Climate Plan 2040
As part of the sustainability strategy of the autonomous province of Bolzano “Everyday for Future – Together for sustainability”, the “South Tyrol Climate Plan 2040” pursues the ambitious goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2040 through measures implemented in a series of fields of action.
Research Projects in the framework of the Climate Plan 2040
The research field pursues the involvement and cooperation of local research institutions in contributing with scientific answers to the challenges that climate change poses. To this aim, the Province launched a call at the end of 2024 for the financing of scientific research projects on topics closely linked to the objectives contained in the Climate Plan. The projects have a two-years duration.
The winning projects are listed below:
A Cutting-Edge Data Infrastructure for Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation (DiCAM)
Lead partner & PI: Unibz – Anton Dignös
Partner Institutions: Eurac, Eco Research
Short description:
Motivation
Addressing climate change through GHG mitigation and adaptation is an urgent priority for policymakers. In Italy, regions are aligning with European targets like the “Fit for 55” plan, aiming for a 55% reduction in emissions by 2030 compared to 1990. Italy must cut emissions by 43.7% in key sectors (e.g., transport, agriculture) by 2030 compared to 2005. South Tyrol aims for climate neutrality by 2040. Achieving these goals requires reliable data. However, limited accessibility complicates effective climate strategies, increasing uncertainty in models and hindering policy assessment. Organized data repositories are essential for supporting mitigation and adaptation activities, enabling decision-makers to respond effectively to climate challenges.
Objectives
This project aims to develop a shared data-collection and exploration platform to support climate change mitigation and adaptation in South Tyrol. The platform will serve as a federated digital repository as well as storage system for data providers without their own infrastructure, gathering diverse datasets relevant to local authorities, researchers, and stakeholders, following the FAIR and TRUST* data principles. It will prioritize filling gaps, particularly datasets currently unavailable for scientific research.
Research Methods
The project will employ basic research, technology development, and qualitative evaluations. It will address issues related to data quality and integration within federated databases and explore techniques to improve accuracy. Results will be published in leading scientific venues. The project will create a platform accessible to research and public institutions, guided by stakeholder feedback to ensure user needs are met. Early findings will be shared to foster engagement among stakeholders.
Innovation
This project introduces a platform that addresses climate mitigation and adaptation needs by making relevant datasets available according to research standards. Innovative technologies, such as federated systems and interoperable interfaces, will facilitate data reuse, reduce redundancy, and improve efficiency. This approach promotes collaboration between research institutions and public authorities, enhancing decision-making. The platform is expected to help public administration, such as South Tyrolean municipalities, in facing the challenge of climate change in a more efficient, informed and robust manner within both the planning and the following systematic monitoring of climate protection activities.
Funding: 495.900,00 €
Contribution to the ClimatePlan 2040: n.a.
