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The final report of the PESETA project (Projection of Economic impacts of climate change in sectors of the European Union based on bottom up analysis), makes an assessment of the annual economic impacts of climate change in Europe in agriculture, river flooding, coastal systems and tourism without considering adaptation policies.

In PESETA, several temperature and sea level rise scenarios for the 2080s are considered for Europe, with temperature increases ranging from 2.5°C to 5.4°C and sea level rise scenarios varying between 48 and 88 cm.

The research estimates that the overall damage to the EU economy (GDP loss) would be between €20 and €65 billion per year. The economic wellbeing (welfare) of Europeans, which has historically grown at around 2% yearly, would improve less due to global warming. A temperature rise by 2.5°C could reduce welfare by 0.2% whereas a rise by 5.4°C could halve the approximate annual EU welfare growth.

The overall cost of global warming could be, however, much higher, as the study only focuses on four sectors of the economy and does not take into account nonmarket impacts in fields like biodiversity and ecosystems or natural disasters.

See the Press release in the JRC Corporate website.

Access the report here

The report shows that social computing goes beyond individual networking and entertainment, as it empowers tens of millions of Europeans to support their work, health, learning and citizenship in innovative ways. The research found that social computing is reshaping work practices, as employees join communities of interest outside their organisations to improve their knowledge and skills. Social innovation enabled by social computing contributes to improved lifelong learning processes, business competitiveness, social inclusion and integration of immigrants, among others.

The study highlights the trend towards more user-centric and effective services as well as new forms of civic and political participation. It also analyses emerging risks and challenges such as a new 'digital divide' as regards the skills required to fully benefit from the opportunities of web 2.0, and emerging threats related to security, safety and privacy.

The report argues that European policy-makers are well placed to set favourable conditions for the spreading of social computing practices and foresees that social computing will further evolve and grow into a fundamental part of the digital networked society.

See the Press release in the JRC Corporate website.

Access the report here

Two EU companies feature in the top ten: Volkswagen in the 3rd place with an R&D investment of €5.93 billion and Nokia in the 8th. The world's biggest investor in R&D was Toyota Motor, with €7.61 billion. The report also shows that companies from emerging countries have the highest R&D investment growth.

Part of the Industrial Research Investment Monitoring activity carried out jointly by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the Research Directorate-General (DG RTD) of the European Commission, the scoreboard is the fruit of research conducted by the JRC Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS), with overall monitoring and guidance provided by Directorate C (European Research Area: Knowledge Economy) of DG RTD.

See the Press release in Europa website.

Access the 2009 Scoreboard

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This is the first time that, in addition to all EU 27 Member States, six countries associated to the Framework Programme have been covered: Croatia, Iceland, Israel, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey.

The studies assess, in a structured manner, the evolution of the national policy mixes in the perspective of the Lisbon Strategy. They focus on how the combination of policies in different domains areas influence research activities and goals, as they analyze, for instance, how innovation or education policies interact and have an impact in research.

The 2009 Policy Mix Reports have been produced by the JRC's Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) and concentrate, in particular, on the national research and development investment targets and on the realisation and improved governance of the European Research Area.

ERAWATCH supports the development of the European Research Area by providing policy makers and analysts working in the field of science and research with concise and up-to-date information and analysis of research systems and policy developments.

This Reference Report shows that €3.3 billion in R&D on low-carbon technologies were invested in the EU in 2007. Of this, 56% came from industry, a figure that rises to 69% when taking into account only non-nuclear low carbon energy technologies. Both corporate and public R&D investments are largely concentrated in a few Member States.

This study constitutes a benchmark of current expenditures on industrial and public R&D in low-carbon energy technologies that have been identified as a priority for the EU in the Strategic Energy Technology (SET) Plan. These technologies are: wind energy, photovoltaics, concentrated solar power (CSP), bioenergy, carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS), smart grids, nuclear fission, hydrogen and fuel cells and nuclear fusion.

The IPTS research builds on the contributions made to the January 2009 Communication "Towards a comprehensive climate change agreement in Copenhagen" and paves the way for the forthcoming UNFCCC Conference of Parties to be held in December in Denmark.

This paper, which seeks to unlock the current impasse in the negotiations, says that finance requirements for adaptation and mitigation actions in developing countries could reach roughly € 100 billion per year by 2020. Domestic private and public finance could deliver between 20-40 % of the funding, the carbon market up to 40 % and international public finance could contribute to cover the rest.

The EU has set the most ambitious climate reduction targets in the world, with binding mechanisms already in place that guarantee a unilateral 20% greenhouse gas emission reduction by 2020 compared to 1990 levels. The EU is committed to increase this to a 30% reduction in the context of a fair and ambitious global agreement in Copenhagen, if other developed countries commit themselves to comparable reductions, and if economically more advanced developing countries contribute adequately according to their responsibilities and respective capabilities.

In the event of a successful agreement in Copenhagen, these documents explain that between 2010–2012, fast-start financing is likely to be needed for adaptation, mitigation, research and capacity building in developing countries in the range of € 5 to 7 billion per year.

Furthermore, the Communication recommends that support to adaptation should give priority to the most vulnerable and poor developing countries. It also suggests that international aviation and maritime transport can provide an important source of innovative financing, and should be further explored.

The document also proposes to create a new High-level Forum on International Climate Finance that should monitor and regularly review gaps and imbalances in financing mitigation and adaptation actions. It also highlights the need for all countries, except the so called Least Developed Countries, to prepare low-carbon growth plans by 2011, including credible mid-term and long-term objectives and prepare annual greenhouse gas inventories.

See the Press release in Europa website.

COP 15 United Nations Climante Change Conference

This report presents the results of an international workshop organised by the JRC's Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) and summarises the different views expressed by the participants. The seminar brought together national regulators, industry representatives, research institutes and participants from the agri-food supply chain.

Participants concluded that the increasing number of new GM crops will intensify the effects of asynchronous approval (different countries do not approve GMOs at the same time) and isolated foreign approval (GM crops are authorised by just one country). Therefore, the likelihood of crop shipments being rejected at the EU border because of low-level presence (LLP) of unapproved GMOs could become considerably higher in future, causing trade disruptions at the international level.

See the JRC News release in the JRC website.

The report is accessible from the IPTS Publications section