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We investigate the limitations of cap-and-trade systems as a tool for driving investments in low carbon industrial technologies. Investments may be delayed, and suboptimal technology choice may result from myopic behaviour, financial constraints, and policy risk. We develop a partial equilibrium model that explicitly incorporates such imperfect behaviour in cap-and-trade systems. We evaluate how these imperfections influence the carbon price signal and their subsequent impact on irreversible investment decisions of industries. We find that such imperfections can distort carbon price trajectories, leading to suboptimal technology choice and delayed investments in low carbon technologies. Vice versa, imperfect behaviour of investors due to other external factors may influence the carbon price trajectory if the group of affected agents is sufficiently large to influence carbon prices. The results indicate a need for complementary policy instruments to address these carbon market imperfections. To better align model outcomes with the reality of carbon markets,we advocate that modellers use techniques that capture imperfect market behaviour.
The literature struggles to explain the success of green bonds: despite financial performances similar to traditional bonds, their popularity continues to grow. Furthermore, their impact on the ecological transition remains uncertain. This project aims to shed light on this paradox by examining the social construction of green bonds and their potential to transform the financial system. We will explore how green bonds are constructed and valued by different market players, and to what extent they can effectively contribute to financing the ecological transition. Five research questions will guide us, focusing on the actors involved, their interactions, the form of green bonds, the resulting governance regime, and their potential effectiveness. This project combines approaches from sustainable finance and social studies of finance. It is based on three case studies in Belgium, using a qualitative methodology to examine in depth the ‘fabric’ of green bonds. This innovative approach will make it possible to go beyond the limitations of the dominant quantitative studies in finance. The results will, in particular, make it possible to propose ways of improving the governance and impact of green bonds. On a theoretical level, this research will contribute to a better understanding of the social and institutional processes underlying the success of sustainable financial innovations, beyond purely financial aspects.
Extreme weather events are becoming increasingly frequent due to climate change, causing extensive damage worldwide. The nature and frequency of these events vary regionally; in Belgium, river flooding is among the most significant causes of weather-related damage. To reduce this risk, governments are investing in nature-based solutions (NBS), by introducing flood plains and enhancing infiltration measures. However, current public investment levels remain insufficient, and flooding persists in areas without NBS measures. The literature identifies insurance companies as potential co-investors in NBS, as they can benefit financially from reduced claims through avoided flood damages. This research explores the potential role of insurers in financing flood-mitigating NBS. Using semi-structured interviews with five major national insurance companies and five regional government administrations responsible for flood protection, we examine the barriers and opportunities for insurer participation in NBS investment and outline the conditions needed to foster an investment-friendly environment. From the insurance perspective, we find that regulatory and institutional path dependencies prevent investment in NBS, as investment decisions do not account for avoided damages. From the public administration perspective, however, significant opportunities emerge, particularly when NBS are reframed as infrastructure, a domain in which the Flemish government has experience involving private, including insurance-sector, financing. We conclude that within the current policy framework, existing financial instruments could be leveraged to attract insurer investment in NBS infrastructure. Nevertheless, the prevailing lack of urgency limits insurer engagement to invest in preventive measures, suggesting that targeted regulatory reforms may be required to stimulate action.
The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) plays a key role in shaping policies that connect economic growth with environmental sustainability. It describes the relationship between economic development, that is commonly represented by income per capita, and environmental quality, often captured through per capita CO2 emissions.
When analyzed across a broad set of countries, the EKC typically reveals that these two factors increase together up to a certain turning point, after which pollution levels stabilize and eventually decline.
Following the “grow first, clean later” concept, here a dynamic longitudinal statistical model that separates the EKC into two components is proposed. These are:
1) an economic growth effect and
2) a green economy effect.
Both of which are allowed to evolve over time. The dynamic structure captures, for instance, improvements in production efficiency or the increasing availability and affordability of green technologies.
The novel statistical dynamic EKC decomposition model is here proposed and its properties discussed. Some Monte Carlo simulations are presented for the estimation of several formulations (linear or nonlinear) of the EKC components.
The model presented is also illustrated for a real dataset comprising over 30 countries that includes not only Belgium and all the EU countries, but also other countries in Europe such as the UK, Norway or Ukraine, and even other western-Asian or transcontinental countries like Kazakhstan, Turkey or Armenia. The empirical findings for a dataset that comprises observations for years 1990-2019 reveal that the EKC evolves over time significantly.
This contribution examines the vulnerability of inland waterway transport in the Rhine–Alpine Corridor to both hydrological and systemic disruptions between 2000 and 2022. Results from a time-series econometric analysis show that critical water levels significantly constrain container throughput, with an average monthly decline of −0.2% per day of disruption and losses reaching −5.9% when conditions persist beyond 24 days. Since 2018, sensitivity to such events has doubled, with the strongest disturbances linked to localized low-water incidents and their lagged effects.
Complementing this, a network analysis traces how regional transport hubs adapted during disruptive episodes, including the global financial crisis, extreme low water periods, and geopolitical instability. The findings highlight that cargo flows became particularly vulnerable in disruptive years, while the corridor’s network structure underwent distinct shifts that reveal both weaknesses and redundancies.
Despite the availability of alternatives to car mobility, the Brussels metropolitan area is one of the most congested in Europe every working day. This presentation uses the sociological theory of practices to examine car commuting to the Brussels Region, and whether and how it changes. Alongside various statistical data, data for this research was collected through two dozen in-depth interviews conducted with commuters, namely beneficiaries from company cars, in 2022 and 2023. According to the theory of practices, a change in practice can occur through the modification of one or more of the four components of a resource-intensive practice (rules, material arrangements, mental and practical routines, and teleo-affective structures), through a modal shift, or through a change in the interlocking of two or more practices. Based on the interviews and statistical data, these three processes of change, or intervention framings, are compared for commuting to Brussels by private car or company car. The results indicate that several phenomena have emerged as potential levers for change, including the pragmatic versatility of certain commuters (particularly women and young people), adjustments to the tax regime for company cars, the new habit of working from home and the reduced efficiency due to congestion.
In Europe, the transport sector is responsible for a quarter of the GHG emissions (2022), and more than 75% of the transport activity comes from passenger cars. Fleet electrification, along with the decarbonization of energy production, is one of several solutions to mitigate climate and environmental problems in transportation. Electric passenger cars require adequate charging infrastructure. In this presentation, we focus on the foundations for the data-informed policy strategy of the Brussels Capital Region to scale electric vehicle public charging infrastructure. First, we develop a prediction model to estimate charging demand at locations where no infrastructure is available. Next, the number of new chargers is determined through simulation of the future demand. Finally, specific locations are determined through the optimisation of a location model, maturing into a hybrid model that balances extending spatial coverage and responding to existing demand. Our results show the effects of scaling the charging infrastructure in terms of usage and coverage. We assess the decision-making outcomes from the point of view of multiple stakeholders, i.e. the industry (charging point operators), the citizens (EV drivers) and the policy makers, and evaluate different approaches of data-informed strategies in terms of equity.
Although (non-listed) SMEs are not legally required to report sustainability information, they are often expected to share it with clients and other stakeholders, or can use it to enhance their competitiveness. The EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) defines three levels of greenhouse gas emissions reporting. Scope 1 encompasses emissions produced by the company itself; scope 2 covers emissions created by the production of purchased energy, and scope 3 includes emissions outside the company due to activities in the supply chain. SMEs may need to map their emissions as part of this scope 3 reporting and provide the necessary information to their clients. Furthermore, the VSME (Voluntary reporting standard for SMEs) provides a roadmap, specifically designed for SMEs, enabling them to answer information requests from clients and other stakeholders (EFRAG, 2024).
While large undertakings (are legally obliged to) take measures to reduce their environmental impact, SMEs often struggle to take the necessary steps towards sustainability reporting and -transition, due to a lack of time and expertise.
Therefore, there is a need for a hands-on tool that enables SMEs to calculate and monitor their greenhouse gas emissions with minimal effort at the level of an individual order and at an aggregated level per client, as the emissions are produced in a well-defined period.
This study focuses on the development and testing of such a tool for small and medium-sized transport companies, using a fuel-based method that calculates emissions by multiplying the volume of fuel consumed by the corresponding emission factor.
Belgium’s transition to carbon neutrality shows both strong momentum and persistent fragmentation. One of the core missions of the Helios Foundation — a new Belgian philanthropic initiative — is to act as a catalyst for effective solutions that help reach carbon neutrality. A decarbonization roadmap for Belgium — developed with Bain & Company — analyses emission baselines and trends, key sector levers, and transition barriers. It prioritizes 34 investment themes based on greenhouse gas impact per euro spent.
Building on this top-down view, the Helios Foundation launched a national call for ambitious and high-impact projects. The call sought projects with significant, demonstrable, additional, direct, and permanent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, with systemic co-benefits and no negative spillovers. The 345 letters of intent received offer an unprecedented bottom-up snapshot of Belgium’s decarbonization landscape — spanning sectors from industry and energy, to transport, construction and agriculture; actors from startups to multinationals, municipalities, civil society and research institutions; and interventions ranging from novel technological solutions to circular-economy approaches, Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage, data platforms, as well as organisational transformation and behavioural-changes initiatives.
Together, they reveal a vibrant and under-connected ecosystem with untapped potential to accelerate Belgium’s decarbonization significantly. Strengthening collaboration between actors and aligning funding and policy support could unlock this potential and allow this ecosystem to flourish and deliver. In this presentation, we will summarize the main take aways from both the top-down roadmap and bottom-up ecosystem mapping, and describe some of the funded projects as examples of promising solutions.
Human activities have already pushed six of nine planetary boundaries beyond safe limits, leading to growing environmental instability. The energy system is a major contributor to these transgressions, making the transition away from fossil fuels both urgent and complex. Traditionally, energy system optimization models have guided this transition by minimizing costs and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, this carbon-focused perspective can cause burden-shifting, where reducing GHGs increases other environmental pressures such as land use, water use, or mineral depletion.
This study proposes a framework that integrates the planetary boundary concept into national energy system modeling, combining prospective life cycle assessment with an energy system optimization approach. The objective is to identify transition pathways that are not only cost and carbon-efficient but also environmentally sustainable in absolute terms.
Preliminary analyses indicate that while conventional low-carbon transition pathways effectively meet climate objectives, they tend to exacerbate other environmental impacts, revealing a structural tension between emission targets and broader ecological limits. Addressing this trade-off requires exploring how transformations in energy demand and consumption could reduce overall pressure on the earth system.
This study therefore focuses on the role of energy sufficiency and demand reduction scenarios in reconciling national energy transitions with the planetary boundaries framework. By assessing to what extent these strategies can realign the energy system within the safe operating space for humanity, it seeks to inform the design of more balanced and resilient pathways toward absolute environmental sustainability.
In current ecosystem services frameworks, geosystem services (GS) are often overlooked, yet they play an important role in the energy and climate transition. Aquifer thermal energy storage, geothermal energy, (seasonal) gas storage and even storage of nuclear waste, derived from GS, can help us move towards a climate neutral Belgium. As with all ecosystem services, GS need to be used sustainably and fairly. Overuse of GS to speed towards climate neutrality, could exhaust these essential services and place a debt on the future. To ensure the inclusion of the different values at play when making decisions regarding sustainable use of GS, a Principles, Criteria & Indicators (PC&I) framework is developed in the DIAMONDS project: Dynamic Integrated Assessment Methods fOr the sustainable Development of the Subsurface. [Compernolle et al., 2023] PC&I is a hierarchical framework consisting of three levels. The first level, the principles, encompasses the universal values that determine sustainability. These were established via a two-round Delphi survey, consulting experts until consensus was reached. The second level consists of criteria which are measurable conditions for the level of applicability of the principle, in this project derived through expert interviews and a focused literature study. Afterwards they are validated and ranked with a survey. To describe the characteristics of the real situation and benchmark against the criteria, indicators are defined at the third level.
Carbon pricing can be an effective instrument for mitigating climate change. Yet, despite some growth over the past decade, public attitudes remain a major barrier to a broader adoption of these policies. Drawing on a large-scale survey experiment in Belgium, we provide novel evidence that framing carbon pricing from the beginning of the policy process within a broader policy package can significantly enhance acceptability. We also contribute to the literature by investigating both the drivers for pure carbon pricing and carbon pricing packages in a single study. While climate concern, perceived effectiveness and especially perceived fairness are identified among the main drivers of carbon pricing policies, the expected financial impact on people’s own household is only a key driver for standalone carbon pricing. This suggests that revenue use can mitigate concerns about the financial impact, and more broadly that policy packaging can positively affect public acceptability of carbon pricing policies.
The replacement of fossil fuels with renewable energy is essential for mitigating the impacts of human-induced climate change. Achieving this transition is a fundamental element of efforts to enable climate neutrality, requiring a reliable and resilient renewable energy system. However, global warming is expected to intensify the instability of renewable energy resources, particularly during periods of simultaneous low wind and solar power generation, known as renewable energy droughts (REDs). These compound events pose major risks to energy security in highly decarbonized systems with limited flexibility and storage capacity. This study provides a global assessment of changes in REDs under 1.5 °C, 2 °C, and 3 °C warming scenarios using CMIP6 multi-model simulations. After estimating wind and solar energy potentials, a Standardized Renewable Energy Index (SREI) is developed using copula functions to model their joint dependence. The impacts of global warming on REDs are evaluated by analyzing changes in their severity, persistence, and recurrence across different warming levels. Results indicate regionally heterogeneous but progressively stronger RED characteristics with higher warming, with solar radiation emerging as the dominant driver and its influence intensifying at 2 °C and 3 °C. These findings highlight the need to integrate compound risk assessments into renewable energy planning to ensure system reliability in a warming world.
The July 2019 heatwave broke the official Belgian temperature record by 3°C, and it was the first time that a temperature above 40°C was measured anywhere in Belgium. Extreme heat stress is known to impact health and lead to increased mortality numbers. For Brussels alone, 112 people died during this 5-day event, of which 46.7 are estimated to be due to the elevated temperatures. With temperatures expected to increase in the future, this heatwave was used as a case study to answer the following question: How many deaths could have been prevented had adaptation strategies been in place?
Using the urban climate model WRF BEP-BEM, we incorporated three different adaptation scenarios: cool roofs (albedo of 0.85), a 20% relative increase of vegetation, and the combination of both. The results showed strong differences amongst urban morphologies, represented by Local Climate zones. Additionally, while maximum temperatures can be lowered most by only implementing cool roofs (2.7°C in compact urban areas and 2.1°C in open urban areas), the best strategy to lower minimum temperatures is the combination of cool roofs and increasing the green fraction (1.6°C in compact urban areas and 1.7°C in open urban areas). By lowering the air temperature, up to 25% of heat-related deaths could have been avoided.
This study investigates how age and educational attainment influence temperature-related mortality among the elderly across Belgian provinces, addressing a critical gap in understanding climate-related health inequalities. While climate change poses a major global health threat, evidence on socioeconomic and demographic disparities in temperature-mortality associations remains limited. Educational attainment shapes vulnerability through multiple pathways: enhanced cognitive skills improve risk assessment and adaptation, and higher socioeconomic status enables protective investments. Prior research suggests that lower-educated populations may face greater risks, though findings vary across contexts.
Using Belgian mortality data from 2000–2019 and a two-stage meta-regression framework, we examined temperature-mortality relationships across two separate analyses focusing on individuals aged 65+ across all 11 provinces. The first analysis stratified populations by age groups, while the second distinguished between low, secondary, and superior education levels as a proxy for socioeconomic status.
