ON THE ROAD TO A RESOURCE EFFICIENT EUROPE: RECENT FINDINGS FROM POLFREE RESEARCH

Concerning the use of natural resources in terms of raw materials, water, land and soil as well as with regards to CO2 emissions, the European Union (EU) aims at achieving ambitious targets (European Commission 2011). It is rather unambiguous that a socio-economic transition is needed in order to achieve these objectives, but to which extent? For an illumination of this topic, the POLFREE project arranged simulation studies by means of the global economy-energy-environment model GINFORS. GINFORS represents an environmentally extended dynamic Multi-Region Input-Output (MRIO) model (for methodological details see Meyer et al. 2013). In order to assure a comprehensive modelling of biotic resource categories like land use or water, GINFORS was linked with the global vegetation model LPJmL in these studies (see, e.g., Popp et al. 2011 for a previous implementation of LPJmL to an integrated modelling framework). This integrated assessment approach facilitates the linked modelling of biotic resource availabilities and global economic developments under alternating climate regimes.1 Our paper discusses selected quantitative findings from this research that have been presented at the World Resources Forum (WRF) 2015 in Davos. Shown are development paths up to 2050 for core environmental and economic indicators for the world, the European Union and particular country groups. Overall, these results indicate that absolute decoupling of economic growth from resource extractions is possible on a global scale, if a large-scale, diverse and ambitious environmental policy mix is implemented soon and continuously tightened.