Website: https://dicam.projects.unibz.it/
Credits: Anton Dignös (unibz)
A Nexus perspective for adapting water management in South Tyrol to future changes (NextWater_ST)
Lead partner & PI: Eurac – Stefano Terzi
Partner Institutions: Unibz, Laimburg Research Centre
Short description:
Climate change and human activities are rapidly affecting water availability and demand in the Alps. On the one hand, shifts in precipitation and temperature are triggering changes in the cryosphere with effects on timing and quantity of the available water. On the other hand, socio-economic activities, such as hydropower production and agriculture rely on high water demands, especially during specific months of the year. Additionally, ecosystems, such as forests and mountain grasslands, are experiencing uncertain changes of water demand in response to the warming trend of climate change. Future projections anticipate a chronic worsening trend of these conditions and more acute drought events are expected to push the system to critical states leading to disputes and tensions across multiple sectors for water use and threatening water security. Despite international recognition of these urgent needs, current assessments of water availability and demand across multiple sectors are still scarce. NextWater_ST will answer the question if future climate and socio-economic changes lead to unbalanced conditions of water availability vs. water demand from multiple water users and resulting conflicts in South Tyrol. We will introduce key advancements to the understanding of hydrological processes in mountain regions to support water management with a focus on South Tyrol and accounting for: (i) improved estimation of water availability complex hydrological processes in mountains hydrological budget, (ii) multisectoral water needs including ecosystems, and (iii) future conditions of climate, land use and socio-economic changes. In particular, NextWater_ST will advance (i) the modelling of complex mountain hydrology by dynamically combining glacier dynamics, snow melt processes and the impact of future land-cover changes on evapotranspiration demands to better capture streamflow conditions from upstream to downstream. Moreover, NextWater_ST will improve (ii) the estimation of multi-sectoral water demand accounting for hydropower, agriculture, ecosystems, by adopting a water-energy-food-ecosystem (WEFE) nexus approach. In particular, water demand for the energy sector will account for ongoing issues of increased demands to meet the goals of the energy transition. Ecosystems current and future land cover types, and their distribution and water demand will be modelled in terms impacts of land-use changes including the land-use change and agriculture impact on water demand and integrated in a comprehensive Nexus framework, filling the ongoing gap of missing representation of ecosystem land cover types needs which often cause misleading evaluation of the overall water demands. NextWater_ST will enhance (iii) the assessment of water availability and multiple demands considering future climate, land-use and socio-economic conditions. Finally, we will bring forward the identification and testing of different synergies and trade-offs breaking the silo of sectoral adaptation strategies.
Funding: 463.284,00 €
Contribution to the Climate Plan 2040:
NextWater_ST directly responds to action field 5.14 of the Klimaplan2040 (“Resilience and Adaptation”, focusing on the adaptation challenges that the water-energy-food-ecosystem (WEFE**) Nexus will face) and addresses climate risks related to water scarcity, classified as “high urgency for action” in the current climate risk and resilience report (to be published by Eurac Research in December 2024). Moreover, NextWater_ST has been designed to meet all four main objectives of the Klimaplan call:
A. the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, (designing optimal solutions for a carbon-free energy system)
B. prevention or contrast of the climate change effects, (ensuring that the expected changes in the seasonality of flowshave minimal impact on all sectors of the WEFE Nexus)
C. the development of concepts / platforms / digital infrastructure to scientifically support the implementation of the Climate Plan (developing a conceptual model for the Suoth Tyrolean WEFE Nexus), and
D. ecological, economic and/or social consequences and contexts of climate change. (assessing the effects of climate change on each of the WEFE sectors, individually and as a system)
Credits: Eurac
Climate, Plastics and Sustainability: Ontology and Operationalization (ClimOO)
Lead partner & PI: PTH-STA – Ludger Jansen
Partner Institutions: Eco Research, Laimburg Research Centre, Fraunhofer Italia
Short description:
There is now ample evidence that plastics are contributing to climate change in various ways during their lifecycle from production to deterioration into micro- and nanoplastics. It is less clear, however, how to define and operationalise possible causes and effects in these complex environmental interactions, and how, on a local level, farmers in South Tyrol can reduce these detrimental effects of their use of plastics in the production of fruits and other produces.
ClimOO addresses these issues with various questions. It begins with analyzing how climate and environmental impacts are defined in existing standards and good practices. Second, existing operationalisations for both climate change and (micro)plastic pollution in agriculture are reviewed and checked for comparability. Third, the contribution of South Tyrol’s agriculture is estimated through a survey among apple farmers and by analyzing soils probes for the presence of microplastic. Finally, these results are used to develop a reference ontology to integrate the data collected by the various methods identified.
These goals are reached by joining the forces of scientific expertise and laboratory experience with philosophical analysis. Definitions and measurement techniques will be both scientifically and philosophically scrutinized and the semantics of resulting data annotated in a computer-tractable format.
The project addresses the urgent need for conceptual analysis of basic concepts of climate and sustainability research. There is currently no semantic resource for integrating diverse data in the field, which will be developed by ClimOO and provided on a Creative Commons license. Moreover, it is the first project that collects data on plastics in South Tyrolean agriculture. Finally, ClimOO is innovative in its unique interdisciplinary research design.
