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Energy

Policy scenarios for delivering the European Green Deal

Starting from the Reference Scenario 2020, and building upon the Climate Target Plan analysis, 3 core policy scenarios have been produced to serve as common tools for analysis across the impact assessments of various initiatives of the European Green Deal policy package, presented in July 2021.

The 3 core scenarios are

  • REG: relying on very strong intensification of energy and transport policies in absence of carbon pricing in road transport and buildings. In REG, maritime transport sector is included in the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS).
  • MIX: relying on both carbon price signal extension to road transport and buildings and strong intensification of energy and transport policies. With its uniform carbon price, it reflects either an extended and fully integrated EU ETS or an existing EU ETS and a new ETS established for road transport and buildings with emission caps set in line with cost-effective contributions of the respective sectors. Maritime transport sector is assumed to be included in the existing EU ETS in MIX.
  • MIX-CP: representing a more carbon price driven policy mix that illustrates a revision of the EED and RED but limited to a lower intensification of current policies in addition to the carbon price signal applied to new sectors. Unlike MIX, this scenario allows to separate carbon price signals of “current” and “new” ETS. The relative split of ambition in GHG reductions between “current” ETS and “new ETS” remains, however, close in MIX-CP to the MIX scenario. As a consequence, considering the different assumptions on policies, this leads to differentiated carbon prices between “current” ETS and “new” ETS. Maritime transport sector is assumed to be included in the “current” ETS in MIX-CP.

Scenario results

The results cover the following 4 dimensions

  • Energy, transport and overall GHG emissions (from the PRIMES model), available for the three policy scenarios;
  • Details on non-CO2 GHG emissions (from the GAINS model), available for the MIX scenario and the MIX-CP scenario; the ambition for the mitigation of non-CO2 GHG emissions in the REG scenario has been assumed to be the same as in the MIX scenario;
  • LULUCF emissions (from the GLOBIOM model), available for the MIX scenario;
  • Air pollution (from the GAINS model), available for the three policy scenarios.

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