Results revealed strong age gradients, with adults aged 85+ experiencing substantially higher temperature-related mortality than younger elderly groups. The education analysis showed that lower-educated populations faced elevated risks, though effect sizes varied across provinces. Cold-related mortality predominated across all demographic and socioeconomic groups. Consistent regional differences emerged across both analyses, suggesting persistent geographic vulnerabilities independent of age or socioeconomic composition.
We are currently continuing this research to obtain more granular district-level results, which will allow us to identify specific meta-predictors—including demographic, socioeconomic, and environmental factors—that lead to higher relative risks of temperature-related mortality at the local level.
Greenhouse gas emissions continue to drive global warming, with severe and often irreversible impacts on ecosystems. Deep decarbonization remains essential to respect the Paris Agreement thresholds, but geoengineering concepts are gaining public attention as potential “quick fixes”.
We present our evaluattion of five of the most advertised geoengineering concepts for the polar regions, proposed as “solutions” to limit impacts of globally rising temperatures: stratospheric aerosol injection, sea-ice management, sea curtains, subglacial drying and ocean iron fertilization. We evaluate these five concepts based on six criteria: feasibility, unintended consequences, timing, scalability, governance, risk of false hopes. Our evaluation results were recently published in Frontiers in Science authored by 42 experts from polar and climate sciences. We find that none of the evaluated concepts are viable or responsible options to limit climate impacts in the coming decades. Pursuing research into these five concepts risks diverting focus and resources from urgent mitigation and adaptation priorities. Of particular relevance to this session, these geoengineering approaches all risk severe damage to environments and ecosystems at local, regional and hemispheric scales. The evaluation framework we established can also be used to examine future geoengineering concepts or be applied to other geographies.
Full author list provided in the published article www.frontiersin.org/journals/science/articles/10.3389/fsci.2025.1527393/full.
In response to the ecological crisis's urgency and severity, many young people have lost hope for the future. Reconsidering how we envision our own future and that of our society concerning climate change offers a relevant approach to foster hope. By doing so, episodic future projections related to ecological transition can motivate the adoption of pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors by individuals, as well as influence their climate-related emotions and psychological distress.
While current literature generally focuses broadly on future-oriented thinking in contrast to present- or past-oriented thinking, we propose to delve deeper by investigating the manner in which the content and characteristics of these future projections (e.g. positive versus negative future scenarios; pragmatic versus utopian narratives) influence climate action and psychological outcomes.
At the BSCA conference, we will present the results of a systematic review that aims to clarify how different types of climate future projections affect the adoption of pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors. As an additional research question, we also explore how these varying future projections influence emotions and psychological distress related to ecological transition.
This review is pre-registered on PROSPERO and follows PRISMA statements. By undertaking a qualitative analysis of included experimental studies, we aim to provide a comprehensive overview of the current research landscape in this domain, including recent knowledge and methodologies. The results presented will also suggest promising directions for forthcoming research.
"Our house is burning down and we're looking away." Twenty years after Jacques Chirac’s statement, this observation has evolved into a profound sense of dismay for many scientists. Faced with polarisation and persistent inertia, their responses are diverging: some, discouraged, are deserting the social media landscape —a trend accelerated by Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter— while others are choosing to intensify their communication efforts there. Our analysis focuses on the latter, presenting the results of a research on their strategies and reception effects on the X platform. Using a mixed methodology combining quantitative mapping of 70 profiles and qualitative analysis of four contrasting cases, the study shows that the stance adopted by scientists shapes the dynamics of interaction. The analysis reveals a divide between two reception configurations: on the one hand, a technical stance geared towards peers generates a protected ‘epistemic community’; on the other hand, a highly politically engaged ‘public intellectual’ stance gives rise to a ‘polarised arena’. In doing so, our study highlights the ‘paradox of engagement’: the quest for maximum visibility mobilises those who are already convinced but seems to reinforce the hostility of sceptics, transforming expert discourse into an identity marker. The discussion of results will then propose a model for understanding the trade-offs between visibility, credibility and exposure to conflict that scientists face today.
Residential buildings play a central role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, making large-scale energy renovations essential to meet climate objectives. Despite strong policy efforts, renovation rates across Europe remain insufficient. Affordability is widely recognised as a major barrier, as many homeowners lack the financial means to undertake deep renovations. While previous studies have explored either financial capacity or motivation, little is known about how these factors interact. This study applies the Attitude-Behaviour-Context (ABC) model to examine how financial comfort (contextual factor) and personal norms (attitudinal factor) jointly influence homeowners’ decision-making regarding home insulation. The analysis draws on survey data from eight European countries, focusing on homeowners who had not recently insulated their homes. Participants reported their current stage in the decision process, ranging from no renovation plans to concrete implementation plans. Personal norms and financial comfort were measured using Likert scales, alongside psychological, sociodemographic, and dwelling-related covariates. Multinomial logistic regressions were used to test both main and interaction effects. Results show that stronger personal norms are consistently associated with more advanced decision stages, highlighting the motivational role of moral commitment toward energy efficiency. Financial comfort, by contrast, showed a negative association with early-stage engagement, suggesting that financially secure homeowners may feel less urgency to act. No significant interaction effect was found between personal norms and financial comfort. These findings indicate that motivational and financial barriers to renovation operate largely independently, underscoring the need for policies that address both dimensions in parallel to accelerate home insulation uptake.
In the food sector, labeling plays a crucial role in consumer choices by providing crucial information about ingredients, nutritional details, and the origin of raw materials. Labeling helps consumers make informed purchasing decisions, promoting transparency and trust between them and producers.
Moreover, labeling is one of the most important tools for communicating sustainability, as many aspects of sustainability involve credibility features that consumers cannot verify themselves, such as the climate impact of food.
To ensure that labeling leads to more sustainable behavior, consumers must be able to perceive, understand, and recognize its relevance to them. It must be factored into their purchasing decisions and weighed against other criteria.
Against the backdrop of the climate debate and growing consumer awareness,
several new climate labels have emerged on the European market in recent years.
The most common climate labels tested are climate neutral labels, CO2 reduction labels, specific CO2 equivalent specifications, best-in-class labels and multi-level interpretive labels.
This presentation will further highlight the type of climate labels, the benefits of climate labels, challenges and limits, current initiatives, future developments and finally the need for policy and legislation.
Background: The impact of heat on a vulnerable population, particularly those with pre-existing chronic diseases, is a growing public health concern. However, the risks for those with specific conditions and their variation across geographic, demographic, and socioeconomic (SES) status remain underexplored.
Methodology: We analysed 14 years (2005-2019) of general practitioners (GPs) data from Flanders, northern Belgium, assessing both morbidity and mortality. Morbidity was defined as GP-recorded general and heat-related illnesses among individuals with pre-existing chronic diseases, while mortality included overall mortality and mortality among people with pre-existing chronic diseases. A space-time-stratified case-crossover design was employed, with a distributed lag non-linear model (DLNM) applied in quasi-Poisson regression.
Results: We found a strong association of heat with morbidity and mortality. A substantially increased risk of morbidity was observed among individuals with pre-existing heart failure (RR= 2.79 [95% CI: 1.84–4.24]) and a high risk of mortality was found among those with pre-existing hypertension (RR= 2.01 [95% CI: 1.23–3.30]). We also observed a rise in heat-related morbidity risks for individuals with pre-existing Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) (RR= 2.09 [95% CI: 1.53–2.85]), hypertension (RR= 1.37 [95% CI: 1.08–1.74), chronic kidney disease (CKD) (RR= 1.74 [95% CI: 1.25–2.42]), and chronic mental health disorders (RR= 1.41 [95% CI: 1.06–1.89]). There was an increased risk of overall mortality (RR= 1.29 [95% CI: 1.02–1.62]).
Conclusion: Our findings indicated that chronic diseases are associated with higher vulnerability to adverse health effects due to extreme heat. We observed notable variations across geographic, demographic, and socioeconomic subgroups.
Abstract:
Understanding how forests respond to climate change requires real-time insight into tree water and carbon dynamics. Within the TreeWatch.net network (Steppe et al. 2016), continuous monitoring of sap flow (including advanced Sap Flow+ sensors), stem diameter variation, stem water potential, and meteorological variables reveals how trees respond to drought, heat, and other extremes. By integrating these high-resolution data with mechanistic tree models, we can simulate processes such as turgor, hydraulic resistance, and hydraulic capacitance, providing a mechanistic understanding of stress and resilience.
While CO₂ uptake remains central to climate mitigation, water availability emerges as an equally critical factor shaping tree vitality and forest productivity. Continuous monitoring allows early detection of drought stress, evaluation of recovery capacity, and development of adaptive forest management strategies. TreeWatch.net thus bridges real-time physiological monitoring and process-based modeling, linking tree-level responses to ecosystem-scale feedbacks, enhancing our ability to sustain the vital role of forests in achieving carbon neutrality.
Reference:
Steppe K, von der Crone J, De Pauw DJW (2016) TreeWatch.net: a tree water and carbon monitoring network to assess instant tree hydraulic functioning and stem growth. Frontiers in Plant Science 7: Article 993.
Understanding the climate and soil determinants of mycorrhizal fungal richness is essential for improving global carbon estimates and supporting nature-based climate strategies. Mycorrhizal fungi play a critical role in plant nutrient acquisition, soil carbon storage, and ecosystem resilience, yet their distribution patterns remain poorly represented in climate models. In this research, we combined a global dataset of vegetation plots with climatic, edaphic, and land type predictors to model and map the spatially smoothed richness of arbuscular (AM), ectomycorrhizal (EcM), and ericoid (ErM) mycorrhiza across major biomes. We applied generalized additive models (GAMs) to capture complex, non-linear relationships between mycorrhizal richness and environmental variables while accounting for spatial structure.
Our present results initially reveal a distinct biogeographical differentiation: AM richness peaks in tropical and subtropical ecosystems, particularly in grasslands and tropical forests; EcM richness dominates in temperate and boreal regions; and ErM richness is confined to cool, nutrient-poor, and mountainous environments. These large-scale patterns underscore the strong influence of climate and land type on mycorrhiza biodiversity. By integrating mycorrhizal biodiversity patterns into carbon accounting and land-use planning frameworks, this work can make carbon estimates more accurate and help guide fair, climate-neutral land management in Belgium and beyond.
Climate change poses a significant threat to agroecosystems by altering the environmental conditions that shape key soil microbial communities, including arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF). These fungi form vital symbiotic relationships with the roots of most terrestrial plants, enhancing nutrient uptake and influencing carbon cycling. Currently, little is known about how climate change affects the seasonal dynamics of AMF in perennial crops.
To address this, we investigate temporal shifts in AMF communities in pear orchards exposed to two climate scenarios – current (2013-2018) and simulated future (2042-2046) – using state-of-the-art Ecotron facilities. Fine roots and rhizosphere soil were sampled at three time points linked to distinct phenophases (mid-summer, early autumn, and late autumn) to assess both intraradical and extraradical AMF components. Community composition was analyzed using metabarcoding, complemented by spore-based assessments of abundance and functional guild distribution.
Preliminary results reveal flattened and delayed sporulation trends in rhizophilic AMF under future climate conditions, with the typical mid-summer sporulation peak absent and increased activity in early autumn. In contrast, edaphophilic and ancestral AMF displayed stable patterns across timepoints and climates. These shifts suggest that future climate conditions may alter AMF reproductive timing and carbon allocation, potentially reducing soil carbon storage and modifying plant-fungal carbon exchange.
This study provides novel insights into how AMF functional groups respond to climate-driven phenological changes, improving our understanding of belowground carbon cycling and resilience in perennial agroecosystems.
The Flemish Green Deal Protein Shift encourages the transition to more plant-based and less animal-based proteins, but how does this transition find its way into contexts where indulgence and enjoyment are central, such as events and festivals? This study explores how event organizers communicate about plant-based food and how visitors make their food choices within these temporary, leisure-oriented settings.
A particular focus is on the case of Paradise City, which made the shift to an entirely plant-based food court in 2025, without explicitly communicating this to the public. This natural experimental setup provides insight into how visitors respond to plant-based choice architectures without moral or environmental frameworks.
In-depth interviews with organizers, face-to-face surveys at two festivals, and an online panel survey were used to identify motivations, barriers, and perceptions on both the demand and supply sides. The results show that acceptance is mainly driven by variety, pricing, and taste perception, and less by sustainability arguments. Subtle, non-moralizing communication and investments in attractive taste profiles appear to be more effective in stimulating behavioral change.
Festivals and events can thus serve as accessible testing grounds for the protein shift: places where plant-based food is not seen as a compromise but as a natural part of the experience. This research offers insights for organizers, policymakers, and caterers who want to normalize plant-based food without resistance or loss of audience experience.
Forests play a vital role in the global carbon cycle: they capture carbon from the atmosphere and store it in wood and soil. Tree growth is a crucial part of this process, as it is a way for ecosystems to fixate atmospheric carbon.
In this study, we examined wood formation (xylogenesis) in European beech (Fagus sylvatica) during the growing season in two contrasting years (2020–2021) with different moisture conditions. Using X-ray micro-computed tomography (XμCT), a technique similar to a medical scanner that allows us to look at 3D wood structures without damaging them, we measured intra-seasonal wood size growth and woody biomass accumulation.
Previous research in conifers suggested a time lag between the increase in wood size and the production of biomass. In beech, we found almost no delay. This means that stem growth measurements with dendrometers can serve as reliable indicators of seasonal carbon storage in semi-diffuse broadleaf trees such as beech in temperate ecosystems, provided early-season adjustments are made for stem swelling.
Our findings highlight the potential of XμCT as a powerful high-throughput, non-destructive method to track tree growth and carbon storage in detail. This approach is now being expanded to larger datasets including beech, oak, and pine from several ICOS (Integrated Carbon Observation Systems) sites across Europe. Early data suggests that the earlier mentioned time lag between wood size growth and woody biomass production is confirmed in pine. This data will help to better understand the dynamics of wood growth and how it is influenced by climate.
As Africa accelerates to become one of the world’s largest integrated electricity markets and sets the target to increase renewable generation capacity, the continent’s power systems are becoming more vulnerable to extreme weather and climate events. With growing shares of renewable resources in the power mix, events such as heatwaves, periods of low wind and solar availability or prolonged hydrological drought periods —so-called energy droughts— threaten to challenge the continent’s power system resilience. However, little is known about how these climate extremes interact with Africa’s rapidly evolving power infrastructure. In this study, we identify and characterise the climate extremes that could impact future African power systems. By integrating the power system design from the African Continental Masterplan with decades of weather and climate data, we examine how variability in wind, solar and hydropower generation, coupled with temperature-driven demand peaks, shape periods of power system stress. Power system stress is measured through load shedding in high resolution dispatch simulations, developed in the PyPSA modelling framework. We will evaluate scenarios of increasing inter- and intra- regional connections between power pools to investigate whether interconnection alleviates power system stress periods by leveraging Africa’s diverse resource potential and complementary spatio-temporal profiles. In this way, this research aims to inform energy planners and policymakers about strategies that enhance the resilience of Africa’s future power systems to climate extremes, ensuring sustainable electricity supply under a changing energy and climate landscape.
In recent years, widespread forest diebacks across Belgium have raised concerns about the vulnerability of forests to recurrent droughts. These events threaten not only biodiversity and ecosystem services but also the capacity of forests to function as stable carbon sinks - a cornerstone of Belgium’s climate-neutral transition. To mitigate these risks, it is crucial to understand the mechanisms that determine how different tree species respond to changing climatic conditions, in order to adapt forest management strategies and limit drought-induced damage.