Funding: 133.500,00 €
Contribution to the Climate Plan 2040:
• Reduction of energy use, of CO2 emission, of agricultural emissions, of waste production
• Support to local sustainable farming through resilient and sustainable agricultural practices
Website: https://www.pthsta.it/en/research/climate-plastics-and-sustainability
Credits: Monica Pastore, PTH Brixen.
Adapting to Climate Change Impact: Crafting South Tyrol’s Cooling Future for Energy Resilience (CoolST)
Lead partner & PI: Eurac – Simon Pezzutto
Partner Institutions: Unibz, Fraunhofer Italia, Laimburg Research Centre
Short description:
CoolST aims to shed light into the cooling market of South Tyrol (ST), providing evidence on the amount of cooling units installed, per type, per sector (residential, tertiary, industry, and transportation) – quantifying actual energy consumptions, being able to generate projections for upcoming years (2040), so to clarify future energy needs and set ground on how to face them best. CoolST will provide a Knowledge Hub, an online open source repository of assembled and quality controlled data and information about ST’s cooling market, and a Tool transforming these data/information into knowledge easily understandable (i.e. graphs). Since households will play a more and more crucial role in this context, CoolST will focus on the residential sector. The focus will be on generating missing primary data by a number of bottom-up approaches. A detailed market analysis will identify the supply chain structure, assessing market shares of manufacturers, sellers, and resellers at the provincial level for direct data retrieval. Moreover, parametric simulations will be carried out, based on local climatic datasets, social clusters, and archetypes etc. Outcomes will be compared, evaluated by experts, and counterposed to the few available results of reliable/scientific sources. CoolST will adopt an interdisciplinary approach, intersecting the areas of engineering, architecture, economics, user-behaviour, ecology, health, and policies. We will gather data/information about the cooling market in ST, providing a comprehensive investigation on the status quo and future developments.
Funding: 499.822,24 €
Contribution to the ClimatePlan 2040:
• Objective 1 – Reduction of GHG emissions: CoolST will encourage the adoption of demand side management/demand response measures by analyzing energy demand to assess peak hours and times when GHG emissions from energy production are highest.
• Objective 2 – Prevention or contrast of the effects of climate change: CoolST mitigates the effects of climate change by reducing CO2 emissions and by promoting passive cooling solutions (e.g. window shading) as well as renewable energy-powered cooling systems (e.g. PV-driven heat pumps). It also encourages NbS (e.g. green roofs) and enhances climate resilient building measures (e.g. controllable shutters).
• Objective 3 – Ecological, economic and/or social consequences and contexts of climate change: CoolST examines cooling applications’ impact on ecosystems and ecological resilience in South Tyrol. For economic implications, it quantifies CAPEX and OPEX to address increasing cooling needs (current and until 2040).
The project investigates energy poverty, focusing on households unable to afford cooling systems, particularly air-conditioning in residential areas susceptible to extreme heat. Health issues related to extreme heat are studied, especially for vulnerable groups.
• Objective 4 – Development of digital concepts/platforms/infrastructures to scientifically support the implementation of the Climate Plan: CoolST will rely on the CoolLIFE platform, particularly its Knowledge Hub for data/information storage and CoolLIFE’s Tool for data visualization/transformation of information into knowledge (i.e. charts). CoolLIFE’s IT infrastructure (open-source and open code) will be utilized to setup the CoolST Knowledge Hub and Tool, which will be connected to the CoolST website. Moreover, the CoolST consortium will proceed with the data/information transfer to official Climate Plan platforms.
Website: CoolST – Eurac Research
Credits: Eurac
* FAIR ensures data is Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable.
TRUST ensures data repositories are Transparent, Responsible, User-focused, Sustainable, and Technically sound
**Approach considering the complex interconnections between Water, Energy, Food, and Ecosystems to support sustainable and balanced resource management