1. Introduction
The considerations underpinning energy policies have evolved significantly. Initially, the focus was on providing electricity (primarily) through large-scale infrastructure projects like power plants, transmission lines, and dams [
1]. This supply-side approach dominated the energy landscape, with governments and utilities investing heavily in centralized generation and distribution systems [
2]. Over time, the limitations of this narrow, supply-side approach became clear, as the (often overlooked) environmental and social impacts of such projects became increasingly evident [
2]. The construction and operation of power plants, dams, and transmission lines often led to habitat destruction, water scarcity, air pollution, and community displacement [
3]. To provide a few examples justifying these impacts, there have been studies highlighting the deforestation and biodiversity risks of energy investments, revealing that significant portions of forests and biodiversity are threatened due to infrastructure projects, including energy developments [
4]. Other studies show how the ecosystem services can be affected by certain energy development decisions [
5]. Also, the broader ecological impacts of traditional energy generation methods such as fossil fuel- and nuclear-powered plants, have been reported long ago [
6,
7].
The gradual realization of such impacts coincided with an increasing sensitization of the broader sustainability transition of the economy and energy systems [
8]. Sustainable energy policies have become a key focus in recent international policies, most notably within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. SDG 7 specifically aims to “ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all”, recognizing energy as a critical enabler for inclusive development. This goal emphasizes the importance of universal access to energy, increasing the share of renewable energy and improving energy efficiency, as essential components for achieving broader development objectives [
9]. Furthermore, energy is interconnected with all other SDGs, including health (SDG3), climate action (SDG13), and sustainable cities (SDG11), highlighting its central role in fostering sustainable economic growth (SDG8) and addressing global challenges [
10,
11]. Also, the interaction between energy and digital transition, the need for automation and AI integration in energy assets performance management (APM) approach and the impact on demand patterns in industrial sector are leading to the interconnection of energy with additional SDGs, such as SDG9 (Industry Innovation and Infrastructure) and SDG12 (Responsible Consumption—also related to circular economy principles). The urgency of transitioning to sustainable energy systems is underscored by the need for integrated approaches that optimize energy’s effects across various sectors, ensuring equity and inclusiveness in the process [
12].
Countries are making varied progress in energy decarbonization, with some leading the way while others face significant challenges [
10,
13], with income inequalities being the main driver of the potential to use more renewable energy sources [
14]. Despite some advancements [
15], no country is fully on track for a complete energy transition. Moreover, failures and setbacks are not uncommon, as showcased by the cancellation of major projects, policy reversals, and public opposition to certain energy technologies [
16,
17,
18,
19]. This generates more difficulties in the efficient use of resources that are absolutely necessary for the deployment of clean energy, such as water reservoirs, or electrical infrastructure. Moreover, the extreme temperature limits (both around high or low temperature limits) accelerate the need for more cooling or heating demand. This underscores the need for stronger policies and financing, based on solid and holistic data-driven pathways and socially acceptable solutions to accelerate the shift and achieve global climate goals.
This Concept Paper supports this assertion by presenting an overview of the evolution of energy policy toward transdisciplinarity and the inclusion of more sophisticated technical aspects, and the integration of socio-economic and human-centric perspectives, and environmental modelling to control for unintended impacts. We examine examples that highlight the necessity for such approaches and their growing prevalence. Building on these findings, we provide a way forward to cover these gaps. We discuss how these aspects can be effectively integrated into a comprehensive, innovative, and transferable framework, which we present here for the first time. This framework is the blueprint of a research-led initiative, the Global Climate Hub, aimed at fostering holistic and sustainable energy policymaking. We present its conceptual structure and innovative elements, setting the theoretical grounds for more holistic and inclusive energy policy assessments and applications, based on this idea.
3. The Approach of the Global Climate Hub as a Response
The previous section shows the trend towards and importance of considering comprehensive interdisciplinary approaches encompassing environmental, social, economic and human systems related to energy systems and policy. By employing integrated approaches that consider these elements, policymakers can design interventions that not only promote renewable energy adoption but also enhance overall societal well-being. In this section, we present a framework to successfully and efficiently combine these elements and support the sustainability of long-term energy solutions.
Under the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (UN SDSN), we developed the Global Climate Hub (GCH), an international research-led and research-funded initiative aiming to meet the needs mentioned in
Section 2, while providing long-term sustainable policies and energy secure pathways. The GCH acts as an initiative for change, leveraging science-based models and solutions for a holistic and equitable transition towards a more resilient and sustainable world.