The TreePulser project addresses this challenge by combining continuous growth monitoring, environmental measurements, and physiological assessments across ten temperate tree species in southern Belgium. Three hundred trees were equipped with high-precision growth sensors that record daily changes in stem diameter, providing detailed insight into growth and water stress dynamics. These records are complemented by environmental measurements of air and soil moisture conditions, temperature, stand structure, and local meteorological data to evaluate how exogenous factors influence tree performance. Furthermore, field observations further explore how endogenous factors related to species-specific water regulation strategies govern their ability to deal with drought stress.
By linking growth patterns with physiological and environmental variables, TreePulser identifies how and why species differ in their responses to drought and other climatic drivers. The project contributes to a deeper understanding of forest functioning under changing conditions, providing a scientific foundation for improving forest resilience in Belgium’s transition toward climate neutrality.
Since its inception, the concept of just transition has gained prominence in both political agendas and academic research. To date, just transition policies and studies have mainly focused on vulnerable groups — particularly on the distributive effects of climate mitigation policies on workers in carbon-intensive industries and low-income households, as well as on compensatory measures designed to secure adequate living standards for them throughout the transition process.
Yet the justice issues associated with the transition to climate neutrality also concern the other end of the spectrum: the privileged populations whose lifestyles, investments, and political influence sustain high-carbon regimes. Recent scholarship has begun to examine these “polluter elites”, but research remains fragmented and incomplete.
Key contributions include work on carbon inequalities showing, for instance, that the richest 10% are responsible for almost half of global greenhouse gas emissions, with the top 1% contributing a disproportionate share. Other studies investigate the ecologically ungeneralizable consumption practices of privileged groups and their influence on broader social norms. Additional research explores the emissions linked to polluter elite investments, the political power of these groups in maintaining a fossil-based economy, and public attitudes toward policies aimed at regulating them.
This contribution draws on a systematic review of the literature on polluter elites to provide a structured overview of this emerging field. Building on this synthesis, we propose a framework for an interdisciplinary research agenda that integrates diverse perspectives to advance understanding — and potential regulation — of polluter elites in the pursuit of a just transition.
Widespread dieback and mortality have been observed across many tree species, leaving forest managers uncertain about how to adapt management practices to ongoing climate change. These disturbances have resulted in clear-cutting and gaps requiring reforestation through adaptive strategies. Identifying drought-tolerant species is therefore essential to strengthen forest resilience. Silver birch (Betula pendula Roth.) is a pioneer species with broad ecological amplitude and strong natural regeneration capacity, making it a promising candidate for recolonizing disturbed areas and supporting forest recovery. However, its climatic sensitivity and growth response to drought remain poorly understood in Western Europe. This study aimed to (i) identify the main climatic drivers of birch radial growth and (ii) assess its growth responses to past extreme droughts. A total of 80 cores (from 40 trees) were collected in four birch stands across Wallonia. Radial growth variability at each site was correlated with monthly and daily climatic variables to identify the key climatic drivers of growth and their consistency across regions. Birch growth responses to past extreme droughts were then assessed using resistance, recovery, and resilience indices. Preliminary results show that birch radial growth is positively correlated with spring and early summer precipitation, and negatively correlated with previous-year summer temperatures. These findings suggest that spring droughts may strongly limit birch growth and that high thermal stress in the previous summer may have a delayed negative effect. Ongoing analyses will refine these relationships and help evaluate silver birch as a suitable species for adaptive forest management in Western Europe.
Just transition has emerged as a key concept in climate adaptation in the last years due to growing evidence on how the most vulnerable people and systems are disproportionally at risk from climate change. Socially vulnerable groups, such as older people, children and low-income groups, are disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change and do not always benefit fairly from adaptation responses to these impacts.
The climate modelling team of VITO has developed climate services that aim to play a role in just transition and adaptation planning to shape a climate-resilient society. One of our focus areas is urban heat, for which VITO has developed a street-level scale urban climate model to quantify the impact of climate change and adaptation measures for vulnerable groups. Combined with citizen-science data collection and stakeholder workshops, we help to support local climate adaptation management and shape policy frameworks. Examples and lessons learned from past projects in Africa, India and Europe will be presented.
A second focus area of our team is sustainable food production, for which we combine key crop and high-resolution climate data to estimate present and future yields. In several projects in Africa, we have assessed the performance of local adaptive management practices in delivering robust yields and better coping with future climatic conditions. Through workshops and training visits we support local communities, national experts and scientists to jointly address the climate adaptation issues by disseminating the findings and promoting collaboration and co-creation.
Climate education is widely championed as a key pillar for climate action, yet its real-world effectiveness reveals a stark paradox. Drawing on an integrative literature review, I demonstrate that education successfully drives adaptation in exposed Global South communities, yet often fails in the Global North where its impact is neutralized by political polarization.
This presentation argues that polarization is not the root cause, but a symptom of a deeper structural problem. I introduce a new theoretical framework, the "System of Invisibility," to explain this paradox. I posit that inaction in protected contexts is enabled by a self-reinforcing system that organizes the non-perception of the climate crisis across three interdependent dimensions: cognitive (derealisation through media spectacle), embodied (infrastructurally produced 'sensory privilege'), and material (the 'black-boxing' of socio-technical systems).
This system creates an 'experiential vacuum' that ideological narratives fill, meaning the failure of education is fundamentally a failure of perception, not of knowledge.
By offering this new diagnosis, this research proposes a necessary complement to existing approaches. It suggests that while socio-psychological analyses of belief are essential, they are insufficient on their own. To fully understand climate inaction, we must also engage critically with the material and infrastructural conditions that shape what can be seen, felt, and ultimately acted upon. This talk will detail the framework, sketching out its implications for both educational practice and for a more integrated research agenda on the societal dimensions of climate change..
Recently, a call has been made to start leveraging the depth of knowledge already developed in the domain of prosocial behavior to better understand pro-environmental behavior. In this project, we aim to first approach the question of whether being more pro-environmental is simply about being more prosocial.
We use an experimental approach to investigate whether both concerns are as motivating for people when they are prompted to invest cognitive effort in a given task. The role of cognitive effort is pertinent when we think about climate change because fulfilling the required climate objectives is going to include changing our own behavior. This modification of our behavior requires cognitive effort for multiple reasons: the breaking of current habits, the need to learn new information, in essence the need to switch from a default mode of functioning to a more controlled mode of functioning.
The current paradigm entails a within-subject design comparing performance (i.e., accuracy) depending on the incentives for which participants are performing the task (pro-environmental vs. pro-social), as well as tracking the evolution of performance across three blocks.
The results show that between prosocial and pro-environmental, only the pro-environmental incentive motivates individuals to perform better compared to the baseline condition. However prosocial and pro-environmental incentives do not differ significantly from each other. Interestingly, the decrease in performance across the blocks is compensated depending on the type of incentive. These findings start to shed light on the overlaps and differences between prosocial and pro-environmental behavior.
This research brings into conversation praxis of justice and decentralisation of the energy sector in the context of the eco-social crisis. Extensive research on energy transition examines how the uptake of renewables can channel elements of energy justice into the current energy sector. Specifically, this argument is analysed through the tripartite lens by Jenkins on energy justice, which is comprised of recognition, procedural and distributional justice. Further, extensive literature underscores that justice stems from transformation of current hegemonic systems – e.g., the energy one. Thus, we contend that energy justice requires the transformation of current energy practices and propose an expansion of the tripartite energy justice framework to include an additional aspect of energy justice: justice by transformation. More to that, burgeoning work reflects on the (de)centralisation of infrastructures and institutions as a channel to address the eco-social crisis. As the energy sector is expected to transform from a centralised to a decentralised, it is important to bring into conversation scholarships on energy justice and energy (de)centralisation. To this end, our research aims to gain a greater understanding of how energy transition relates to socio-spatial transformations, through an interdisciplinary understanding of the energy transition across political philosophy, energy law and governance, and political geography. To do so, our work takes renewable energy communities (REC) as a case study and it employs a comparative lens to understand REC across multiple levels of governance, specifically: European Union, national level (Belgium) and sub-national level (Brussels-region, Flanders, and Wallonia).
Accelerating climate neutrality in the electricity sector requires not only technological innovation but also socially accepted and spatially coherent deployment strategies. We will present two regional analyses of renewable energy siting: 401 onshore wind turbine projects in Wallonia (Belgium) and 236 utility-scale solar PV projects in the French Alps. Both regions face land-use and environmental constraints and complex permitting processes, making them ideal case studies for exploring socio-political and market acceptance. Using spatial analysis and logistic regression, both studies reveal a mismatch between where projects are submitted and accepted. In Wallonia, wind project submissions are more frequent in areas with low population density and proximity to major infrastructure, while approvals favour smaller turbines and avoid ecologically sensitive zones. In the French Alps, solar developers focus mainly on economic feasibility: solar irradiance, slope, grid proximity, and land costs. In contrast, approval is determined almost exclusively by environmental protection, regardless of socio-demographic context. Spatial clustering of submissions suggests a learning process among developers, who increasingly target areas with higher approval rates. However, this raises concerns about uneven territorial burdens and energy justice. The comparative analysis highlights a common tension: developers optimize for feasibility, while authorities prioritize ecological integrity. These findings offer policy-relevant insights for designing transparent and inclusive planning frameworks that support a just transition in the electricity sector by better accounting for geographical factors.
The increasing importance of wind energy in the electricity mix underscores the need for accurately estimating the production of wind energy over the coming decades. We will present a new statistical–dynamical downscaling approach to estimate the wind energy production of wind farms under the climate conditions taken from an ensemble of future climate projections. This approach relies on two reanalysis-driven regional climate model simulations, one of which includes a wind farm parameterization to account for interactions between wind farms and the atmosphere, and wake losses. We then apply this method to a projected, 92-GW North Sea wind farm distribution and compare the energy production between the wind climate of 1985–2014 and 38 projections for the wind climate of 2025–54. The ensemble mean difference in 30-yr energy production is −5% for JJA, −2.5% for SON, and near zero for DJF and MAM. However, these 30-yr differences have a large ensemble spread, with an interquartile range of around 8% and a full range of around 15%. Furthermore, the probability distribution of decadal energy production based on the future projection ensemble is different compared to the historical reference period. For winter (DJF), 16% of future decades fall below the 5th percentile of the historical period and 12% of future decades exceed the 95th percentile. Finally, we illustrate the importance of considering how wind climate changes increase or reduce wake losses, as long-term changes can differ strongly when these effects are not taken into account.
To decarbonize its power sector, the European Union plans a major expansion of wind energy in the North Sea. However, closely spaced turbines can cause wake losses, which may aggregate at the wind farm scale and extend tens of kilometers. This study examines the cost of inter-farm wake effects, accounting for the correlation between wind speed and electricity prices. As a case study, we assess the planned Princess Elisabeth Zone (PEZ) and its potential impact on the existing Belgian North Sea cluster. Previous work used the meso-scale climate model COSMO-CLM with the Fitch wind farm parameterization to estimate wind farm energy production for both the current and a potential future layout that includes PEZ. The difference in energy production of the existing Belgian cluster between both runs is attributed to the PEZ’s wake effect and parameterized by wind speed and direction. The energy deficit is applied to ERA5 wind velocity time series, enabling synchronous multiplication with historical electricity prices. This yields a hypothetical cost of wake losses that reflects the historical wind-price correlation. For the years 2016 to 2024, the cost of wake losses relative to revenue from the existing cluster (without PEZ) ranges from 6.93% to 10.01% . For all years except 2021, this cost is slightly lower than when using average electricity prices, suggesting that wakes tend to occur during periods of below-average prices. This is linked to the wind speed distribution in the direction of the wake effect.
Previous research shows that hypocrisy in political decision-making elicits negative emotions and undermines public trust. However, little is known about how morality and personal values interact to shape reactions to political decisions. The present study examined perceptions of environmental hypocrisy in an out-group context, focusing on another U.S. state. Using an online experimental design, we presented participants with fictional news articles describing a governmental decision that varied by (1) policy orientation (pro-environmental vs. pro-economy) and (2) consistency with prior statements (hypocritical vs. consistent).
We predicted that hypocrisy would evoke stronger negative emotions when the decision conflicted with participants’ personal values and that these emotions would, in turn, predict climate activism. Data from U.S. participants (N = 202) showed that hypocrisy led to more negative emotions when the governmental decision was pro-environmental. More specifically, participants experienced significantly more negative emotions when the decision shifted from pro-economic promises to environmental priorities, compared to consistent pro-environmental actions. In contrast, for economic decisions, hypocrisy had no effect; only participants’ environmental values (New Environmental Paradigm) accounted for negative emotions. Across all conditions, negative emotions were a significant predictor of climate activism.
These findings rejected our idea that morality would play a primary role in environmental hypocrisy perception; rather, moral considerations seem to emerge only for environmental decision. The results highlight the importance of consistent governmental communication and emphasize how global environmental policy trends can shape citizens’ emotional and behavioral responses beyond national borders.
Climate change mitigation is a critical challenge urgently calling on individuals to adopt more pro-environmental behaviours. While prior research has primarily examined the key factors explaining why people behave (un)sustainably, the cognitive processes underlying how they make such decisions remain poorly understood. To address this gap, we investigated the role of environmental attitudes and attentional processes during decision-making involving real trade-offs between personal financial rewards and environmental consequences. In a laboratory setting, 114 university students completed an adapted version of the carbon emission task while their eye movements were recorded via eye-tracking, providing direct measures of information acquisition and weighting preceding decision-making. After the task, environmental attitudes were assessed using the Schwartz Value Scale and the Campbell Paradigm. Using mixed-effect models, we found that stronger Campbellian environmental attitudes predicted an attentional prioritization of environmental information (i.e., CO2 emissions), as reflected by a higher proportion of fixation time on this information, and an increasing likelihood of fixating it first once participants became familiar with the task. In contrast, the attention-behaviour link appears context-dependent, influenced by factors such as the magnitude of financial incentives and environmental stakes. Notably, while attention played a role in financially less rewarding choices, we speculate that financially more rewarding decisions may involve higher-order cognitive processes. These findings emphasize the interplay between attentional dynamics, decision context, and environmental attitudes in shaping pro-environmental behaviour. Integrating these insights could inform strategies to promote pro-environmental decision-making.
Addressing the climate crisis requires urgent transitions in all sectors of society. Psychological research can help enable these transitions by investigating barriers and facilitators of pro-environmental behaviour. Cognitive effort is a characteristic but understudied feature of many pro-environmental behaviours, and traditionally, it is mostly discussed as a barrier that keeps people from behaving pro-environmentally. In contrast, contemporary frameworks of cognitive effort show that effort can also be beneficial, for example, by increasing the subjective value of an outcome from an effortful action. This observation that effort can be both, a cost and source of value, has been termed the “effort paradox”.
In a series of experimental studies, we investigated the effort paradox in the context of pro-environmental behaviour. We probed participants’ willingness to invest cognitive effort for pro-environmental outcomes (profiting a pro-environmental organization) and how this differs from cognitive effort for personal outcomes (profiting the individual). We also tested after effects of having spent effort on generating pro-environmental outcomes on subsequent donation decisions. Overall, we find that (1) individuals are less motivated to spend cognitive effort for pro-environmental outcomes compared to self-benefitting outcomes, that (2) effort can act as a cost preventing spending effort in the future and (3) it can act as a source of value after having spent effort. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings for donations to non-profit environmental organizations and how it can inform behaviour change interventions.
