OPEN – 4 Visions for Europe by 2050, 2012

In One Planet Economy in Europe, funded by the EU, OPEN evaluated four scenarios for Europe by 2050: Fast Forward is a ‘technological optimist’s’ path, with citizens largely passively adopting (or oblivious of) the innovations that businesses create to allow sustainable living. Clever and Caring adds social innovation to technical innovations, a nuanced shift from materialism, with citizens actively changing personal values, goals and lifestyles. Breaking Point assumes that Europeans don’t do much to adapt until crises force rapid change, sub-optimal solutions, and lost opportunities—this might be said to best represent the current path. Last, Slow Motion, takes the best of current technologies, but with a shift to localisation and small scale production, ‘good green and fair’ production methods, fewer working hours and a smaller cash economy, and more time spent on richer family and social life and pursuing the global footprint advantages of ‘enlightened hedonism’. An increasingly widely used technique, EE-MRIO, was used to assess the economic, social and environmental consequences.

None of the scenarios were able to keep consumption within sustainable limits, with the most dramatic failures for Fast Forward and Breaking Point, which have the greatest similarities to proposed and current EU policy.

OPEN in more detail

OPEN was commissioned to help the EU consider ‘smart, sustainable and inclusive growth over the coming decades’ to 2050. It attempts to establish the per capita carbon, water and ecological footprints (which must become smaller as population increases to 2050; see earlier discussion), and then explores different ways in which these targets might be met. The four scenarios explored were Fast Forward, a ‘technological optimist’s’ pathway, with citizens largely passively adopting (or oblivious of) the innovations that businesses create to allow sustainable living. Clever and Caring adds social innovation to technical innovations, a nuanced shift from materialism, with citizens actively changing personal values, goals and lifestyles. Breaking Point assumes that Europeans don’t do much to adapt until crises force rapid change, sub-optimal solutions, and lost opportunities—this might be said to represent the current path. Last, Slow Motion, has similarities to the Slow Food movement, taking the best of current technologies, but with a very marked shift to localisation and small scale production, ‘good green and fair’ production methods, fewer working hours and a smaller cash economy, and more time spent on richer family and social life and pursuing the global footprint advantages of ‘enlightened hedonism’.

Evaluation of the impact of these four scenarios by 2020 and 2050 was lead by the (highly respected) Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) using EUREAPA, which in turn is based on an ‘Environmentally Extended Multi-Regional Input Output (EE-MRIO) model, which in principle accounts for the global environmental and impact of consumer choices all the way back up the supply chain through the global economy. However, those indications illustrate the enormity of the task. Despite trying many variations, none of the scenarios were able to keep consumption within limits, and the failures were particularly dramatic for the scenarios Fast Forward and Breaking Point which both assume that consumption patterns are resistant to change, so footprint reductions are reliant, for example, on technological innovations or slamming on the economic brakes at a late point. The simulations also indicated that much of the impact will be associated with imported goods and services, indicating the importance of globally co-ordinated action. While these are only early simulations, the scale of the shortfalls are so large as to raise concerns in the minds of policy-makers (or at least should do), which is exactly the point of scenario analysis.

From Future Business, Long Finance, 2012, MMG