The GCH is a diverse group of research teams with the necessary expertise to tackle modern sustainability challenges, including energy-related challenges, in a coordinated way. It provides actionable pathways resulting from comprehensive modelling of natural/physical systems, resilience assessments of climate change and extreme phenomena, socio-economic models, and living labs with extensive and transformative stakeholder engagement and co-development of solutions [
83].
The GCH’s approach covers all the gaps and areas outlined in the previous section [
84]. It combines different disciplines (e.g., climate, natural systems, energy systems, public health, economics and social science, among others); it is transdisciplinary in the way it coordinates and uses this diverse expertise to develop holistic solutions; it considers the socio-economic aspects and involves co-developing solutions with relevant stakeholders, ensuring their wide co-ownership, and accelerating the necessary investments for their implementation; it develops and uses innovative metrics to account for the human security angles of the policies under consideration; it provides programs for long-term training and education to sustain the proposed sustainable pathways.
The described research approach is unique and powerful in its holistic nature and transferability. It can be applied to any country/region, capitalizing on the UN’s SDSN network consisting of multiple local and regional hubs and dedicated research teams worldwide [
85].
In order to further specify how the GCH’s approach works in practice, it is necessary to explain the five pillars/innovations on which the solutions’ development is based (
Figure 1).
- I.
Development of advanced cross-sectoral system dynamics models
Cutting-edge models, built on data-driven and mathematical simulations, are essential for capturing the trade-offs and dynamics across natural and infrastructure systems. These models analyze interactions among various systems (such as energy, water, land, atmosphere, food, etc.), allowing us to simulate scenarios and predict system behavior under different conditions. These conditions can refer to climate change projections, extreme phenomena and shocks, and management or policy scenarios to evaluate their impacts.
- II.
Support through an AI-driven digital infrastructure
A robust AI-driven digital infrastructure has been developed to support the management of large datasets generated by cross-sectoral simulations and facilitate the different models’ integration. It automates the harmonization, updating, and handling of big data, while enabling the development of digital twins—virtual replicas of physical systems. This infrastructure is crucial for integrating different modelling results that are particularly useful to study together and for providing visualizations that enhance understanding.
- III.
Bridging holistic scientific approaches with civil society
To ensure that sustainable pathways are fair and publicly acceptable, there must be a connection between holistic scientific models and civil society. This is achieved by developing socio-economic narratives that are tailored to specific cases, integrating economic models, valuation approaches, equilibrium models, and analyses of trade-offs. These narratives help to contextualize scientific insights in a way that is relevant to the everyday lives of individuals, promoting policies and solutions that are equitable, sustainable, and economically sound.
- IV.
Transformative participatory frameworks for stakeholder engagement
Engaging stakeholders in the co-design of sustainable pathways is critical to ensuring these solutions are both scientifically grounded and socially accepted. Transformative participatory frameworks involve communities, policymakers, and experts throughout the process, promoting collaboration and shared ownership of the outcomes. The GCH has an entire research unit working on such frameworks using state-of-the-art models, technologies and tools for living labs in a human-centric way, ensuring that solutions are tailored to the needs and values of stakeholders who must develop a sense of ownership of these solutions and their long-term sustainable and trusted implementation.
- V.
Open science and open access principles for sustainable pathways
All our data, models, and scientific tools developed are openly accessible, allowing for broad participation in the scientific process. We strongly believe that the sustainable pathways we develop should be built on the principles of open science, ensuring transparency and collaboration. This ensures that the knowledge and infrastructure developed can be used by researchers, policymakers, and the public alike, fostering innovation and enabling more comprehensive, inclusive solutions that are freely shared for the common good.
As mentioned, the GCH consists of nine research units, each one with its own research head and committed members. These units cover a wide range of expertise in digital applications, climate science, land–water–food–energy–biodiversity systems, human health, solutions acceleration, labour markets, policy, finance, participatory approaches, education and training programs (
Figure 2). It is their coordinated and systemic work that enables the provision and implementation of holistic, sustainable pathways, triggering the necessary transformations in all layers of the complex challenges our societies face [
86]. This coordinated approach follows the five principles (innovations) of
Figure 1, making the applications possible for any problem, scale and region. Indeed, such problems include the just decarbonization of energy systems, while considering the environmental and socio-economic implications highlighted in the previous sections.