To meet EU climate goals, reducing fossil fuel use is crucial, and transitioning domestic energy consumption to sustainable sources like heat pumps offers a potential solution. However, uptake in Flanders remains low. This study explores predictors of heat pump adoption intention among Flemish homeowners using a mixed-methods approach. A quantitative survey based on an extended Theory of Planned Behaviour model (Study 1, n = 692, Mage = 55.03, SDage = 15.54, male/female = 335/357) is complemented by semi-structured interviews with homeowners who do not own a heat pump (Study 2, n = 16, Mage = 41, SDage = 35, male/female = 8/8). Study 1 indicates that perceived behavioural control and subjective norms positively influence heat pump adoption intention, with perceived behavioural control enhanced by product knowledge and technological innovativeness. Surprisingly, a positive attitude towards heat pumps is associated with a lower adoption intention. Study 2 reveals cost concerns, uncertainties about energy cost savings and property value increases as barriers to adoption intention, alongside a temporal disconnect between attitude and intention due to practical constraints. Our findings offer suggestions for communication strategies of policy makers such as addressing financial and practical barriers, mitigating practical constraints and enhancing public knowledge. Lastly, our survey results suggest the presence of yet unidentified moderating variables affecting the attitude-intention relationship, which could be determined in future research.
Being able to quantify the future evolution of heat stress in cities and to develop smart adaptation strategies to counter its impacts requires the capturing of fine-grained variations in heat-related hazards within the urban fabric. However, the coarse resolution of Earth System Models makes it difficult to model urban areas explicitly. Moreover, few outputs of high-resolution modelling of future climate in cities end up in the public domain, and there is limited understanding of the potential of climate-smart urban development for reducing heat stress.
In the H2020 PROVIDE project, we used the urban boundary layer climate model UrbClim coupled with the emulator for Global Mean Temperature FaIR and the Earth System Model emulator with spatially explicit representation MESMER in order to generate projections of urban heat stress at a 100-meter resolution, for about 20 indicators in 140 urban centres across the world. The resulting database is openly accessible in the PROVIDE Climate Risk Dashboard, an online tool that allows visualization and download of global-to-local future climate impacts for various global emission scenarios.
Furthermore, building on this work we develop a prototype climate service that delivers scientific policy-relevant information on the potential of urban greening to reduce heat stress in cities. Following a co-development process involving urban planners and city-level stakeholders in Lisbon (Portugal), Islamabad (Pakistan), and Berlin (Germany), UrbClim is run at very high resolution (down to 1 meter) over parts of these urban centres. The modelling results are also made available in the PROVIDE Climate Risk Dashboard.
Developing national climate scenarios allows for a consistent translation of global and regional climate projections into information relevant for impact modelling and decision-making within Belgium. We present a new set of national climate scenarios developed within the CORDEX.be II project, based on kilometer-scale regional climate model (RCM) simulations. The ensemble includes three RCMs (ALARO, MAR, and COSMO-CLM) that simulate the present-day climate and two 20-year future periods representing global warming levels of +2°C and +3°C. The downscaling specifically targets the representation of climate extremes, including heatwaves and heavy precipitation events. Boundary conditions are derived from global climate models from the 6th phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6), that perform well in reproducing these extremes. The performance of the three models is evaluated through an analysis of their ability to simulate key climate variables for the present-day period . The resulting scenarios provide a robust basis for assessing climate impacts across multiple sectors, including agriculture, health, and water management, and for supporting adaptation planning to future climate extremes in Belgium.
There is a growing need for stakeholders to access relevant and user-friendly climate information to develop action plans addressing climate change challenges across various sectors. The occurrence of future climate events is often presented in a probabilistic context, where multiple projections are produced to represent the uncertainties inherent in climate modeling. However, the practical use of these projections is limited by (1) systematic biases in climate models—despite continuous improvements in their skill—and (2) the large number of available simulations, which complicates effective decision-making.
Indicators based on absolute thresholds are particularly sensitive to such biases, which can strongly distort analyses. To address this, we present a bias-corrected ensemble of simulations generated using statistical correction methods and the CLIMATE GRID, an observational dataset developed by the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium (RMI) to accurately represent conditions across Belgium.
Even with a bias-corrected ensemble, potential users often struggle to identify which scenarios and models to prioritize. To tackle this issue, we are developing an interactive, collaborative method that helps users select a representative subset of climate simulations from large ensembles. Inspired by a service developed by MeteoSwiss, this approach identifies specific low-, medium-, and high-impact scenarios, providing plausible statistical outcomes for selected climate indices, emission scenarios, and regions. An example focusing on temperature-related indices will be presented to illustrate how users can efficiently handle large ensembles by selecting a manageable, representative subset of climate projections for further analysis.
Climate plays an important role in the occurrence and ecology of tick and mosquito vectors, and therefore on the transmission of pathogens causing vector-borne diseases (VBDs) such as Lyme borreliosis, Dengue, Chikungunya, and Zika. Understanding and anticipating vector dynamics requires timely, high-resolution climate information integrated into public health surveillance systems, a gap that currently exists in Belgium. In response, VITO, the Belgian Climate Centre, and Sciensano co-developed a climate service for vector and VBD risk monitoring and management, within the framework of the Copernicus Climate Change Service.
The service delivers daily, high-resolution (100 m) climate maps of temperature and relative humidity for Belgium through two complementary workflows: (i) an AI-based model leveraging Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis, trained and validated with UrbClim simulations for diverse Belgian environments, and (ii) a regression-based workflow using historic and near real-time observations from the Royal Meteorological Institute’s AWS network. Together, these ensure continuous coverage, bridging the five-day latency of ERA5 data.
A modular Python package (CLIMSERVE) underpins the workflows, enabling automated data retrieval, processing, and integration into Sciensano’s operational environment. This ensures operational control by the public health institute while maintaining scientific robustness and reproducibility.
The service will be used for early warning, risk assessment, and as such supports decision-making by the regional and federal (health) authorities. This by delivering climate-driven indicators such as tick and mosquito activity thresholds. Beyond Belgium, the approach offers a transferable blueprint for co-designed, operational climate-health services that enhance preparedness and resilience under climate change.
This contribution builds on the recent report Building Social-Ecological Protection for Belgium to address the institutional dimension of a just transition towards climate neutrality. The report highlights that the most persistent barriers are not primarily financial or technical, but institutional. In federal contexts such as Belgium, competences relevant to social protection, labour, and environmental policy are fragmented across multiple levels of government. This fragmentation generates coordination gaps, overlapping responsibilities, and political stalemates that weaken citizens’ protection against ecological risks such as heatwaves, pandemics, or resource scarcity. At the European level, ecological concerns remain insufficiently embedded in the social acquis, leaving social protection systems ill-equipped to confront climate disruptions.
Yet these vulnerabilities also suggest possible strategies. For instance, anchoring ecological sustainability explicitly within European social rights would strengthen the legitimacy and resilience of welfare systems. Improving intergovernmental cooperation mechanisms in federal states could reduce institutional deadlocks and foster more robust responses to crises. Participatory foresight and scenario exercises can provide a democratic basis for reform, creating shared visions and enhancing trust in public institutions.
By mapping these institutional barriers and strategies, the intervention aims to open a discussion on how to reconfigure governance frameworks so that they become enablers, rather than obstacles, of a just transition. Belgium’s experience offers a laboratory for exploring how federal complexity, when properly managed, can be transformed from a source of vulnerability into a resource for institutional innovation.
Belgium illustrates some of the key tensions in delivering a just transition in Europe: pronounced regional economic disparities, uneven exposure to climate risks, and differing capacities for long-term planning. These challenges are particularly visible in Limburg, where the transition toward a climate-neutral economy began not as a choice, but as a necessity.
In the 1980s, all coal mines in Limburg were closed, despite employing over 30,000 people and forming the backbone of the regional economy and identity. Coal mining had created prosperity and cultural diversity, but also a vulnerable mono-industrial structure. Initial policy responses focused mainly on economic compensation and social measures.
Over time, growing awareness reframed the region’s future: sustainable recovery required a strategic shift toward a climate-neutral and innovation-driven economy. This strategy did not emerge from comprehensive academic master plans, but from a hands-on, quasi bottom-up process led by municipalities, regional actors, and civil society.
A pivotal insight shaped the transformation: build the future with what already exists. The adaptive reuse of former mining sites—giving coal mines a new, forward-looking purpose—became both a symbolic and practical driver of renewal. By repositioning industrial and cultural heritage within the broader challenge of climate neutrality, Limburg demonstrates the long-term and systemic nature of a just transition. The case shows that while transitions are complex and ongoing, historical assets can serve as powerful anchors for sustainable regional transformation.
Geological resources, such as geothermal energy and pore space for hydrogen storage, are increasingly acknowledged to support the achievement of a carbon-neutral society. In Belgium, the Campine Basin in Flanders has become a particular location of interest for subsurface development.
However, questions of justice emerge when considering the potential costs for local communities, future generations, and nature. Moreover, access to the subsurface is limited, leaving only a limited group of people with the necessary financial means, infrastructure and knowledge to get benefits and make decisions about these resources.
Existing justice literature about the subsurface tends to focus on distributional and, to a lesser degree, procedural aspects, often overlooking recognition. Nonetheless, this tenet is essential, as it forms the foundation of justice, shaping both distributive outcomes and participatory processes.
Based on Honneth’s and Fraser’s conceptualizations of political and cultural recognition, this study examines which values and recipients of justice are currently recognized in legislation, policy advice and strategic documents concerning groundwater, seasonal gas and hydrogen storage, and (shallow and deep) geothermal energy.
Our analysis reveals a lack of recognition of social values, local communities, future generations, nature and vulnerable groups. Moreover, justice principles are not represented beyond basic distributional concerns. These findings highlight the need for a broader, recognition-centered approach to subsurface governance.
The concept of just transition has gained increasing prominence in policy agendas at all governance levels, evolving from a reactive approach aimed at protecting industrial workers affected by environmental regulations to a broader social-ecological project aimed at addressing social inequalities and ecological degradation in an integrated way. This integrated approach is particularly relevant in urban contexts, where social and ecological issues tend to concentrate and intertwine.
Yet, while much research on just urban transitions has focused on retrospective or evaluative analyses, future-oriented perspectives remain scarce. This paper addresses this gap by presenting the approach and findings from COGITO, a prospective research project on the just transition in the Brussels-Capital Region.
We first introduce the project’s original conception of a just transition and its operationalization through the framework of social-ecological inequalities.
We then present a participatory prospective approach combining creative and interactive methods to explore how these inequalities might evolve in Brussels by 2050. The resulting four exploratory scenarios – “Sustainable Growth Hub”, “Social-Ecological Pact”, “Bastion of Resilience”, and “Green Fortress” – depict contrasting possible futures under a +3.2°C global warming trajectory, each reflecting alternative responses to the twin crises of social inequality and ecological degradation: techno-optimistic neoliberalism, wellbeing economy, degrowth, and ethno-nationalist protectionism. In each scenario, social-ecological inequalities evolve differently by 2050, with some forms of inequality decreasing or worsening, and new ones emerging.
Finally, we discuss the key insights emerging from this scenario analysis and outline strategic avenues to ensure a just transition in Brussels.
To mitigate the ongoing ecological and climate crisis, governments and private actors are developing multiple interventions, among which three have large implications on land: (i) conservation of natural ecosystems, (ii) forest and landscapes restoration and afforestation and (iii) non-fossil energy production, through renewable energy infrastructures and the associated minerals mining, and land-based bioenergy. Expanding the area devoted to these sustainability interventions can lead to conflicts between these and with other land uses. We compiled quantitative targets from multilateral agreements or public commitments, and, using global suitability and priority maps, provide a spatial assessment of their distribution and overlap at the global level. We found that meeting global sustainability targets would require more than doubling the area already occupied by the considered interventions, to reach a total of ~5350 Mha in 2050, or ~40% of the ice-free land surface (of which 30% for conservation). A third of current agricultural land, and over half of the forestry land would be targeted in 2050 if the interventions were spatialized following a top-down and siloed approach, with large country and regional disparities. Over a third of energy-related best-locations are also targeted by other interventions. When also considering other business-as-usual land demands for food, fiber and timber, taken together with sustainability interventions, the area needed is larger than the earth’s ice-free land surface. Our findings provide additional insight into the mounting land squeeze, and stress the need to break silos, and focus on organising sobriety to reduce production and overconsumption.
Climate change is expected to reshape the seasonal rhythm of grassland productivity across temperate Europe. Using the process-based model Gras-Sim, this study assessed how future warming and associated CO₂ trajectories (+2°C, +3°C, +4°C) may alter the intra-annual distribution of biomass yield in permanent grasslands. Simulations were conducted for contrasting pedoclimatic regions of Wallonia, combining downscaled CMIP6 projections (CMCC, MIR, MPI) with site-specific soil and management parameters. Results indicate a pronounced seasonal redistribution of productivity rather than a uniform annual response. Spring yields consistently increased across all models and warming levels, reaching up to 4.5 t DM ha-1 relative to the historical baseline (1981-2010) under the MIR +4°C scenario (P < 0.001). In contrast, summer yields declined in all simulations, with losses up to -2.4 t DM ha-1, while autumn responses were more variable across regions and models. Regionally, cooler high-altitude areas exhibited the most stable seasonal profile, spring gains of +2.60 ± 1.51 t DM ha-1, limited summer losses of -0.93 ± 0.99 t DM ha-1, whereas drought-prone lowlands on sandy or clay-limestone soils experienced stronger summer declines, reaching up to -1.46 ± 1.15 t DM ha-1. These findings highlight a shift toward earlier growth and reduced summer resilience, reflecting the interaction between warming, soil water availability, and phenological advancement. Seasonal shifts in productivity thus emerge as a key dimension of grassland vulnerability, emphasizing the importance of adaptive management to sustain forage supply under future climates.
Shifting cultivation and wood extraction have given rise to a vast expansion of secondary forests - i.e. regrowing forests on clearcuts or fallow land – across the wet tropics. These disturbances do not just remove biomass—they transfer nutrients in space and time, with potential implications for the regrowth of secondary forests. Ash pulses, biomass export, leaching, and lateral transport move nutrients from vegetation to soil and then out of the landscape. We argue that these transfers might lead to landscape-scale nutrient depletion, which in turn might govern the speed of secondary forest regrowth. We identify nutrient cations (Ca, Mg, K) as being particularly vulnerable on the old, highly weathered soils that are characteristic for the majority of lowland tropical forests.
We present emerging evidence from both observations and experiments in central Africa: (1) along succession, available phosphorus is being cycled in excess, while exchangeable base cation availability was found to decline; (2) cations increasingly accumulate in woody biomass through time, making them susceptible to permanent loss when wood is removed; (3) In a pot experiment, tree growth responded first to cation additions (and secondarily to N), indicating that cations potentially directly limit productivity.
Together, these results highlight a landscape-level problem: disturbance-driven nutrient transfers deplete the “cation capital” needed for resilient recovery. We outline how ongoing work couples field budgets, tissue stoichiometry, and targeted fertilization experiments to parameterize a biogeochemical model, enabling scenario tests of how management can conserve nutrients and sustain carbon uptake in regenerating tropical forests.
The Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS) Belgium is part of the European ICOS Research Infrastructure, which provides standardized, high-quality observations of greenhouse gas (GHG) fluxes and concentrations to support climate science and evidence-based policymaking. ICOS Belgium operates a network of ecosystem, atmosphere, and ocean stations covering key biogeographical regions and land-use types. These long-term observation sites deliver continuous data on greenhouse gas exchange, complemented by meteorological and biogeochemical measurements. Together, they provide essential insights into ecosystem dynamics in response to environmental change.
Through close collaboration among universities and research institutes, ICOS Belgium contributes to national and European climate objectives by improving the accuracy of greenhouse gas budgets and enabling model validation and upscaling. The data are openly available through the ICOS Carbon Portal, fostering transparency and interdisciplinary research. Beyond scientific impact, ICOS Belgium actively engages with stakeholders and the public through education and outreach, linking local observations to global climate efforts.
The agri-food sector is a significant contributor to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, yet the factors shaping its long-term emission trends remain insufficiently understood. Here, we quantify the drivers of agri-food GHG emissions - demand, technology, and geography - using an environmentally extended multiregional input-output model and structural decomposition analysis. The GHG emissions footprint of global food consumption rose from 8.8 Gt CO2-eq in 1990 to 9.2 Gt CO2-eq in 2020, a modest increase of 5% considering that global food calorie demand rose by 61% over the same period. The relatively stable global trend is the result of opposing focus that offset one another and hides regional variation. Positive drivers like population growth and higher per capita food demand have been counterbalanced by reduced emission intensity and shifts to low-emission intermediary sectors. While the impact of demand (+4.95 Gt CO2-eq) and technology (-5.04 Gt CO2-eq) have been large, the geographical origin of goods has played a smaller role (+0.49 Gt CO2-eq). At the regional level, the footprint of food consumption rose in Africa and Asia and declined in the Americas, Europe, Eurasia, and Oceania. For instance in Europe, the footprint of food consumption declined with 30%, from 917 Mt CO2-eq in 1990 to 643 Mt CO2-eq in 2020. While the global agri-food sector’s ability to decouple emissions growth from production expansion is a notable achievement, it has is still a long way to go to achieve climate neutrality.
Globalized food systems have increased interdependence but also vulnerability to shocks, a challenge further amplified by climate change. This study investigates whether Wallonia (Belgium), a highly industrialized region, could achieve food self-sufficiency under future climate scenarios. A two-step approach was developed: first, a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming algorithm optimized crop rotations to meet population nutritional needs based on the EAT-Lancet dietary scenario, while integrating pedo-climatic suitability and agronomic constraints. Second, these rotations were simulated with the STICS crop model to assess yields, water and nitrogen dynamics, and greenhouse gas emissions under warming levels of +2 °C, +3 °C, and +4 °C.
Results suggest that nutritionally balanced self-sufficiency is theoretically achievable with diversified four- to six-year rotations across the region. However, climate impacts vary by crop and soil: cereals and oilseeds show progressive yield reductions, legumes face strong variability due to drought stress, while maize and sugar beet could benefit from longer growing seasons if water remains available. At the territorial scale, self-sufficiency appears feasible under +2 °C warming but becomes increasingly fragile at higher levels, requiring adaptive measures such as improving soil water retention, adjusting sowing dates, and broadening rotation diversity.
This work demonstrates that land-use optimization and dietary transitions, while necessary, are insufficient without climate adaptation strategies. Coupling optimization with process-based crop modelling provides dynamic insights for policymakers and farmers, enabling the design of resilient cropping systems that can sustain food security under changing climatic conditions.
Over the last few decades, Belgium has become the world’s largest exporter of processed potato products such as frozen fries. In 2023, the industry exported 3.5 million tonnes of these products to over 150 countries, with 49% of the volume destined for non-EU markets, such as Brazil, Colombia, Japan and China. To sustain its economic growth, the industry relies on expanding its production capacity both domestically and abroad, increasing the availability of natural resources, expanding export markets and implementing technological innovations to improve efficiency in the supply chain. However, with rising concerns about climate change, the limited availability of natural resources and environmental pressure due to the large-scale cultivation of potatoes in some regions, as well as a fall in exports, questions are being asked about the sustainability of the industry’s economic growth.
To evaluate and anticipate the environmental and socio-economic impacts of the industry’s growth, quantitative storytelling (QST) is used in this study to analyse the narratives that are used to justify policies and innovations that enable and sustain this growth. The method involves a multi-scale integrated analysis of societal and ecosystem metabolism (MuSIASEM), testing the robustness of these narratives in terms of feasibility (within biophysical limits), viability (within socio-economic limits) and desirability (compatibility with societal norms and aspirations).
This approach makes bottlenecks, constraints and contradictions in these narratives explicit, providing support for stakeholder discussions and fostering dialogue about achieving climate neutrality and a just transition in Belgium’s potato industry.
Rising temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, and more frequent extreme weather events are disrupting crop growth cycles, reducing yields, and threatening food security. As these challenges intensify, addressing climate change impacts on agricultural resilience becomes increasingly crucial and highlights the importance of innovative strategies to strengthen both resilience and sustainability. This study examined the livelihood assets and adaptation strategies that influence agricultural resilience in Europe through a meta-analysis of 43 original papers (1990–2024). The results show that sustainable and climate-resilient agriculture in Europe is significantly shaped by the availability and quality of livelihood assets—particularly natural assets—which exert a strong influence on agricultural resilience through the lens of economic sustainability. These natural assets not only underpin ecological stability but also provide critical economic value, thereby enhancing the sustainability and resilience of agricultural systems. Furthermore, the analysis of spatiotemporal dynamics revealed that temporal factors have a negative and statistically significant effect on socially and economically sustainable agriculture, underscoring the vulnerability of agricultural systems to time-based changes and uncertainties. Strengthening livelihood assets therefore emerges as a strategic pathway to enhance competitiveness, foster innovation, and ensure a stable supply of essential agricultural resources. Accordingly, the study emphasizes that focusing exclusively on social assets is insufficient for achieving economic sustainability in agriculture. Instead, a more integrated approach—centered on reinforcing natural and other forms of livelihood assets—is imperative for enhancing agricultural resilience and supporting the broader goals of sustainable development across Europe.
Climatechange policies are cross-sectoral in the sense that they need to be deployed in many policies and across different scales of governance. It entails that several levels of governments and authorities are competent for climate policies. This poses some serious governance challenges, notably in federal structures. Climate federalism literature studies and evaluates how federal structures organize themselves to achieve climate policies. Contributing to this rich literature, this contribution first recalls the principal tenets of Belgian climate federalism and evaluates their strengths and weaknesses based on existing literature. It is generally assessed that Belgian climate federal structure is ill-equipped to address climate change wicked problem. Among the challenges highlighted by literature, it has been argued that the exclusive separation of powers between the State and the subnational entities (SNE) or the lack coordination between them impair Belgian federalism to pursue climate objectives. From this this state of art, this contribution elaborates different legal pathways to improve Belgian climate governance and focuses particularly on the residual competence of the federal Authority, on the federal competence on security and civil protection and on the principle of mutuality. It is argued that residual power could empower the federal Authority to pursue climate policies. Federal competence on security matters could also empower the federal Authority on climate questions. We elaborate on the principle of mutuality, that has already been proposed by the doctrine and recognized in Brussels law as a principle that would seek mutual reinforcement of the effectiveness of States and SNE’s measures.
Climate change and environmental degradation rank among the most urgent and complex challenges facing contemporary societies. Addressing them requires ambitious, long-term policies — yet the question of how such consequential decisions should be made remains deeply contested. Should they be left to elected politicians, delegated to independent experts, entrusted to citizens through participatory processes, or concentrated in the hands of authoritarian leaders able to bypass democratic constraints? Understanding public preferences for different decision-making models is essential for designing legitimate and effective forms of climate governance. This contribution addresses this question using data from The Social Study (2025) (https://thesocialstudy.be/), in which a representative sample of French-speaking Belgians was surveyed about a wide range of attitudes and behaviours related to climate change. The analysis explores how support for different governance models is rooted in citizens’ attitudes toward climate change (e.g., level of concern), perceptions of the political system (e.g., trust, ideological orientation), and subjective as well as objective socio-economic conditions. The findings will contribute to understanding the social and political foundations of legitimacy in governing the climate crisis.
Belgium’s climate transition increasingly relies on subsurface use (geothermal energy, hydrogen and gas storage, CO₂ storage, nuclear-waste disposal), yet governance remains fragmented across federal, Flemish and local levels. Treating the subsurface as a common-pool resource, we apply the Institutional Resource Regimes (IRR) framework to assess institutional capacity and legal alignment in Flanders. A mixed, activity-centric design combines a top-down review of governing instruments with bottom-up evidence from 19 semi-structured interviews. For each use, we score extent (coverage of formal rules) and coherence (consistency within and across levels of governance) by comparing institutional arrangements with their activation in practice.
Findings indicate an overall complex regime: extent is low to moderate and coherence low to medium. Key drivers are split competences between federal and Flemish authorities, parallel economic and environmental permits, weak safeguards for interference, and ambiguous pore-space or access rights that sustain first-come-first-served dynamics and legal priority for earlier permits. Interviewees also report fragmented data sharing, limited early-stage participation at the policy (not only project) level, and “club” access to decision networks, raising accountability and liability concerns.
We propose a policy bridge toward sustainable-use and thus an integrated regime: joint Flemish–federal coordination with clear enforcement and liability allocation; an activity–instrument matrix that clarifies rights, responsibilities, and interference tests; harmonised licensing horizons plus a shared permitting and data-governance mandate; and minimum participation and transparency standards at the policy stage. These steps strengthen institutional capacity and democratic accountability while enabling climate-relevant subsurface uses without undermining local communities or intergenerational equity.
Recent decades have seen a significant rise in the frequency and intensity of droughts and heatwaves globally. The 2022 European summer exemplified how the co-occurrence of heatwave and drought can lead to unprecedented impacts to natural and human systems with up to 50% cross losses and 61 672 heat-related deaths including 434 in Belgium alone. The disproportionate impacts of these compound hot-dry events can be largely attributed to land-atmosphere feedbacks that mutually intensify the surface warming and drying. While research has focused on observing and quantifying this feedback through the soil moisture-temperature coupling, current approaches rely mainly on correlations, and are unable to capture the intrinsically asymmetric directional nature of the interaction between two climate variables leaving a gap in our understanding of these critical events. In this work we use the non-stationary Liang-Kleeman information flow formalism to study the causal soil moisture-temperature coupling. Using ERA5 and ERA5-Land data, we inspect the trends of the causal coupling and inspect its variations during univariate extremes and compound hot-dry events; and investigate the anthropogenic influence on the observed trends using a multi-model, multi-member ensemble. We find spatial patterns and asymmetries in the coupling direction for both the trends and the behavior during extremes, with generally more significant changes for the causal effect of soil moisture on temperature. These results demonstrate the value and potential of causal inference based coupling metrics to advance our understanding of these increasingly impactful and frequent extreme climate events.
Climate change is projected to intensify and increase the frequency of extreme rainfall across Europe as a result of higher atmospheric moisture in a warmer climate, leading to major socio-economic impacts. However, the role of future changes in atmospheric circulation patterns in shaping these extremes remains uncertain. Recent studies also suggest that climate models often misrepresent regional circulation, which can significantly affect their projections over Europe (Vautard et al., 2023).
This study introduces a framework to separate thermodynamic and dynamic contributions to projected changes in extreme daily rainfall, using the Lamb Weather Type (LWT) classification and applying it to Belgium. CMIP6 Global Climate Models are first evaluated for their ability to reproduce both general atmospheric circulation (Serras et al., 2024) and circulation patterns during extreme rainfall events. Results show that models performing well for overall circulation do not necessarily perform well for circulation during extremes, necessitating an additional selection criterion.
Under the SSP3-7.0 scenario, increases in extreme-rainfall intensity and frequency by the end of the century are primarily driven by thermodynamic processes rather than dynamic changes. Seasonally, the probability of extreme rainfall rises mainly in autumn and winter, while intensity increases are strongest in spring and summer.
Vautard et al (2023). Nature Communications, 14(1), 6803.
Serras et al. (2024). Climate Dynamics, 1-23.
Climate extremes such as heatwaves, river floods, droughts, crop failures, including aspects of wildfires and tropical cyclones, are increasingly attributable to anthropogenic climate change. Yet how this translates into unprecedented levels of extreme event exposure in one’s lifetime remains unclear. Here we show that, neglecting adaptation, many of today’s youth will experience unprecedented exposure to extremes during their lifetimes. For the events above, the share of people facing unprecedented lifetime exposure is projected to at least double from 1960 to 2020 birth cohorts under current mitigation policies aligned with a global warming pathway reaching 2.7 °C above pre-industrial temperatures by 2100. In a 1.5 °C pathway, ∼50% of people born in 2020 will experience unprecedented lifetime exposure to heatwaves. If global warming reaches 3.5 °C by 2100, this rises 30 to ∼90% of this birth cohort. For the same cohort and warming pathway, ∼30% will live with unprecedented exposure to crop failures and ∼10% to river floods. Further, under current policies, two indicators of vulnerability show that the most vulnerable experience significantly more unprecedented exposure to heatwaves than the least vulnerable. Our results call for sustained greenhouse gas emissions reductions to lower the burden of climate change on young generations
The Permian Delaware Tight, located in Texas (USA), is the largest carbon bomb on Earth. Carbon bombs are defined as 425 fossil fuel megaprojects, of which about 60% are already under exploitation. With potential emissions of 27.8 GtCO₂, the Permian Delaware Tight would release three-quarters of total annual global CO₂ emissions. Exploiting this single project would consume more than ten percent of the remaining global carbon budget for limiting global warming to 1.5 °C by the end of the century. Considering all carbon bombs, the cumulative potential emissions from these coal, gas, and oil fields exceed at least twice the remaining global carbon budget consistent with the Paris Agreement.
Within the Source2Suffering project, we develop a methodology to translate the greenhouse gas emissions of any project into lifetime climate impacts. Our modeling framework estimates—while explicitly accounting for uncertainty—the number of extreme events, such as heatwaves, droughts, or floods, that current and future generations are likely to experience as a result of these specific emissions. Crucially, the method also captures how these impacts vary not only across generations but also among populations in different countries, thereby reflecting unequal exposure to climate risks. This unequal exposure is represented in the model as the combined outcome of two factors: first, the physical dynamics of global warming, which generate disproportionately higher impacts in the Global South; and second, the demographic reality that the majority of the world’s population—including most future generations—resides in these regions.
Climate change can alter both carbon cycling and fruit production in orchard ecosystems. Pear is one of the most economically important fruit crops in Belgium, playing a key role in both local agriculture and export markets. Understanding how climate change affects pear productivity and ecosystem processes is therefore essential for both food security and environmental sustainability. To assess these effects, we monitored pear trees grown under two climate scenarios based on RCP 8.5—ambient (2009–2013) and future (2040–2044)—in the climate chambers of the UHasselt Ecotron facility. Continuous CO₂ flux measurements were used to calculate net ecosystem exchange (NEE), while fruit yield and quality were measured at harvest. Results showed lower cumulative NEE under future climate conditions, indicating reduced carbon loss and enhanced carbon sequestration. Pear trees grown under the future scenario also produced slightly higher fruit yield and dry mass. These findings suggest that future climate conditions may reduce carbon loss and increase fruit production in pear orchards, highlighting the potential positive effects of moderate warming and elevated CO₂ on orchard ecosystems.
