We will briefly provide an overview of ongoing work on sufficiency scenarios and respective assumptions on the one and on our sufficiency scenarios created by our research group on the other side. We would like to find potential collaborators for modelling sufficiency scenarios. Either the ones we derived in the background or own ones. Potentially this may lead to discussing how knowledge on sufficiency potential and options could be fed into energy models. We will provide ideas to gather data and references on quantification of sufficiency potentials and will collect feedback on how to format this information to be useful for modellers.
Some notes from the break-out group session — I do not know if you all agree on these points, I just try to summarize some points — you are very welcome to add and comment on this:
Overall
Interest from modellers side to include sufficiency is increasing
We are all aware that social challenges exist to implement sufficiency measures, however also technical challenges are connected to what is technological development is implicitly or explicitly included in modelling/scenario parameters and assumptions. Sometimes the technical ones are even rather on the magical side regarding the speed of implementation that is assumed, partly the limits of what is possible to realize are already crossed in the model assumptions to reach the climate goal boundary conditions. Including sufficiency could balance this
Especially the required speed to build infrastructure is a dominant constraint for the required fast transition to climate neutrality, here sufficiency could kick in to enable reaching the goal
However, there is still a high skepticism regarding including sufficiency in the scenarios for modelling, not that much among the openmods in the session, but it was reported that it would be difficult to explain for colleagues, recipients of the modelling results etc.
Models
Free standing sector demand models (rather simulation) can support to provide justified reduction potentials by sufficiency
The idea was proposed to try the other way round: Give the model a budget, the outcome is how much energy needs to be saved. Further models then get this reduction /energy demand and provide numbers on which energy service level indicators would that mean
Data
Additionally a comment understanding in energy service level indicators would be helpful - should be integrated in the energy ontology, so far there are only two energy service level indicators
More reliable data on potentials of sufficiency is required
A compilation of quantified sufficiency potentials can be very helpful - The energy sufficiency research groups currently works on such a sufficiency potential database, which provides quantified effects (GHG or TWH or other reduction) of different sufficiency policy measures
Including a measure for uncertainty like e.g. an error bar would be great
Including beneficial factors that would lead to this policy or the realization of the quantified potential to happen would be great
Would be great to offer the possibility to choose a bottom line for certain energy service indicators or something like preference spaces and get the respective quantified potential then
per-capita indicators have their advantages, but a big disadvantage is that they hide distributional effects which are also important for sufficiency - very important point, however we still need the aggregated per-capita-ones but should develop additional ones that reflect distributional aspects
We might come back to you for further feedback when the sufficiency potential database has developed
Scenarios
We have presented the scenarios our energy sufficiency research group has derived with a Cross-Impact-Balance Method (two green growth, four different sufficiency scenarios), there are 10 defined descriptors and narratives for each, but juts first steps of quantification of parameters yet.
If any of you are interesting in modelling these, let us know, then we can find out together how the quantification can take place
Peer‑reviewed article on how sufficiency is understood (sociologist perspective rather) — Lage, J. (2022). Sufficiency and transformation — A semi-systematic literature review of notions of social change in different concepts of sufficiency,
in: Front. Sustain., 25 August 2022 Sec. Sustainable Consumption. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frsus.2022.954660/full (open access)
sufficiency in National Energy and Climate Plan Analysis: Zell-Ziegler, C., Thema, J., et al. (2021). Enough? The role of sufficiency in European energy and climate plans, in: Energy Policy, 157, 112483. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2021.112483 (open access)
Scenarios/tools that include sufficiency aspects
CLEVER — A collaborative low energy vision for the European region — so far only a webinar/presentation of results is online but project report etc. will be published soon: https://clever-energy-scenario.eu