According to the illustrated approach of
Figure 1, the research units of
Figure 2 use state-of the-art tools, models and approaches (for their respective fields) to provide new, innovative, and socially acceptable pathways. The solution pathways provided by the GCH can be applied anywhere and be tailored to any context, and there are several ongoing projects for various case studies at national, regional, and continental scales, taking advantage of the wide, global SDSN coverage (
Figure 2).
4. The GCH Concept Example for Analyzing Energy Systems
In this section, we provide a more in-depth explanation of what sort of work and what tools can be used by each one of the nine research units of the GCH, indicatively for energy systems analysis, along with some application examples.
The “climatology” unit (unit 2) provides climate change scenarios, and their projections downscaled to the region of interest, allowing us to explore their impacts on key variables (e.g., impact of future temperature and rainfall on energy demand and consumption). This practically can be achieved by downscaling Regional Circulation Models (RCMs) for instance, providing sets of plausible future conditions in a studied region/area, that can affect energy-related parameters and patterns [
87,
88]. Also, the study of extreme phenomena (e.g., historic floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, etc.) is covered by this unit in order to provide a description of a similar disturbance. Thus, the energy systems’ performance can be tested against such phenomena to explore how to make them more resilient [
89].
The “systems modelling” unit (unit 3) focuses on the modelling of natural/physical systems to provide us with integrated assessments to understand how such systems function. In particular, we develop and apply models simulating land-use changes, land productivity, and mainly monitor urbanization (based on remote sensing techniques, according to [
90,
91]) rates that directly affect energy demand. Such insights are connected to models of the dynamics of land, agriculture, food production and diets (based on the FABLE Calculator [
92]), which also affect energy use patterns. Another key parameter in energy planning is hydropower, so we also employ water management and hydrological models to obtain estimates on the availability and potential use constraints [
93].
The “energy” unit (unit 4) is dedicated to the development and application of energy-emissions models to provide data-driven insights for all sectors of the economy. In particular, we use the Balmorel model [
94], a fully sector-coupled energy system approach to explore plausible cross-sectoral decarbonization pathways based on the adoption of greener fuels as supply sources [
95]. Also, we use the LEAP model for more thorough assessments of the energy demand, costs and prices, and affordability of various policy scenarios [
26]. This unit covers all sectors of the economy, namely residential, services, agriculture and forestry, industry, and transportation. In particular, for the maritime sector, we have developed the MaritimeGCH model, which integrates economic, energy, fuel, emission and environmental factors, with economic and European policy considerations to provide pathways for sustainable shipping [
96].
The “public health” unit (unit 5) analyzes the effects of various energy policies in human health. These can be associated with emissions, their future evolution and the impact of different decarbonization pathways [
97]. The tools used are econometric models for the impact assessment and policy analyses to provide mitigation recommendations [
98].
The “economics” unit (unit 7) develops the socio-economic narratives for the integration of several of the parameters and results mentioned above into robust economic models, providing finance options for a just transition [
99]. The tools used by this unit cover environmental valuation techniques to integrate their insights into energy policymaking to make it more holistic [
100] and equilibrium models for the description/simulation of the overall picture of the economy under recent policies and sustainable decarbonization solutions [
101,
102]. An innovative example of this approach that is worth mentioning is the use of the environmental valuation of the ecosystem services (the benefits of having healthier ecosystems by adopting flexible renewable mixes) and the health impacts (better health due to reduces GHG emissions) to develop subsidies for certain energy policies. These aim to boost the uptake of innovative and more sustainable measures by local energy suppliers. Such measures refer to the use of energy-autonomous solar power units, enabling the operation of recycling and/or water reuse options. Furthermore, solutions related to finance opportunities and labour markets are also developed to ensure that the decarbonization pathways will be fully sustainable and will not happen at the expense of economic outputs or employment, but will in fact lead to increased productivity and the creation of greener jobs [
103,
104].
The “transformative participation” unit (unit 8) includes the whole process of stakeholder engagement, spanning from the early stages of model development (interacting with the aforementioned units) to the common understanding of the problems that must be tackled, the existing solutions and approaches, and the development of sustainable pathways by both researchers and diverse stakeholders. Sophisticated tools and software such as LivingLabModeler [
105] or MIRO [
106] and technologies (e.g., Virtual Reality) are used to make the experience realistic and efficient. This unit ensures the inclusion of the social and human/personal angle in energy policymaking and planning. The development of novel Human Security metrics and newly developed Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) enable the measurement of a crucial decision-making driver for sustainable energy transitions, revealing hidden elements (e.g., psychological, safety, etc.) for more efficient development of implementable solutions [
77].