Enhanced weathering (EW) is proposed as a key strategy for climate change mitigation. Dissolution of silicate minerals enhances the alkalinity of the pore water, resulting at a shift of the carbonate system towards carbonate and bicarbonate, leading to higher dissolved inorganic carbon when the water is equilibrated with the atmosphere. Here, we evaluated the effects of EW on a crop ecosystem within a macro-scale ecotron—an enclosed facility enabling complete quantification of carbon fluxes among the atmosphere, vegetation, soil, and leachates. We monitored all greenhouse gases in deep mesocosms representative of marginal soil conditions and applied 10 t ha⁻¹ of basalt at the start of the experiment. EW treatment resulted in an almost three-fold enhancement of measured carbon flux into the soil, achieving rates up to 1.5 tons per hectare during the growing season. Furthermore, the magnitude of carbon sequestration exceeded what could solely be attributed to weathering rates. Therefore, we conclude that EW facilitated significant carbon accrual in our simulated ecosystems via not only carbonate precipitation but also enhanced biogeochemical activities promoting additional carbon storage. Based on these findings, we speculate on the underlying pathways responsible for such outcomes.
The cement industry alone is responsible for around 7% of the global greenhouse gas emissions, of which 60% are process emissions released during clinker production. To decarbonize these unavoidable emissions, CO2 Capture and Storage (CCS) is necessary. The EU-funded LEILAC projects aim to demonstrate a new capture technology, with implementation at HeidelbergMaterial’s Lixhe (BE) and Ennigerloh (DE) plants.
Together with the German geological survey BGR, we developed a business case for an integrated CO2 capture, transport and storage value chain in Germany. Several scenarios were evaluated with multiple on- and offshore CO2 transport options, storage locations and upscaling, and considering ongoing and planned transport and geological storage initiatives.
The PSS simulation tool for CCS implementation forecasting and a dedicated techno-economic model were applied for general and sensitivity analysis, considering capture, conditioning, buffer storage, transport, transshipment and storage. At demonstration-scale (0.1 Mt/y), onshore train and offshore ship transport is preferred. When upscaling (1-5 Mt/y), pipeline transport gradually becomes the most economic and practical option. While demo-scale capture remains uneconomic at current energy and emission prices, a full-scale chain is at the economic threshold. Our study highlights the important economies of scale that can be won, which can be supported by government policies that encourage infrastructure upscaling for hubs, joint transport and storage. Early storage opportunities are available in the Danish and Norwegian North Sea. In time, CO2 use and domestic storage can be considered.
A pan-European storage atlas is needed to inform strategic decisions on how use of the subsurface can be optimized to deliver climate targets, including through Carbon dioxide Capture and Storage (CCS). CCS has a key role to play in meeting climate targets.
The European Net Zero Industry Act (NZIA) provides an annual carbon dioxide injection target of 50 million tonnes capacity by 2030. Current operational plants in Europe have an annual injection capacity of around 3.54 Mtpa. To meet the NZIA target, we urgently need to scale up CCS; this means we need to identify and mature storage opportunities in Europe.
CO2GeoNet, the pan-European network on geological storage of carbon dioxide, prepared the first pan-European atlas during the CO2StoP project (2013). This atlas has been funded through a number of EU-funded projects and is currently being advanced by the Geological Service for Europe project (2022-2027) which is an initiative of EuroGeoSurveys.
The latest version of the atlas can be viewed through the European Geological Data Infrastructure (EGDI). This atlas highlights storage opportunities and uses a Storage Readiness Level (Akhurst et al., 2021) to indicate the maturity of development for each potential storage trap. The database currently contains almost 1000 identified storage traps, along with ‘units’ and ‘formations’ where rocks are at suitable depth and could be investigated further. Under NZIA it is anticipated that more data will be released which will benefit future editions of the pan-European storage atlas.
With the Green Deal, the European Union aims to achieve carbon neutrality and circularity through building renovation and the use of secondary resources. As a major source of carbon emissions, resource consumption, and waste, the construction sector must play a central role. In Wallonia, where construction generates 39% of waste, large-scale energy renovation of historic buildings, often considered as energy-inefficient, creates significant material flows. From an Urban Mining perspective, these flows represent a valuable stock of reusable materials, particularly historic timber, valued for its durability, cultural significance, and carbon storage capacity. However, its reuse remains limited by normative barriers, leading most end-of-life timber to energy recovery.
The research focuses on 19th-century houses in Liège, known for their rich and high-quality timber structures. It aims to prove that historic timbers are suitable for structural reuse in new construction; to support their reuse through a protocol that guarantees technical performance and heritage value; and to propose scenarios that question current regulations.
Five methodological steps are proposed based on ten digitally documented case studies to achieve two main deliverables: a technical dataset for historic timbers, and a technical protocol, developed and validated on site in collaboration with renovation professionals, and using visual classification, statement methods, and mechanical tests.
This interdisciplinary research, combining building archaeology, structural engineering, circular construction offers new insights into 19th-century carpentry and supports reuse practices and circularity in the wood industry, bridging constructive memory with architectural innovation, and contributes significantly to reducing carbon emissions in the construction sector.
Extreme climate events pose serious threats to human society and ecosystems. Measuring their impacts remains a crucial challenge scientifically. Although data linking climate hazards to socio-economic effects are crucial, their public availability is still relatively sparse. Existing open databases such as EM-DAT and DesInventar Sendai offer some impact data on climate extremes, but impact data on climate extremes also appear in newspapers, reports, and online sources like Wikipedia.
Wikimpacts 1.0, a comprehensive global database on climate impacts developed using natural language processing techniques. This database utilizes the GPT4o model for extracting information, following document selection, post-processing, and data consolidation. In this release, impact data for each event is recorded at three levels: event, national, and sub-national. Categories include the number of deaths, injuries, homelessness, displacements, affected individuals, damaged buildings, and insured or total economic damages. This dataset encompasses 2,928 events from 1034 to 2024, featuring 20,186 national and 36,394 sub-national data entries. Comparison with manually annotated data from 156 events shows that the Wikimpacts database is highly accurate in the event level for time, location, deaths, and economic damage, though details on injuries, affected individuals, homelessness, displacements, and building damage are slightly less precise. An analysis from 1900 to 2024 demonstrates that sub-national data provides more comprehensive coverage of tropical and extratropical storms, and wildfires than EM-DAT, with enhanced data on events in countries like the United States, Mexico, Canada, and Australia. Our study emphasizes the potential of natural language processing in creating open databases on climate event impacts.
Global land surface models (LSMs) describe vegetation growth in detail, simulating photosynthesis and plant hydraulics. The crop modules, however, in which growth stages and annual yields are simulated, are one of the most recent additions to LSMs. And because of their complexity, they often lack critical components, such as the effect of different stresses under various growth stages. There is thus a need for more accurate representation of crops in LSMs. As heatwaves are already becoming more frequent, we present some model implementations to target heat stress effects on crop production and evaluate them for the some major crops in the Community Land Model (CLM5).
Clouds represent a major source of uncertainty in Earth system models. In particular, the altitude and vertical distribution of clouds strongly influence their radiative properties and impact Earth’s climate. As such, constructing real-time 3D global cloud maps with a high temporal frequency could result in a significant improvement in these models. Satellites such as CloudSat and, more recently, EarthCARE help us in gaining information about the vertical distribution of cloud properties. However, with narrow track width and long revisit times (about 25 days), we only obtain a snapshot of our atmosphere and cannot directly study how clouds evolve on a timescale of minutes to hours. In comparison, imagery from passive sensors onboard geostationary satellites is available with high temporal cadence (15 mins) but only provide the “top down” view without directly probing atmospheric profiles. In this study, we extend the sparse vertical profiles in both space and time and create 3D cloud maps from 2D satellite imagery using machine learning. More specifically, we use imagery in 11 spectral channels from the MSG/SEVIRI instrument, collocated with vertical profiles measured by CloudSat’s Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR) for 2010. To take into account the vast amount of data from MSG/SEVIRI, we use unsupervised pre-training by using a masked autoencoder architecture to improve upon existing methods.
This study examines the potential of local energy cooperatives to accelerate a just and effective pathway toward climate neutrality in Belgium. Focusing on an in-depth case study of the ‘Living Lab Muide-Meulestede’ in the city of Ghent, the research combines Strategic Niche Management with Nancy Fraser’s three-dimensional justice framework to analyse how technological, social, and institutional factors interact in niche development, upscaling, and citizens’ involvement. Through qualitative interviews, document analysis, and triangulation with policy literature, the study highlights that energy cooperatives offer promise to democratise energy governance, promote distributive justice, and reduce energy poverty. However, substantial barriers persist. Fragmented ownership limited long-term policy alignment and difficulties engaging marginalized communities at scale reveal ongoing tensions around procedural and recognitional justice. Despite efforts to engage a diverse group of residents, power remains limited to a relatively homogeneous core.
The study concludes with targeted policy recommendations for Belgian and European stakeholders, calling for more stable frameworks, sustained support, and tailored measures to ensure that vulnerable groups are not left behind. By integrating governance innovations, stakeholder engagement, and supportive legal infrastructure, Belgium can leverage local energy cooperatives to drive both decarbonization and social resilience. These findings offer actionable insights for policymakers and practitioners assembling at the Belgian Science for Climate Action Conference.
Theoretically, this study contributes to scholarship on socio-technical transitions by extending SNM through the integration of a multi-dimensional justice lens. This interdisciplinary approach advances understanding of how equity and recognition dynamics shape niche empowerment and legitimacy in the energy transition.
Climate Smart Agriculture offers an integrative whole-farming system approach to respond effectively to climate related challenges in European agriculture. It is based on practices contributing to increasing agricultural productivity while adapting and building resilience to climate change and reducing and/or removing greenhouse gas emissions. However, strengthening connections and mutual learning between farmers, advisors, and research is essential to accelerate this transition to climate smart agriculture across Europe.
Three large-scale Horizon Europe projects—Climate Farm Demo (CFD), Climate Smart Advisors (CSA), and Climate Smart Research (CSR)—jointly address this challenge. CFD connects 1,500 pilot demo farmers and their advisors across 28 countries, fostering peer-to-peer learning, testing innovations in real farm conditions, and demonstrating climate smart practices in more than 4,500 demonstration events. CSA mobilizes the European advisory community by creating 260 Communities of Practice, training 1,500 advisors, and strengthening advisory capacity to support systemic farm-level transitions. CSR engages 29 Experimental Research Stations to co-develop integrated approaches for mitigation, adaptation, and productivity, validate decision-support tools, and embed practice-oriented innovations into EU and national AKIS networks.
Together, by co-organizing multiple activities, these projects create a climate smart agriculture knowledge and innovation system (CS-AKIS), where farmers, advisors and researchers at regional, national and EU level join together. By linking these actors, and strengthening their capacities, the projects foster cross-border knowledge flows and co-creation, ultimately accelerating the transition to climate smart agriculture.
Architectural decisions are not cosmetic; they are binding contracts between the built environment and its users. Choices about envelope and space design determine both comfort and carbon footprint.
To illustrate this relationship, we focused on hospital buildings, as they are one of the most energy and carbon intensive typology, operating 24/7.
Hospital architecture has evolved through shifts in design trends, social attitudes, politics, medical technology and building services. The resulting typologies: pavilions, podium towers, and others, shape how well-being and energy demands are distributed across departments.
This research, part of the EU-funded Horizon project Caring Nature (CN), aims to advance sustainable, circular healthcare buildings. Focusing on inpatient units, still major energy consumers despite fewer beds and shorter stays, we analyse a prototypical patient room. Over 10,000 dynamic simulations across four climates vary orientation, glazing, window-to-wall ratio, solar shading, natural ventilation and thermal mass. The goal is to identify design compromises that balance well-being, daylight, carbon reduction, and costs.
Simulations are processed in two ways: first, assessing the cumulative impact of all strategies under a baseline scenario to reveal maximum energy savings; second, isolating variables to measure each strategy’s effect by climate. Results are linked to a well-being framework highlighting room-level parameters most influential on recovery.
Extending findings to whole-unit archetypes, central corridor, double corridor and courtyard, we evaluate how room-level decisions scale up.
The conclusion highlights that early, performance and evidence-based design coordination between architects, engineers and hospital managers can align patient well-being with substantial carbon reductions.
The Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) is one of the global core climate tipping elements on Earth. However, its impact on the global carbon cycle remains critically ignored in the current global carbon budget. This is especially important because the Antarctic Sedimentary Basins (ASBs) are believed to harbor significant reservoirs, ca. 400 Pg C, of the potent greenhouse gas methane (CH4) stored as gas hydrates. Gas hydrates can form and are stable under a combination of specific high pressure and low temperature conditions: the gas hydrate stability zone (GHSZ). Yet, the exact size of this zone, its spatial distribution and thus its vulnerability to projected ice mass loss remains unknown.
Here, we present the first comprehensive spatial mapping of the GHSZ beneath the AIS, quantifying its volume and tracing its evolution from the onset of glaciation 40 million years ago through to the year 3000 under two Shared Socio-economic Pathways: SSP1-2.6 and SSP5-8.5.
Initial results indicate that the present-day GHSZ volume beneath the AIS ranges from 1.5 to 1.65 x1e6 km3. A significant portion of this volume resides in the subglacial environment, predominantly beneath parts of the East Antarctic Ice sheet. In a next step, we will quantify the amount of CH4 that is has accumulated over glaciation times within this stability zone and identify its vulnerability to the shrinking GHSZ.
Transitioning to a circular and low-carbon building sector requires a detailed understanding of the material composition of existing buildings. While mineral materials such as concrete, steel, wood, and glass are well documented, plastics have been largely overlooked despite their growing use since the post-war period. This study presents a structured literature review on the historical evolution, typologies, and applications of plastics in Walloon buildings, highlighting their relevance for circularity and carbon reduction strategies.
The review traces major phases of polymer adoption (1945–2025), from PVC in pipes and joinery to synthetic insulation and polyolefins in the 1990s–2010s, emphasizing the influence of European and regional policies—including the European Green Deal, circular economy directives, and Belgian regulations—on material choices and carbon outcomes. Key plastics (PVC, PE, PP, PU, PS) are classified by applications (insulation, membranes, coatings, joinery, technical networks), with attention to traceability, recyclability, and reuse challenges.
Methodologically, the study combines bibliometric analysis (Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar) with institutional sources (SPW, OVAM, Statbel, ADEME). Results indicate that embedded plastic stocks remain largely unquantified, limiting circular and low-carbon strategies. To address this gap, an integrated approach is proposed, combining georeferenced inventories, material typology, and prospective flow modeling. The Borinage area (Mons) serves as a pilot territory to demonstrate how reliable data can support circular strategies and reduce the building sector’s carbon footprint.
This research provides a scientific foundation to inform regional planning, support circular economy policies, and guide evidence-based decisions for a low-carbon built environment.
Soil contamination remains a significant environmental challenge, stemming from past industrial activities, property rights issues, and ongoing unsustainable practices. Among the innovative solutions to this issue, phytoremediation—defined as the use of plants to remove or neutralise contaminants—emerges as a dual-benefit strategy. This environmentally friendly technique offers a nature-based approach to combating soil degradation while producing biomass that can serve as feedstock for advanced biofuels, thereby facilitating the transition to a low-carbon circular economy. Moreover, phytoremediation is recognised for its role inenhancing biodiversity.
However, the successful integration of phytoremediation into biofuel production presents both scientific and regulatory challenges. A primary concern is the necessity for plants that can thrive in toxic environments and produce adequate biomass for energy conversion. In this regard, advancements in biotechnology, including the use of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and New Genomic Techniques (NGTs), represent promising technical innovations.
