EURO 2025 Leeds
Abstract Submission

2959. Optimising sectoral climate mitigation efforts against multiple sustainability indicators: a multi-objective integrated assessment

Invited abstract in session MC-18: OR for Sustainable Development III, stream OR for Sustainable Development.

Monday, 12:30-14:00
Room: Esther Simpson 2.09

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Alexandros Nikas
Electrical & Computer Engineering, Decision Support Systems Lab, National Technical University of Athens
2. Dirk-Jan Van de Ven
Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3)
3. Clàudia Rodés Bachs
Basque Centre for Climate Change
4. Theo Rouhette
Basque Centre for Climate Change
5. Russell Horowitz
Basque Centre for Climate Change
6. Jon Sampedro
Basque Centre for Climate Change
7. Natasha Frilingou
National Technical University of Athens
8. Kimon Georgiou
National Technical University of Athens
9. Xin Zhao
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
10. Abhishek Chaudhary
Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur
11. Konstantinos Koasidis
Institute of Communication & Computer Systems, National Technical University of Athens

Abstract

The sustainable development agenda involves complex transformations that significantly interact with climate action. Developing long-term sustainable development pathways typically relies on integrated assessment models (IAMs) by exploring co-benefits and trade-offs between climate policy and sustainable development goals (SDGs), and hardcoding policies into models to understand sustainability implications of climate action. However, most IAMs apply least-cost approaches for defining marginal mitigation efforts, disproportionally favouring maximising performance on economic rather than broader sustainability indicators. Here, we introduce an integrated approach leveraging multi-objective optimisation algorithms linked with IAMs, and Monte Carlo simulations to simultaneously optimise mitigation in terms of multiple SDG indicators, while considering stochastic uncertainty. Our aim is to optimise global mitigation effort allocation across economic sectors based on the performance in indicators along multiple SDGs and assuming a wide range of socioeconomic assumptions, towards developing long-term pathways with balanced sustainability performance. We validate this approach with the GCAM model and the AUGMECON-R algorithm, identifying trade-offs in sectoral and sustainability performance, notably between economic and environmental dimensions. Finally, we highlight the advantages of our approach to inform climate policy by comparing our SDG-balanced pathways with least-cost ones.

Keywords

Status: accepted


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