Open EU
The OPEN:EU project is working to develop a comprehensive and foresighted set of EU consumption indicators that can be used to facilitate greater transparency in decision making and high-quality policy and transform the European Union (EU) to a One Planet Economy by 2050. SEI is working with a number of partners to deliver this project, including NTNU, SERI, Ecologic, GFN, WWF and University of Twente.
The EU FP7 funded project will develop EUREAPA, an interactive online scenario modelling and policy assessment tool to understand the environmental pressures associated with consumption activities. EUREAPA will help to evaluate current EU policy and support policy-makers to design policy which promotes resource productivity and reduces the impact of EU consumption on the planet. The scenario functions in EUREAPA enable decision makers to answer questions about the effects of policy on environment, consumption, industry and trade, thus helping to formulate strategies for sustainable consumption and production in Europe and beyond.
EUREAPA contains baseline data on the economy, greenhouse gas emissions, ecological footprints and water footprints for every EU member state and other countries and regions of the world. At the heart of EUREAPA is an environmentally extended multi-region input-output model which combines tables from national economic accounts and trade statistics with data from environmental and footprint accounts.
An important part of the project will be the development of future scenarios for consumption in the EU. These scenarios will help us to understand what life might be like in 2050. They will be developed to explore how consumption patterns and production efficiency might change into the future. The scenarios will also provide the basis for policy recommendations; they will help us to identify where we might intervene with policy in the future and what kind of policy might be most effective.
Further information: http://www.oneplaneteconomynetwork.org/