Nonetheless, these methods are highly controversial. The Confédération Paysanne judgment (C-528/16) by the Court of Justice of the European Union classified NGTs within the same regulatory framework as traditional GMOs, leading to the implementation of a highly restrictive regime within the EU context. The ultimate goal of implementing phytoremediation correctly is to transform contaminated land into arable land, thereby making it suitable once again for mitigating and combating
climate change. Besides modern taboos, such as the involvement of GMOs and NGTs, one question will be particularly considered: whether phytoremediation falls under the definition of sustainable agricultural practice.
International Cooperative Initiatives (ICIs) are transboundary voluntary efforts by a group of actors (including non-Party and/or governmental actors) to achieve specific climate-related goals. To ensure that ICIs are effective in achieving their objectives, it is necessary to track their progress over time against their stated objectives.
The paper will examine the framework for global coordination and the adaptability of ICIs, focusing on the Breakthrough Agenda sectors of steel, concrete and cement. Breakthrough Agenda is an ICI convening initiatives and countries by providing a framework to prioritise, coordinate, and enhance collaborative action across seven high-emitting sectors. For the two sectors of steel, cement and concrete, the initiative aims to realise near-zero steel and cement production across regions as the preferred choice in global markets.
The paper aims to review the effectiveness and fairness of the ICI in the face of climate backtracking by large actors and institutions. It will analyse the risks embedded in ICIs that subject them to failure in goal attainment and whether a focus on the self-interests of actors participating in ICIs enables them to continue cooperation and collaboration through case studies.
The paper will be based on the analysis of existing academic literature, relevant reports (UNFCCC, IPCC, UNEP, etc), and grey literature. The study aims to generate insights into the effectiveness and fairness of ICIs to ensure just and inclusive transformation. The paper argues for the significance of heightened international climate cooperation by industry stakeholders, given the reality of the climate crisis and its impacts.
Subsea permafrost thaw on the warming Arctic shelf could release up to ~2822 (1518–4982) Pg of organic carbon (OC) [1]. Microbial processes convert this OC into methane ($CH_4$) and dissolved inorganic carbon ($DIC$), which, if released to the Arctic Ocean, may intensify acidification and global warming. The impact depends on how much carbon escapes and in which form. In upper sediments, anaerobic methane oxidation ($AOM$) consumes $CH_4$ but raises $DIC$ and alkalinity ($TA$), influencing carbonate chemistry and favouring carbonate precipitation. This precipitation sequesters carbon but consumes $TA$. Thus, Arctic acidification and $CO_2$ fluxes depend not only on permafrost $CH_4$ and $DIC$ fluxes, but also on $AOM$ and authigenic carbonate precipitation rates, key regulators of benthic carbonate biogeochemistry.
We use a reaction-transport model on the pan-Arctic scale to quantify seafloor $DIC$ and $TA$ fluxes driven by subsea permafrost-derived $CH_4$ and $DIC$ inputs for three climate scenarios (SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP5-8.5) from 1900–2300. Across all scenarios, results confirm that $AOM$ is a highly effective microbial barrier consuming all dissolved $CH_4$. However, its regulating role on seafloor $DIC$ and $TA$ fluxes is dwarfed by high permafrost-derived $DIC$ fluxes. The model predicts subsea permafrost thaw could release 15 (SSP1)–95 (SSP5) TgC yr⁻¹ as $DIC$ and 10 (SSP1)–50 (SSP5) Teq yr⁻¹ as $TA$ by 2300. The pan-Arctic $TA/DIC$ efflux ratio, slightly below 1 for SSP1–2 and markedly lower for SSP5, indicates that permafrost thaw will amplify Arctic Ocean acidification and may weaken its $CO_2$ sink, especially under SSP5.
Climate change is driving increased fire weather across the world. Hot, dry and windy conditions lead to higher risk of fire ignition and spread and make fire suppression more difficult. With further warming, fire weather is projected to increase in many parts of the world. This means today’s children and young people will be exposed to an ever-greater number of fire danger days during their lifetimes. In this study, we analyze projections of Canadian fire weather index (FWI) conditions over Portugal and Europe from an ensemble of CMIP6 simulations previously bias-adjusted and statistically downscaled against ERA5-Land (Hetzer et al. 2024). We define fire danger days as days exceeding the 95th percentile of FWI values in a grid cell from a reference period (1985-2014) in historical simulations. Combining this with spatially explicit demographic data, we apply a lifetime exposure framework (Thiery et al. 2021), now adapted as a flexible python package dem4cli, to estimate the number of fire danger days that people of different generations are projected to be exposed to during their lifetimes under stylized warming pathways ranging from below 1.5ºC to 3.5ºC of warming in 2100. We find young people in Portugal and Europe will be disproportionately exposed to fire danger days compared to older generations during their lifetimes, and that they have the most to gain from ambitious mitigation. Our research highlights the intergenerational inequity of climate change impacts, underlining the urgency of ambitious mitigation and adaptation action.
The Congo Basin in Central Africa remains one of the few regions globally where the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has not reported observed trends in hot extremes or attributed such changes to anthropogenic influences—primarily due to the scarcity of in situ observational data. Although extensive daily weather records exist, spanning from the 1900s to the early 2000s, and covering numerous stations across the basin, the majority of these remain archived on paper, limiting their accessibility for climate analysis. Here, we present our historical weather data rescue project entailing archived data from 37 weather stations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). We outline the digitization process of these archival records, comprising over 1 million individual observations, and describe the subsequent transcription using MeteoSaver version 1.1. We construct daily time series of daily maximum, average, and minimum temperatures, precipitation, as well as dry bulb and wet bulb temperatures measured at three times per day (06:00, 15:00, and 18:00) across these stations. This newly transcribed dataset provides a critical foundation for undertaking hydroclimatic trend analysis in the Congo Basin—one of the world’s most data-scarce yet climatically significant regions. Using these records, we conduct an analysis of multi-decadal temperature trends across the basin. Our findings reveal a consistent and accelerating warming signal since the 1950s, characterized by a rightward shift in the distribution of daily maximum and minimum temperatures with each successive decade. This highlights the urgent need to close the knowledge gap on climate trends in the Congo Basin.
Belgium’s circular forestry and timber sector holds major untapped climate potential. One dry kg of wood stores 1.83 kg of CO₂, sequestered during tree growth. Forests offer not only carbon storage, but also biodiversity, well-being, and sustainable, low-impact materials. Belgium’s forest sink captures 1.4 MtCO₂e/year, while the domestic harvest holds 4.5 MtCO₂e/year. Additional timber imports further increase the stored carbon stock, especially in long-lived buildings. However, 4.1 MtCO₂e/year of wood waste remains underutilized.
Key emission reduction strategies include: (i) improving forest sink assessments under climate change, (ii) extending Harvested Wood Product (HWP) lifespans, (iii) replacing concrete and steel—cutting emissions by 10–15%—and fossil-based chemicals with bio-based alternatives, and (iv) managing and optimizing the urban timber carbon stock.
Belgium’s forest landscapes, high population density, and access to timber imports make it well-positioned for climate-smart timber valorization. Our approach includes six innovation pathways:
1. Forest Sink – Use CAT/CAPSIS modeling to assess carbon storage and forest resilience.
2. Urban Sink – Quantify building carbon stocks through dynamic LCA.
3. Engineered Wood – Create laminated timber from mixed, undervalued species.
4. Durability – Thermally modify wood and produce biochar to extend lifespan.
5. Circular Timber – Manufacture laminated products from reused wood.
6. Wood Waste Valorization – Extract lignin for bio-based specialty chemicals.
These approaches reduce emissions through both carbon storage and material substitution, making timber a low-hanging fruit for decarbonization. Engineered products lock carbon for a mid- to long-term, while bio-based chemicals replace high-emission fossil alternatives.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) depends on voluntary contributions from experts worldwide to produce comprehensive, balanced scientific assessments that inform global climate policy. Thousands of scientists contribute as authors, reviewers, or through the publication of relevant literature, making the IPCC a uniquely collaborative international effort. This poster outlines the main opportunities available for scientists, practitioners, early‑career researchers, and institutions to meaningfully engage with the IPCC assessment process.
To manage current climate change, global greenhouse gas emissions will have to be reduced considerably, which is coordinated under multiple international treaties. An accurate assessment of greenhouse gas emissions therefore forms the basis for any predictions and mitigation strategies regarding climate change. Currently, this is done by most countries via bottom-up calculations that are reported to the UNFCCC. These however contain very large uncertainties and are often in disagreement with actual atmospheric concentration measurements. A promising approach is to complement these bottom-up calculations with a top-down approach that is based on atmospheric inversions and integrates atmospheric observations, leading to considerably lowered uncertainties which are additionally spatially and temporally resolved. For this, the GHG fluxes of different landcover types are estimated and upscaled (based on e.g. ICOS fluxtowers), combined with an atmospheric transport model (such as WRF-GHG) and then checked by atmospheric concentration measurements, resulting in posterior flux estimates. To establish such a framework for Belgium, the VERBE project (GHG VERification for BElgium) was formed as a partnership between BIRA-IASB, the Universiteit Antwerpen and the Université Liége with three main aims: 1) Establish independent atmospheric GHG concentration measurements via a new ICOS tall tower and field campaigns; 2) improve prior GHG flux estimation by adapting current methodologies specifically to the Belgian domain and by integrating new remote sensing products; and 3) develop an independent framework for atmospheric inversions for the Belgian domain that integrates the atmospheric measurements and prior fluxes to obtain posterior fluxes.
The Walloon Platform for the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) aims to promote understanding of climate change and ways of addressing it. This platform (PwG in French1) was created by the Walloon Government in 2016 under the direction of climatologist Jean-Pascal van Ypersele. It is currently supervised by Francesco Contino, energy expert at UCLouvain.
We highlight the work of the platform over the last 10 years:
· Synthesising and disseminating knowledge on climate change, risks and solutions. The PwG published more than 40 thematic Lettres reviewing topics from climate change projections and socio-economical drivers to loss and damages from unprevented risks, from the global scale to Wallonia.
· Supporting Walloon scientists participating in the work of the IPCC through a multidisciplinary network of experts and through active involvement in the Belgian delegation at IPCC Plenaries2.
· Supporting climate change adaptation in Wallonia by synthesizing knowledge and data.
In its 2024-2029 Regional Policy Declaration3, the Walloon Government commits to strengthening adaptation across sectors. As a contribution to this objective, the PwG is coordinating a project supported by the European Union in the context of “Pathways to Resilience” (P2R), a large framework which provides methodologies to help about 100 cities or regions in the design of adaptation plans. With the Walloon air-climate agency, we aim to contribute to the development of a strategy based on scientific knowledge while involving key stakeholders.
Just Green is an EC funded project designed to strengthen citizen engagement in the green transition across the Visegrád Four countries: Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland.
The project addresses a critical risk facing EU climate policy: decarbonisation measures that affect housing, transport, and labour markets may be perceived as externally imposed, socially unfair, or economically burdensome.
Such perceptions can weaken public support and undermine long-term climate objectives.
The core goal of JustGreen is to ensure that the transition toward climate neutrality is socially just, democratically grounded, and responsive to citizens’ lived experiences. The consortium, composed of leading policy and research organisations from all four countries, combines civic participation with applied research to capture how individuals understand, experience, and evaluate decarbonisation policies in everyday life.
Through public debates, focus groups, surveys, and expert consultations, the project identifies structural, financial, and informational barriers that hinder behavioural change. Particular attention is paid to energy poverty, transport accessibility, labour market adaptation, and the effectiveness of subsidy schemes.
Key outputs include national policy analyses, comparative regional reports, citizen testimony collections, public discussion summaries, and recommendations for policymakers at local, national, and EU levels.
By translating citizen insights into actionable policy feedback, JustGreen strengthens trust, and promotes a fair and inclusive pathway toward Europe’s green transformation.
This paper analyses the European Union’s (EU) multi-level governance framework for zero-emission energy-intensive industries (EIIs). European EIIs face the dual challenge of decarbonising in line with the EU’s climate targets while maintaining international competitiveness. While at the forefront of global industrial decarbonisation, European EIIs face severe economic pressures due to strong global competition and high energy prices, threatening their decarbonisation and competitiveness (and potentially survival). Addressing this dual challenge will require a comprehensive, coherent and coordinated industrial strategy and multi-level governance across Europe. Whereas the EU has an advanced climate policy framework (including for EII emissions), existing green industrial policies targeting EIIs remain insufficient, incoherent, and fragmented across EU member states. Against this backdrop, this paper explores how the EU’s multi-level governance framework for zero-emission EIIs can be strengthened. It analyses relevant policies and actors and their interactions across the EU and member state level. This allows to identify gaps and challenges across the existing governance framework for EII decarbonisation and to discuss potential options to address these shortcomings. The findings of the paper contribute to the development of a more effective governance framework for EII decarbonisation and advance the academic discussions on EU green industrial policy and climate governance.
Decarbonizing industrial heat remains one of the most challenging tasks for achieving climate neutrality. In Belgium, a significant share of industrial energy demand is for high-temperature heat (>100 °C), yet conventional electrification solutions, such as high-temperature heat pumps, often struggle to compete with fossil fuels on cost. While carbon pricing could improve their economics, industrial operators face constraints related to process continuity, high investment costs, and limited in-house expertise for advanced thermal technologies. In contrast, sectors like wind and solar benefited from early, large-scale governmental investments that catalyzed market development and created self-sustaining demand.
In this context, heat-integrated Carnot batteries — or Pumped Thermal Energy Storage (PTES) systems — offer a promising solution. By coupling a Brayton-cycle-based system with high- and low-temperature thermal storage, PTES can both store excess renewable electricity and deliver flexible heat and power to industrial processes. Such systems can provide demand-following, high-grade heat while leveraging simpler, lower-capex designs to reduce investment barriers.
To illustrate this potential, a use case based on real industrial data is presented. Various business models, including Heat-as-a-Service and leasing arrangements, are evaluated to assess economic feasibility and industrial acceptability. Results highlight that robust, simplified PTES configurations can provide flexible, cost-competitive heat supply, supporting industrial decarbonization while enhancing integration with renewable electricity. The study demonstrates how thermal energy storage can play a central role in transitioning industrial sites toward low-carbon, flexible, and resilient energy systems.
The global transition toward a low-carbon energy system relies on the rapid and large-scale deployment of renewables. However, they face two challenges: (i) wind and sun are not dispatchable, and (ii) electrification cannot provide high-temperature heat for industries. Energy storage generally addresses the first challenge. Metal fuels could help tackle both challenges at once.
Metal fuels have been recently proposed as high energy-dense and carbon-free energy carriers. Iron powder combines safety, abundance, and low cost. The stored energy is released by burning the metal powder. Then, the produced iron oxides are collected and regenerated in a reduction process using green hydrogen, bringing back the powder to its initial state and closing the metal-fuel cycle.
Despite progress on designing optimal iron burners, only few studies address the application of this technology inside a global energy system. Therefore, based on a fossil-free scenario for Europe by 2050, we investigated the potential of metal-fuels to substitute and complement other energy storage technologies.
Our results show that iron powder could substitute NH3 and CH4 used in CCGT to produce 100 TWh of electricity per year by retrofitting coal power plants, mostly from Eastern Europe. Regarding their combustion temperature above 2000°C, iron particles could also provide high-temperature heat, complementing biomass combustion. Accordingly, we explored the technical challenges to use iron powder as a source for high-temperature heat used in cement, glass, steel, and chemicals production. For most applications, collecting the burned particles and avoiding that they contaminate the products are key aspects.
