The COACCH project (CO-designing the Assessment of Climate CHange costs) is an EU funded Horizon 2020 project assessing the economic costs of climate change and climate actions. The project is coordinated by the Euro Mediterranean Centre for Climate Change (CMCC) Foundation in Italy and involves a consortium of 14 leading climate research institutes from countries across Europe.

Objectives

The final objective of COACCH is to produce an improved downscaled assessment of the risks and costs of climate change in Europe that can be of direct usability and respond to the different needs of end users from the research, business, investment, and the policy making community. To this end, COACCH brings Europe’s leading climate change impacts and economic modelling teams together with stakeholders to co-develop methods and analyses in an innovative research practice, policy integration. COACCH adopts a trans-disciplinary perspective, within a consortium of high complementary competences, widened further by the direct participation of public, economic, industrial and research actors. This overall objective is substantiated into five specific goals:

1. To develop technically excellent and innovative research on complex climate change impact chains, using downscaled climate information and advancing integrated assessment methods and models developed under early RTD research calls.
2. To develop a challenge-driven and solutions orientated research and innovation approach, involving proactively business, industrial, public decision makers and research stakeholders in the co-design, co-production and co-dissemination of policy driven research.
3. To significantly advance the knowledge and the evidence base not only on climate tipping elements and tipping points but also on socio-economic tipping points.
4. To advance the economic valuation of climate action (mitigation and adaptation) in the EU at various scales (spatial grids, regions, countries, economic sectors) over short to longer-term timeframes to support a more informed policy process in the achievement of intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) for the EU.
5. To enhance innovation capacity and integration of this new knowledge using co-dissemination of results with business, industrial, public decision makers and research communities, maximising the use of innovative approaches in communication for dissemination, including direct elicitation of end-user needs to shape knowledge outreach and uptake.

Project activities

The research and innovation action of COACCH is organised in 7 interlinked work packages.

WP1: stakeholder engagement & co-deliver is at the core of the project, and will establish the overall co-design, co-production and co-dissemination approach for the project.

WP2: Impact chains is devoted to the downscaled assessment of climate change impacts, risk and costs under climate change, including extreme events. It conducts sector specific impacts assessments, which then provide input for a systemic macroeconomic assessment of climate change consequences in the EU detailed at a sub national scale.

WP3: Tipping points provides an assessment of key climate tipping elements of particular relevance for the EU and to extend the concept of tipping points to socio-economic systems.

WP4: Policy assessment evaluates the implications of the new climate impact insights from WP2 and 3 in terms of policy, and identify mitigation and adaptation options in different sectors for Europe.

WP5: Synthesis synthesises and summarises the major findings produced by COACCH.

WP6: Dissemination and outreach develops and pursues external project dissemination, exploitation, and communication activities.

WP7: Coordination ensures a sound coordination and management of the project.

Ecologic Institute in COACCH

Ecologic Institute is leading Work Package 5: Synthesis in COACCH. Ecologic Institute will coordinate the preparation of a database and a web-tool as well as policy briefs and reports. Ecologic Institute will take stock of the co-design process implemented in COACCH and will prepare a Best-Practice guide for co-design research.

Furthermore, Ecologic Institute has important involvement in Work Package 1, which addresses stakeholder engagement and establishes the overall co-design, co-production and co-dissemination approach of the project. Ecologic Institute is supporting the work in the different tasks of WP1. Ecologic Institute leads the task undertaking a stock-taking and gap analysis of the existing knowledge on impact analysis and scenarios.

Ecologic Institute is as well involved in work in WP4: Policy assessment. It is part of the work on policy effectiveness in industry and business and focuses on the assessment of adaptation policies and responses, e.g. an European seaport, and for the supply chain of chemical companies.