river runoff, with the most significant negative impact on hydropower production occurring in the Kizilirmak basin. While reservoirs in the Devoll basin improve water availability during low flow periods, reservoirs in the Kizilirmak basin increase water losses through evaporative surfaces and by enabling larger irrigation withdrawals.
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Document type: Research paper
Industrial and terrestrial carbon leakage under climate policy fragmentation
The study examines how fragmented climate policies, where some regions implement carbon taxes while others do not, lead to 'carbon leakage'—the relocation of emissions to non-participating regions. It distinguishes between industrial carbon leakage (ICL), driven by fossil fuel price changes, and terrestrial carbon leakage (TCL), driven by land-use changes. The findings indicate that TCL is the dominant form of leakage until 2050, primarily due to deforestation in non-participating regions as food and bioenergy production shift away from participating areas. The research concludes that the total leakage rate decreases as the size of the climate coalition increases, but even the most inclusive fragmented scenarios fail to limit global temperature rise to below 2°C by 2100.
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Document type: Research paper
ENERGY SAVINGS FROM WINDOW SHADES
The report evaluates the energy impact of Hunter Douglas insulating honeycomb shades using whole-building simulations in nine U.S. cities. It finds that these shades can significantly reduce heating and cooling energy consumption, particularly in existing homes, while improving operative temperatures and reducing peak electrical demand. The study emphasizes that savings are highly dependent on the operation schedule and window orientation, with west-facing windows being critical for peak demand reduction in summer.
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Document type: Report
Simulating High-Elevation Hydropower with Regional Climate Warming in the West Slope Sierra Nevada
The authors used the Water Evaluation And Planning (WEAP) system to simulate hydropower generation in the upper west slope Sierra Nevada under four temperature increase scenarios (0°C, 2°C, 4°C, and 6°C) through 2100. The model indicates that the highly productive northern Sierra Nevada would experience large reductions in hydropower generation due to decreased annual runoff, while central watersheds show a better ability to adapt to changes in runoff timing. Generation in the less productive southern watersheds also decreases.
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Document type: Research paper
Climate-Friendly Land Use: Paths and Policies toward a Less Wasteful Planet
The report uses a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to simulate two scenarios: a reduction in global beef consumption and a combined scenario of reduced beef and increased poultry/pork consumption. The findings indicate that reducing beef consumption leads to significant declines in cattle production and pasture land, particularly in the US, Latin America, and Australia. In the US, a beef-only reduction would decrease cereal grain acreage by 4% (3.5 million acres) and pasture land by 16% (100 million acres). The combined scenario shows that while beef production falls, poultry production increases significantly in regions like India (166%) and the US (36%), with global pasture land reductions totaling millions of acres across several regions.
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Document type: Report
Global air quality and health co-benefits of mitigating near-term climate change through methane and black carbon emission controls
The research evaluates 14 emission control measures for black carbon and methane to determine their impact on air quality and health by 2030. The study finds that full implementation could significantly reduce global surface concentrations of PM2.5 and ozone, avoiding millions of premature deaths annually, with the vast majority of these benefits occurring in Asia.
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Document type: Research paper
The DICER Model: Methodological Issues and Initial Results
The document presents the DICER (DICE-Regional) model, which improves upon the DICE2007 model by introducing regional specifications for damage and abatement cost functions and a modified climate module. Initial deterministic results indicate lower peak temperatures (2.6°C) and more rapid emission reductions compared to DICE2007. The authors also propose a risk-adjusted cost-benefit analysis using option pricing to account for uncertainty, finding that incorporating volatility in damages and costs lowers maximum mean temperatures by approximately 0.5°C.
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Document type: Research paper
Environmental Concerns in Water Pricing Policy: an Application of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)
The research evaluates irrigation water pricing policies in Puglia, Italy, using a two-step process: simulation via mathematical programming and efficiency analysis via Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The study compares technical efficiency with 'eco-efficiency,' which simultaneously considers economic outputs and environmental externalities. Results indicate that volumetric pricing methods are generally the most efficient, while inefficiency in other options is primarily driven by technical factors, specifically labour use, rather than environmental concerns like nitrate surplus or pesticide risk.
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Document type: Research paper
Tropical cyclones: current characteristics and potential changes under a warmer climate
The project investigates tropical cyclone dynamics in the Eastern Pacific, emphasizing the role of atmospheric circulations and external factors like warm dry air from the US in track prediction. Initial results include the creation of a historical database of cyclones hitting Mexican Pacific States and the training of over 100 students. The project concludes that regional-level climate studies and data collection must be expanded to accurately assess regional risks.
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Document type: Fact sheet