Hello, Welcome to this course entitled “Simulation
models for the design of transition paths towards a sustainable society.”
This MOOC will help the students to reach the competences in the use of simulation tools
for the assessment of economy, energy and environment systems, and, specifically the
tools developed in the MEDEAS project.
This first module will be divided in two parts: a general overview about climate change, global
ecological crisis and sustainability and an introduction to the general structure of Integrated
Assessment Models, such as MEDEAS.
We will start with an INTRODUCTION TO SUSTAINABILITY What does Sustainability means?
In the dictionary, the word Sustainability is defined as: the ability to be maintained
at a certain rate or level.
The quality of being able to continue over a period of time.
Regarding the environment.
Sustainability is the quality of causing little or no damage to the environment and therefore
able to continue for a long time.
Sustainability expresses the quality of a system to survive.
An economic system will be sustainable when it doesn’t suffer major disruptions that
seriously question its principles.
A social system will be sustainable when its transition to better living conditions preserves
and encourages those values that are promoters of good coexistence.
And similarly, a biological system will be sustainable when the conditions for life and
reproduction of the species are maintained.
But it is the natural biological system that, each day, seems less capable of sustaining
life on Earth, at least as we know it, as a result of the Global Ecological Crisis,
such as Climate change, Pollution, Scarcity of natural resources and the overshoot of
several Planetary Boundaries.
In 1992 the document "World Scientists´ warning to humanity", signed by more than one thousand
seven hundred scientists, showed that we were pushing Ecosystems beyond their capacities
to support life.
And they prayed that we would greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reverse the trend
of collapsing biodiversity.
More than twenty five years later, we have only been able to stabilize the stratospheric
ozone layer.
Humanity has failed to progress in solving these environmental challenges.
The situation is now even worse than in previous decades.
Humanity is not taking the urgent and necessary measures to safeguard our threatened biosphere.
The world´s biodiversity is vanishing at an alarming rate.
Populations of vertebrate species are rapidly collapsing, as we can see on the graph.
Between 1970 and 2012 the total decline is close to 60%.
Global fossil-fuel carbon dioxide emissions have increased sharply in comparison with
the historic trend before 1992.
In parallel, the global average surface temperature has also rapidly risen.
In 2009 Johan Rockström and his team proposed a new approach to global sustainability.
They defined nine planetary boundaries within which they expected humanity to operate safely.
Transgressing one or more boundaries may be catastrophic due to the risk of crossing thresholds
that will be triggered in a non-linear way.
Nowadays, four planetary boundaries have already been transgressed: climate change, biosphere
integrity, land-system change and biogeochemical flows (Nitrogen & Phosphorous).
And another one is close to being crossed, the acidification of the oceans.
The farther we pass the boundary, the higher the risk of regime shifts, destabilized system
processes, or erosion of resilience.
And the opportunities to prepare us for such changes are fewer.
Seen in another way.
today, the ecological footprint generated by humanity exceeds the total biocapacity
of the planet Earth.
Thus, the ecological debt continues to increase each year without remedy.
A return to sustainability will require a drastic change in lifestyles, and this change
must be bolder the longer it takes to act.
None of the necessary changes have yet been made: today humanity uses the equivalent of
1.7 Earths to provide the resources we use and to manage our waste.
We use more ecological resources and services than nature can regenerate and we mainly do
it through overfishing, overharvesting forests, and emitting more CO2 than the system can
absorb.
Initiatives such as the MEDEAS project ("Modelling the Energy Development under Environmental
and Socioeconomic constraints") are designed to be part of this return to ecological sustainability.
What is MEDEAS?
It is a consortium that aims to create a new computational model that redefines the future
of the energy system in Europe.
It takes into account the physical and social limitations to implement, modify and test
public policies to facilitate the transition towards a European system of low carbon energy.
And avoiding, in this transition, the loss of socio-economic competitiveness, any lack
of protection of the environment, the destruction of quality jobs and social unrest.
In the next topic, we will address the concept of Integrated Assessment Models and an overview
of MEDEAS model.