ALternative Pathways toward Sustainable development and climate stabilization (ALPS) International Symposium

About ALPS: A variety of emissions scenarios for climate change mitigation have been developed so far, and made a due contribution to policy-making in the climate change mitigation efforts.

The traditional approaches in modeling exercises for scenario development, however, tend to describe a simplified world under which mitigation or adaptation costs are minimized with the ideal conditions.

The reality is more complex: different actors have different policy priorities based on their economic level, natural circumstances and other constraints, which leads to difficulty in creating a coordinated uniform policy, as observed in the COP15 negotiations and in the domestic policymaking processes.

Climate change is not the only issue on the global agenda, so it should be addressed in a balanced manner across multiple dimensions. Traditional global abatement scenarios may be too simplified to capture richness of detail and context of the real world situation. The results reveal that climate policy with the highly-idealized premises sometimes does not deliver relevant outcomes, or rather causes unduly confusion to the society.

The ALPS project aims at providing alternative plausible future scenarios and through quantification of multiple aspects of society on the assumptions that the real-world society is intrinsically consist of a wide range of values. This approach allows us to inform decision makers of more appropriate strategies toward sustainable development and climate stabilization from longer and wider perspectives.

TNT Researchers Arnulf Grubler and Nebojsa Nakicenovic will give the following talks at the symposium:

• Arnulf Grubler will present an alternative end-use, demand-side focused strategy for meeting a 1.5 degree climate target (without overshoot).  The strategy, published as Low Energy Demand (LED) scenario in Nature Energy in 2018 takes an end-use and efficiency entry point towards climate mitigation and SDGs.
• Nebojsa Nakicenovic will talk about "Disruptive technologies and sustainable lifestyles toward net-zero emissions", drawing on findings from The World in 2050 (TWI2050) initiative.

Last edited: 06 March 2019