Join our two-day hybrid workshop for national policymakers, government science advisors and EU officials interested in rethinking how economics is used in climate-change modelling.
This event offers an accessible introduction to Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), which are tools that combine economics with insights from human and earth systems to inform climate and sustainability policy. You will hear from leading experts, followed by guided discussions shaped by priorities raised in national, European and UN processes.
We will explore how current economic assumptions influence IAMs and other models, what these models can and cannot assess, and how they can better support real-world transitions.
Four main areas will be considered:
1) IAMs and climate change mitigation scenarios tend not to include climate change impacts and adaptation costs. This can lead to comparing the economic costs of mitigation with counterfactual scenarios without the economic costs of climate change and adaptation.
2) Claims that equity and justice are not adequately reflected in the IAM scenarios that often result in greater and unrealisable expectations on developing countries and do not consider the need for development.
3) IAMs do not explicitly consider finance and financial flows and how policy responses at national and international levels, such as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and Long Term Strategies (LTS), are financed as well as their role in reducing climate change risks. Finance as aid (Paris Agreement (PA) Art 9) and switching from brown finance to green (aligning financial flows PA Art 2.1.c) are not adequately reflected in the modelling scenarios.
4) IAMs and modelling scenarios have a rather limited treatment of technology development, deployment, and transfer including carbon reduction/removal technologies and associated risks.
Outcomes of the dialogue will be drawn into a summary report to feed into the next Climate Neutrality Forum, to be held in May 2026.
Organisers: JPI Climate, Cambridge Trust for New Thinking in Economics; supported by MAGICA
Note: Places limited to 40 in-person participants; upon registering participants will receive confirmation of their place.