The application of these solutions is the focus of the “innovation and acceleration” unit (unit 6). It mobilizes local governance, technology holders, start-ups, public–private partnerships, and all parties involved to uptake the designed pathways [
107,
108]. They become owners of the proposed solutions, giving particular importance to the inclusive, fair and equitable allocation of their benefits [
109].
The “education” unit (unit 9) designs tailored training and upskilling programs to ensure the viability of the solutions [
110]. These will be managed by the local stakeholders, after the project is finished to ensure that the necessary expertise stays in place for the successful long-term management of the developed solutions [
111].
All the data, models, and insights produced by such a process follow the principles of open science. Unit 1 is currently developing a powerful AI-supported infrastructure to host these insights and make them publicly available.
5. Concluding Remarks
The presented approach of the GCH is a comprehensive and systemic framework that enables researchers and stakeholders to understand the natural and socio-economic systems, realize the multifaceted problems, explore and co-design solutions, and sustain them in the long run. It accomplishes this by addressing the gaps and trends presented in
Section 2, as it offers interdisciplinary collaboration, coordination between scientists and stakeholders, ownership of solutions, and integration of socio-economic and human-centered perspectives into the developed pathways.
This Concept Paper is in essence a conceptual description of our vision towards sustainability, while it offers a preliminary picture of how it can practically work. There are currently several projects underway based on this approach, and although none of them are complete, we believe it was necessary and particularly useful to present here its conceptual foundations.
At this point, it is worth mentioning a few examples of such projects that are underway. We have started simulating the climate, energy, social and economic conditions of four European cities, along with the respective risks (natural, climatic, and supply chain) they face. This holistic simulation will be used to develop a tool to help public stakeholders and citizens assess the resilience of energy systems within the built environment, across multiple scales ranging from buildings to urban areas and territories. The aim of this project is to enhance preparedness and responsiveness throughout the life cycle of energy systems. A key element of the approach (in line with what we described in the previous sections) is the inclusion of human well-being, health, and quality of life as core metrics for evaluating resilience. Another example project that recently launched looks at the water–climate–energy–food nexus and its coupling with our socio-economic models to develop net-zero pathways at the European scale. The focus is on job creation, enhanced wellbeing and environmental stability. These projects take the GCH’s multidisciplinary approach, incorporating socio-economic, engineering, climate, and life sciences, while integrating relevant European and international policies and initiatives.
As these projects are underway, we cannot present any results at the moment. However, the aim of this paper was to present the concept of the GCH’s approach and the innovations it mobilizes at a theoretical level, rather to show the specific results of such applications. But it is worth noting two interesting observations from the ongoing research so far that apply for all case studies. First, it is difficult to make stakeholders understand that we need to build resilient energy and environmental systems to increasingly severe climatic threats. The understanding that extreme events for instance are not exceptions, but are likely to be the “new normal” in the future, is key to drive behavioural changes and investments to adaptation and mitigation. Second, the consideration of the social and human perspectives we analyzed is mostly overlooked. It is often omitted from current assessments, or at best perceived as a new parameter to include in energy policy.
We believe that adopting similar comprehensive approaches following the GCH concept holds immense potential for addressing pressing global challenges, such as the development of sustainable and resilient energy systems, with the same or higher economic outputs and job opportunities. In the future, we are optimistic that the research and policymaking will follow such ideas and will start to incorporate elements from these concepts. By mobilizing diverse, interdisciplinary research teams and leveraging the power of collaboration and on-ground research work (through the GCH and its national and regional networks), researchers can foster deeper connections with local communities and consistently drive meaningful action on different scales and problems.
Beyond just participating in projects, it is crucial that the GCH offers researchers the opportunity to remain actively involved in implementing their findings even after the projects are finished, while they can capitalize on their experiences and also apply them in other similar cases and projects.
We hope this approach becomes increasingly prevalent in the future, as we see it as a successful and uniquely holistic framework addressing modern challenges. We are optimistic that the GCH will continue inspiring more committed researchers to embrace this vision and join us in the pursuit of long-term sustainable solutions.
