NEWPATHWAYS is a project funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme and the consortium consists of 13 partners, and brings together leading research groups to support climate policymaking within and outside the EU. These research groups are involved in modelling international climate policy, national policies, social science, policy analysis, environmental assessment, and stakeholder engagement.

General Objectives

There is an urgent need to strengthen collective action to limit global warming to levels consistent with the long-term objective of the Paris Agreement. The NEWPATHWAYS project aims to inform solutions to strengthen action by developing and analysing next-generation Paris-aligned global and national low-emission transformation pathways for the next global stocktake in 2028. The project objectives are to promote enhanced transparency, consistency, and clarity of GHG emission reduction commitments, identify opportunities to leverage equity and finance to strengthen collective climate action, and establish new national and global transformation pathways that limit temporary overshoot, rely on deep sectoral transformations, combine climate and nature protection, and are aligned with sustainable development and just transition objectives. The project will rely on a multi-level stakeholder dialogue to co-create knowledge and build user capacity to maximize relevance and uptake of its results. The NEWPATHWAYS consortium combines strong global and national pathway modelling capacity with expertise from the social sciences, economics and policy analysis. National modelling teams come from a diverse set of countries in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Europe covering two thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions. The robust global and diverse national modelling capabilities with simultaneous access to global and national policy debates will prove effective in providing critical information to global and national policymakers and stakeholders for strengthening climate action towards achieving the long-term objective of the Paris Agreement.

CMCC is leader of WP4 “Finance and equity” (Leadership Task Task 4.4: International financial flows and equity) and co-leader of WP1 “Framing, stakeholder dialogue, capacity building and dissemination” (Leadership Task 1.3: Capacity building and engagement). It is also involved in all the other WPs (co-leadership Task 6.3: Appraisal of new global transformation pathways aligned with the Paris Agreement: investments, finance and equity [Lead: CMCC and PBL).

Expected Results

• A common scenario protocol co-designed with stakeholders connecting national and global pathways, aligned with the Paris Agreement (WP1, WP2, WP5-WP6).
• Methodology to relate national inventory and model accounting of land-related carbon fluxes (T2.1, T3.2)
• Comprehensive evaluation of NDCs, LTS and the pledges by non-state actors informing the assessment of implementation and alignment gaps in 2030 and 2035 (WP2).
• New generation of national mitigation pathways with deep-dives in specific sectors and feasibility assessments of new national mitigation pathways, including an investigation of the role of non-state actors, just transitions and finance requirements in a national context (WP5).
• Enhanced scenarios sets integrating biodiversity and other NCPs and policy interventions targeting ecosystem protection and restoration, sectoral transition and Paris aligned fossil phase out schedules (WP3).
• 3 reports including policy recommendations on international climate finance flows and commitments to assess their adequacy and effectiveness and a database of existing international climate finance mechanisms, on the current landscape of international climate finance (WP4).
• New generation of global pathways aligned with the Paris Agreement: climate equity, sectoral transitions and nature implications (WP6, informed by WP2-WP5).
• Scenario explorer and user tools for stakeholders and establishment of NEWPATHWAYS Community of Practice (WP1).