PhD Studentship – SELFS

Inadequate climate mitigation efforts will lead to a global overshoot of the 1.5C temperature target. To preserve the Paris Agreement commitments, countries will need to go beyond “net-zero”, into a state where carbon is being drawn down from the atmosphere. “Carbon drawdown” with require profound changes in energy, land and food systems. The SELFS (Sustainable integrated pathways for carbon-negative energy, land and food systems) project, funded by the Environmental Protection Agency, will develop a new national-level integrated assessment model of energy-land-food systems to explore these possible divergent futures, focussing on Ireland, and draw insights for long-term climate policy.

The doctoral researcher will join the SELFS project, which has the overarching aim of developing new integrated energy-land-food systems modelling tools and capacity to support long-term climate planning and improve the evidence base for climate policy.  The researcher will contribute to achieving on the objectives of the SELFS project, which include:

1. to quantify the potential fair level of CO₂ emissions Ireland may be required to sequester in the period to 2100 under different global temperature goals, near-term mitigation efforts and non-CO₂ emissions trajectories.
2. to review the potential mitigation and carbon sequestration levers specific to Ireland, including both technology and behaviour change, quantifying their total sequestration potential, energy requirement and land use requirement.
3. map the interactions, in particular the potential complementarities and conflicts, between deep decarbonisation and sequestration levers in each of the energy, land and food systems.
4. review global, regional and national modelling approaches to assessing integrated pathways for sustainable land-food-energy systems, including reviewing which interactions are captured in existing Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs),
5. develop a new modelling methodology, SELFS, to downscale global IAMs to a national scale and simulate long-time horizon integrated Sustainable Energy-Land-Food Systems scenarios under a range of demand and technology futures,
6. model a range of divergent possible futures for Ireland using SELFS, integrating existing national modelling energy, agriculture and land use modelling frameworks, to inform long-term policy planning for climate mitigation.

The successful candidate will be supervised by Professor Hannah Daly in UCC’s MaREI Centre, the SFI Centre for Energy, Climate and Marine at the Environmental Research Institute. They will join her group of doctoral and postdoctoral researchers, working within the ERI Energy Policy and Modelling Group (EPMG), who develop high-impact energy systems models to inform and explore future decarbonisation pathways. UCC’s Environmental Research Institute (ERI) is an internationally-recognised institute for environmental research dedicated to the understanding and protection of our natural environment and to developing innovative technologies, tools and services to facilitate a transformation to a zero-carbon and resource-efficient society. Overlooking a protected natural reserve and the River Lee, the ERI is a welcoming, diverse and modern workplace.