EU Science Hub

Impacts of climate change

The European Commission is working to make the European economy more climate-friendly with both mitigation and adaptation policies.  

Mitigation policies aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and so produce benefits in terms of avoided climate damages; adaptation policies are deployed to minimize the expected impacts.



The JRC contributes to the definition and implementation of climate change policies by assessing the economic impacts of on-going and future climate change and the related adaptation strategies. It pays particular attention to the comparison of the geographical and sectoral damage patterns in order to provide insights for the prioritisation of adaptation policies.

The assessment of the physical and economic impacts of specific climate change scenarios, both at European level and international level, is based on the integration of the relevant scientific disciplines, including climate change modelling, biophysical impact models and economic models. The methodological toolbox for the assessment is conceived around a computable general equilibrium model (GEM-E3), complemented with bottom-up biophysical models (e.g. hydrological models that simulate river floods). Other models operational at JRC in this area include MaGE (developed by CEPII, Agnès Bénassy-Quéré, Lionel Fontagné and Jean Fouré) and the POLES global energy model.


JRC PESETA project (Projection of Economic impacts of climate change in Sectors of the European Union based on bottom-up Analysis, part I and II) provides a multi-sectoral assessment of the physical and economic impacts of climate change in Europe for the 2071-2100 time horizon.