About

Concept

Concept
Phase 1
Identifying measures and cross-sectoral links, generating input data, and co-developing new open-source modules
Phase 2
Integrating, validating, and operationalising the open-source MIC3 framework, co-designing industry & policy questions
Phase 3
Modelling Europe’s desirable industrial futures and developing capacities in the case study regional industrial clusters
Phase 1
Identifying measures and cross-sectoral links, generating input data, and co-developing new open-source modules
Conceptualisation of circularity & decarbonisation
Generating input data & framework conditions: Identification and characterisation of measures, interactions, and opportunities.
Stakeholder engagement & co-creation
Co-defining operational capacity needs from diverse perspectives of EU industry, regional industry clusters, EU & national policy actors.
Open model development
New, open-source capabilities Service & product databases, global & EU MFA, socioeconomic, industrial, energy, and environmental modules.
Phase 2
Integrating, validating, and operationalising the open-source MIC3 framework, co-designing industry & policy questions
Stakeholder engagement & co-creation
Co-designing pertinent questions for scenario analyses. Validation and desirability of the new individual modules.
Open model development
The open-source MIC3 model. Integration of modules, modelling and data coordination, API development, compatibility with IPCC AR7 cycle.
Driving the transformation of EU industry
Case study analysis based on the individual open-source modules. Mapping questions on the individual modules and demonstrating their use.
Phase 3
Modelling Europe’s desirable industrial futures and developing capacities in the case study regional industrial clusters
Stakeholder engagement & co-creation
Co-production of pathways of sustainable EU industry futures. Validation and capacity development in regional industry clusters
Open model development
Final version of MIC3 based on users’ feedback. Simplified online version of MIC3 with helpdesk support.
Driving the transformation of EU industry
Modelling pathways to a circular, and climate-neutral European industry. Including in the global context, and against all SDG dimensions.
The need to address a joined decarbonisation and circularity strategy for industries and the project’s ambition at a glance.

The need to approach climate action, resource efficiency, and circularity performance as integrated, economy-wide, cross-cutting issues is gaining attention in the policy world, stimulating the development of new industrial policies worldwide, including the USA’s Inflation Reduction Act and China’s 14th five-year plan. In the EU, the Green Deal Industrial Plan along with the Net-Zero Industry Act, the Critical Raw Materials Act, and a reform of the electricity market design, set the regulatory framework for industrial competitiveness and innovation as well as the attractiveness of the EU as an investment location for the net-zero industry. These initiatives are aimed not only to respond to the geopolitical environment following the war in Ukraine and the need to secure access to raw materials, but also to reinforce the new Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP), which explicitly promotes crosscutting actions that build synergies between Circular Economy and climate change mitigation and adaptation at global, regional, and national level. Despite these policy advancements in Europe and other major economies, however, there remains a wide progress gap at the global level between ambitious emissions savings and high circularity performance due to the limited scientific and technical capacity available to underpin feasible, robust, and effective policies in both domains.

The TRANSIENCE project will create an open, integrated, modular framework to simulate pathways toward achieving the transition of European industries to climate neutrality while fully integrating material efficiency and circular economy measures in energy and climate models. To do this, it will bring together the consortium’s high-level expertise behind, and backbones of, well-established models in actively informing climate, energy, and industrial policies in Europe, addressing concerns related to broader sustainability, including environmental synergies or trade-offs, changes in industrial output, employment, competitiveness, global sourcing, trade, and other macroeconomic indicators. The end product, the Model for European Industry Circularity and Climate Change mitigation (MIC3), will allow to establish the required capacities and provide useful insights for industrial circularity performance and decarbonisation. MIC3, the ‘satellite’ modules comprising it and the scenario exercises stemming from it will be entirely co-developed and validated with relevant stakeholders from industry, policy, and civil society, as well as used to inform assessments and transition strategies, at EU and country level, at global level, and within 4 heterogeneous regional industry clusters in Europe, to ensure their usability and exploitation in real-world use cases.