Participatory Scenario Construction for Sustainability in European Regions and Cities

The EUCO2 project is the largest sub-national initiative on CO2 mitigation in Europe. It is a three stage process that is based on mutual learning. The three stages are: forming emissions and energy baselines; forming energy scenarios; and forming energy plans. There is a strong network behind the project that consists of 18 European City regions (including 9 capital cities) each seeking to learn from one another. The scenario component of the EUCO2 project will directly engage in excess of 300 stakeholders. When it is complete there will be 64 separate energy scenarios, 4 for each region. The conclusion of the project will see 18 energy plans being formed (one for each region) – each designed to deliver the equivalent of an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions. The project uses the EU standard Greenhouse Gas Regional Inventory Protocol (GRIP) and its combined qualitative / quantitative approach to forming energy futures. The GRIP approach will be presented, along with the preliminary results from the EUCO2 project. Furthermore, the initial results from additional studies conducted using GRIP will be discussed including an energy planning European study entitled PEPESEC. In this component of the presentation the headline results from a range of scenario exercises including ones conducted with the Scottish Parliament and in Sacramento, California – will be compared and contrasted. One of the common outcomes of the GRIP scenario process is that the resulting output does not achieve its intention for example a scenario that seeks to achieve an 80% scenario falls short, sometimes substantially short, of the target. There are many reasons for this. This is largely due to how individuals and groups make decisions. It is, however, interesting to note that even though the scenario process is always conducted in a “laboratory style environment” that the participants as a group or as individuals bring their own constraints to the exercise. As a result of this the participants in the scenario sessions produce energy futures that do not include the requisite changes in energy demand, fuel mix and generation technologies necessary to deliver long term, let alone short term emissions reduction targets. The presentation will highlight the potential importance of ascribing numbers to energy futures. It will highlight the need for a joined up (non-silo) approach to energy planning. The experience of the GRIP is that policy makers, and energy planners have often never sat down and quantified their energy futures in terms of changes in CO2. The intention of the project is to move discussion on mitigation forward, to encourage top-down and bottom-up policy formation and to see how international linkages may be built to further this aim.