The overall aim of SHIFT is the identification, design and evaluation of instrument packages that are comprehensive (i.e. address economic, normative and feasibility/acceptability objectives) to enable Austria´s low-carbon transition according to the Paris Agreement targets (as ratified by the Austrian Parliament).
The following sub-targets are addressed:
- Integration of stakeholders into the research process from the very beginning to ensure issue and result relevance as well as feasibility and acceptability;
- Development of an evaluation tool for Austrian climate-relevant policy for the long-term horizon, that can address economic, normative and feasibility criteria, and is based upon functionalities to be met for society;
- Identification of instruments available to a country embedded within the world economy to effectively foster innovation in a low-carbon transition;
- Integrative bundling of instruments to alternative packages (answering different potential future overall development scenarios);
- Evaluation of the identified instrument packages in terms of the economic, normative and feasibility/acceptability criteria specified;
- Discussion of these packages and their improvement in terms of acceptability by means of co-design with stakeholders;
A short overview on the basic concept of the project and its structure is given in Figure 1:
Figure 1: Project flow and workpackage interaction