The development of a CO2 value chain in Europe, including Carbon Capture (CC), Transport and Storage (T&S), is strongly influenced by (i) evolving Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) markets and (ii) rising industry relocation, complicating investments on the carbon capture and the T&S operator's side. We investigate how these two factors affect the industrial carbon capture landscape characterised by underlying scale economies and complementary markets. A spatially-explicit optimisation model is applied to a case study encompassing Belgium and its neighbouring regions. Endogenising both CC and T&S components within the model allows us to demonstrate the pivotal role of industry clusters in rolling out a CO2 value chain. Especially CDR credits could create substantially increased capture volumes, as biogenic carbon capture becomes competitive. The resulting T&S scale economies allow sites with a low willingness to participate, to join the CO2 value chain. At the same time, caution is warranted regarding bio-CCS: excessive reliance on biomass for storage applications could lead to resource scarcity and pose broader environmental and economic risks. In contrast, under scenarios with substantial industry leakage, scale advantages diminish, causing a higher risk of exclusion for small or remote emitters.
Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage (CCS) is recognized as an important component for achieving climate neutrality goals in Europe. In Germany, however, large-scale deployment of CO₂ storage faces legal and societal barriers, particularly for onshore storage. The ongoing revision of the national legal framework will enable offshore CO₂ storage, but prohibits onshore storage, though it will include an opt-in clause for federal states to allow storage onshore.
Facing such obstacles to unlock onshore storage potentials in saline aquifers and hydrocarbon fields, the focus concerning large-scale CO₂ storage has shifted towards offshore storage in the German North Sea. The deep subsurface there is promising for CO₂ storage, yet competing uses and marine protected areas may limit available storage space significantly. A comparable situation exists in Belgium, where storage is generally allowed, but constraints by public opinion, lack of deep geological knowledge and overall capacity exist.
Consequently, both Germany and Belgium increasingly view the development of cross-border CO₂ transport infrastructure and shared transport routes as a viable alternative, to access storage capacities in neighboring offshore sectors, with primary targets in the Danish and Norwegian North Sea. Both countries have advanced regulatory frameworks and offer immediate storage opportunities. Regarding small-scale CO₂ storage, however, regional cooperation to explore onshore storage options can be sought, targeting smaller saline aquifers and hydrocarbon fields. In Germany, this is supported by the intention of some federal states to draw the opt-in clause for onshore storage.
A promising negative emission technology is organic carbon sequestration in soils, which mitigates climate change impacts and improves soil properties, such as water retention and fertility. Maximizing the incorporation of organic carbon deeper in the mineral soil, is critical to prevent forests and agricultural land from shifting from carbon sinks to carbon sources.
A solution to boost ecosystem health and kickstart the sequestration of soil organic carbon is rock dust application. This technique can stabilise organomineral C through increased biomass input, microbial efficiency, and stable mineral associated organic matter formation. Our results in 10 control and application pairs of forests show a fast (within four years, stable up to hundreds of years) and consistent net sequestration of 20 to 40 Mg C/ha more in the soils of the amended forests, with additional growth gains in trees resembling another 33 Mg C/ha in the decadal timescale. This means a potential to sequester carbon via a one-time rock dust application in Flemish forests (150 000 ha) of 60 Mg C/ha x 150 000 ha = 9 000 000 Mg C = 33 MtCO2. If rock dust application on agricultural land (610 000 ha) also stores a conservative 10 Mg C/ha more, this leads to an additional 22 MtCO2 stored. The total of 33 (forest_soil) + 33 (wood) + 22 (agricultural_soil) MtCO2 = 88 Mt CO2 is substantial and could with a carbon penalty for the spreading (factor 0,75) offset 5% of Flanders' cumulative emissions (66 MtCO2-eq/year) for the coming 20 years.
There is increasing recognition that emission reductions alone are unlikely to achieve global climate targets. This has prompted research into removing atmospheric CO₂, with estimates suggesting that hundreds of gigatons must be removed by the end of the century to remain below 2°C warming.
Marine Enhanced silicate weathering (ESW) has been identified as a potential efficient Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal approach, seeking to accelerate the natural cycle which constrains atmospheric carbon dioxide conditions on geological timescales.
Here we use a coupled diagenetic model which is capable of resolving both the organic matter degradation chain and related secondary redox processes, as well as
mineral dissolution and reverse weathering dynamics, to quantitatively assess the efficiency of marine ESW in enhancing the benthic alkalinity flux.
We run a large sensitivity model ensemble over the full range of plausible coastal sediment conditions (bottom water pH, sedimentation rate, organic carbon concentration and organic matter reactivity) for 1) coastal sediments without silicate input, 2) coastal sediment with natural silicate input, and 3) coastal sediments with input of easily dissolvable silicates, and quantify benthic alkalinity production/consumption and alkalinity flux. Results indicate that although enhanced silicate weathering produces a large amount of alkalinity in coastal sediments, much of this excess alkalinity is quickly consumed by carbonate precipitation and reverse weathering, so only a small increase in alkalinity flux is observed. The highest increase in alkalinity flux was observed in environments with high input flux of organic matter.
CCS is a chain of technologies to capture CO2 from large industrial sources, transporting it to a suitable injection location for permanent storage in a deep subsurface reservoir. For efficient supercritical storage, sufficient depth (>800 m) is needed. Impermeable sealing formations and trapping structures ensure safe and long-term containment. In the battle against climate change all solutions are necessary and CO2 storage is one of the few available methods capable of containing CO2 in sufficient quantities that match the scale of emission reduction needs.
To enforce member states taking their responsibilities regarding capture, transport and storage, the EU Net Zero Industry Act sets a 50 Mt/y storage target by 2030, and an obligation to report on geological data and capacity assessments. The anticipated increase in storage urges the proper management of the subsurface, especially in weighing different emission reducing and sustainable solutions.
While the Belgian territory is limited and poorly explored at depth, current knowledge indicates a total available capacity of 620 Mt, though with a large uncertainty range. Primary exploration targets are the Dinantian limestones, and the Neeroeteren and Buntsandstein sandstone formations. Domestic storage, even if limited, comes with significant benefits, such as lower costs for transport, storage and monitoring onshore and strategic control of capacity and pricing. Further exploration is necessary, and care is needed in evaluating targets and poorly explored areas, as each location has a unique geology.
The circular economy is increasingly promoted as a key strategy for advancing urban sustainability. However, local governments often struggle to clearly define their role and to identify feasible pathways for implementation. Through a systematic analysis of policy documents combined with a set of semi-structured interviews, this research examines how the circular economy is currently conceptualized as a strategy for climate action. In doing so, it also provides insights into the challenges local governments face when adopting and operationalizing the CE discourse.
Within the framework of the European Green Deal, transitioning to a circular economy is imperative, particularly in high-impact sectors such as construction and demolition. As such, this study develops an Urban Mining Screener as a framework for data acquisition on material intensity in the built environment to inform and facilitate the selective demolition of buildings for urban mining. As a proof of concept, the developed Screener is tested through a case study on post-war social housing in Sint-Niklaas, Belgium.
Employing a bottom-up approach to material stock analysis, the methodology involves the detailed assessment of building blueprints to estimate the material intensity of the selected building archetype. Building data is classified into cohorts by construction year and housing type (single and multi-family houses) for analysis. Using Madaster services for material registration and Material Passport generation, the Screener successfully identified and quantified substantial stocks of reuseable and recyclable materials.
Key results show significant variations in material intensity across different building types and construction periods, with concrete and brick dominating the material composition and offering high recovery potential. The findings suggest substantial potential for material recovery and reuse in post-war social housing, supporting the objectives of the circular economy and sustainable development. The screener and its associated methodology are easily replicable by design, allowing for repetition worldwide, on building and urban scales.
Urban waste management has become a global environmental priority as mass-consuption societies generate increasing volumes of municipal solid waste. Although recycling rates are rising in Europe, fractions of urban biowaste, green and food residues, continue to be incinerated, landfilled, or downcycled. This research investigates pathways for the valorisation of urban biowaste into construction materials within the Brussels Capital Region, considering waste fractions as complementary urban feedstocks. Examples of construction materials in our analysis include insulation panels from grass clippings, composite façade tiles incorporating poplar-derived fibres, bio-resins produced from food waste for finishing panels etc. The methodological framework combines city-scale material flow analysis, regional statistical data, spatial mapping, stakeholder consultation, and lifecycle assessment. Biowaste flows are quantified and spatialised to identify potential material outputs and assess collection and preprocessing logistics. An inventory of biobased construction materials commercialised in Belgium and countries compatible with biowaste feedstocks is developed to examine production routes, technological maturity, and market positioning, informing viable processing strategies and potential substitution pathways. The analysis indicates that construction materials derived from urban residues generally generate lower lifecycle impacts than those based on agricultural or petrochemical feedstocks. However, large-scale implementation remains constrained by seasonal variability, fragmented supply, collection logistics, requirements for preprocessing, and regulatory uncertainty. Key enabling factors include the establishment of preprocessing hubs, improved source separation, targeted public procurement, and the development of clear certification frameworks. The study proposes policy recommendations and a replicable methodological approach for European cities seeking to integrate urban biowaste into circular construction value chains.
Originated in the late ‘70s by EPA, brownfield redevelopment has evolved into a strategic pillar of European policy (e.g. Circular Economy Strategy) with significant potential to deliver sustainable growth opportunities. In the drive towards decarbonization, flagship initiatives, e.g., “A Resource Efficient Europe”, recognize land as a resource and set a target of zero land consumption among the 2050 targets. Brownfield regeneration is a comprehensive action aligned with sustainable design and calls for circular strategies focused on material fluxes, waste, emissions, and energy management to gain a panoramic perspective on sustainability ambitions, but a complex and challenging process. As a key innovation, Digital Twins (DT) are promising technologies to enable predictions, data sharing, and stakeholder communication by creating bidirectional connections between the physical sites and digital representation supporting decision-making processes for brownfields’ rehabilitation. Although there are some examples of best practices, a lack of consistency in the applied approaches indicates further scope for research and development of customizable frameworks. This study reviews the role of dynamic twinning models to provide comprehensive circular design operations in brownfield dynamization as a catalyst for sustainable land and resource management by identifying the gaps and proposing supporting information to speed up holistic and data-driven approaches for tailored strategies in selected cases.
Belgium’s path toward a climate-neutral building stock remains uncertain, as renovation rates and policy consistency fall short of the European 2050 targets. The transition toward a zero-carbon building stock is slowed by multiple technical, economic, and behavioral barriers that limit the adoption of deep renovation strategies. Recent reforms, including the reduction and withdrawal of financial support for households across Belgium, reflect a broader instability in renovation policy, risking more harm than good by slowing the renovation pace when acceleration is needed.
Building on two ongoing studies, this paper reflects on how Belgium’s residential building stock can advance toward climate neutrality. The first study examines the cost- and emissions-optimal renovation options for representative residential archetypes, while the second explores the socio-economic characteristics of homeowners and the barriers they face in undertaking deep renovation. Examining these aspects in parallel reveals both the technical potential and social limits of the transition: while significant energy and emissions reductions are achievable, financial constraints, knowledge gaps, and behavioral factors remain major obstacles to large-scale action.
This research reflects on the feasibility of deep renovation in Belgium. It emphasizes the need for coherent, targeted policies that align economic incentives with social realities, ensuring that climate neutrality becomes not only a technical ambition, but also a socially attainable goal.
The 2024 European Energy Performance of Buildings Directive requires that, by 2030, Member States must impose limit values on the whole-life carbon emissions of new buildings, and develop a roadmap of stricter limit values over time. In Belgium, the limit values and roadmap must still be defined. Recent research developed reference (benchmark) values for the life cycle environmental impacts of new Belgian residential buildings, following two approaches. A bottom-up approach was used to obtain benchmark values from reference buildings, which represent conventional construction practices. A top-down approach was used to translate global environmental targets, such as carbon budgets, to target values for buildings. The comparison of both reveals that new buildings exceed their allocated carbon budget by a factor of 6.5. Furthermore, benchmark values were calculated for not only carbon emissions but also other environmental indicators. Comparing both approaches reveals that the targets are exceeded for four additional indicators, out of 14 indicators assessed. This highlights that, while carbon emissions are high on the agenda, other environmental impacts should not be neglected, as burden shifting may occur. The main drivers for these impacts are operational energy use and conventional building materials. Key mitigation strategies thus include decarbonising the electricity mix, increasing renewable energy use, and adopting low-impact building materials. Impacts should also be reduced by extending building and material lifespans and reusing materials to limit raw material demand. The findings and benchmark values can be used to develop a roadmap for Belgian buildings that goes beyond the carbon tunnel vision.
This article analyses the impact of the Flemish energy renovation obligation on house prices. Introduced in January 2023, the policy requires buyers of the most energy-inefficient homes to renovate within five years of purchase to obtain at least a class D energy performance certificate (EPC). Using a difference-in-differences technique and a unique dataset that merges Belgian dwelling transaction data with EPCs, asbestos certificates, and online real estate listings, we find that energy-inefficient houses in the Flemish Region became approximately 2% cheaper. This result holds across multiple control group specifications: relative to similar houses in the Walloon Region, to those with a class D EPC in Flanders, and in a triple difference-in-differences estimation comparing price differentials between EPC classes across both regions. The relatively limited price effect is explained by two factors. First, most buyers of energy-inefficient homes were already renovating to at least class D. Second, renovation costs were largely priced in before the policy’s introduction. The slightly higher discount for energy-inefficient homes provides some financial leeway for buyers to carry out renovations. However, for those not planning to renovate, the obligation imposes a substantial investment, potentially reducing access to home ownership for buyers with limited repayment capacity. As Flanders is the only region worldwide to have introduced an energy renovation obligation for homebuyers, our findings may be of interest to other countries considering similar policies to accelerate residential energy efficiency improvements.
This study assesses heating system decarbonization options for a residential neighborhood in Ghent, offering relevant insights for Belgian and European climate targets. The area comprises over seventy historically valuable housings from the 19th to 21st centuries -e.g., terraced houses from the 1850s, 1950s semi-detached homes, and 2021 apartment blocks- making it a representative case for urban retrofitting. Through scenario-based modeling of 76 combinations of heating technologies, building retrofits, and renewable integration, it identifies cost-effective strategies that balance comfort, carbon reduction, energy efficiency, and long-term investment. These scenarios include combinations of technologies such as condensing gas boilers, air-source and ground-source heat pumps, dry coolers, booster heat pumps, heat interface units, variations in system characteristics like supply temperatures (10–60°C), thermal emission systems (radiators or underfloor heating), and building envelope retrofits. Key performance indicators - including energy use, carbon emissions, comfort, and costs- are used to benchmark each configuration. A modified Environmental Levelized Cost of Heat (eLCOH) is proposed, expanding the traditional economic metrics with ecological data. The study finds that ground-source heat pumps in refurbished homes, combined with low-temperature heating supply and the integration of geothermal storage regeneration further enhances system performance and cost-efficiency. The methodology provides a replicable method and underlines the value of simulation and scenario analysis in achieving climate-neutral urban development. Hence, the findings serves as practical guidance for municipalities and urban planners by highlighting the trade-offs between comfort, investment, efficiency, and sustainability. It supports strategic decisions for local energy transitions, prioritizing low-carbon solutions in complex urban situations.