Effective use of outputs from the 2050 Calculator

Making the best use of Calculator outputs is important.

Preparing: Logic trees and the 2050 Calculator

Using: How do you achieve quality in a 2050 Calculator?

Making the best use of Calculator outputs is important, especially as countries can use outputs to help guide and refine greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation policies and, in general, to educate and inform.

Before we turn to the types of outputs that could be used, we need to consider the audience that the outputs will be aimed at. A more technical audience likes detailed tables of data and more complex graphs and visualisations. Policy makers who are less technical will want clear messaging. Your audience may not know how to interpret uncertainties in the outputs – and you’ll need to help them to understand.

Who to choose to engage with

Consider who the Calculator is currently serving. Who is engaging with it now, and which groups might be interested in engaging in future? To answer this, it can help to track the users of your Calculator.

The ‘users’ and ‘stakeholders’ of Calculators are related, but distinct. While it’s possible that stakeholders might also be users (and we hope this is the case), stakeholders are involved in the commissioning, co-design, co-development, and production. In other words, they’re stakeholders in climate mitigation activities. Users are categorised in broad groups, for example, policy makers, private sector, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and civil society. Their interest in the Calculator is different from those involved in the commissioning, co-design, co-development, and production.

To identify potential users and stakeholders, refresh your stakeholder mapping from the development of the tool. If you’re planning a major update of your Calculator, a relaunch, or think the calculator would be useful for the development of an upcoming policy, then this is good idea. The map will help you to understand the connections between the stakeholders who currently use the Calculator, and those who might use it in future. It will also help you to understand the outputs and analysis generated from Calculator use.

Different stakeholders want different things. Some will be most interested in the evolution of long-term energy futures, possible trade-offs and synergies generated from specific actions (changes to levers), and they’ll want to have debate around this. Other stakeholders will be more interested in the mitigation options to limit GHG emissions, and they’ll want to know how ambitious these options will need to be to meet net zero targets.

There’s no right or wrong choice of stakeholders. The Calculator has been designed to work for a range of audiences, with a wide range of abilities, technical interests, and affiliations; but it depends on what your objectives are. By considering your audience, it will help to maximise the impact of the Calculator.

Potential objectives:

• Influence policy makers – the objective of most Calculators is to help shape climate policy and influence debate. If multiple ministries in a country are familiar with the Calculator, it’ll help create a common understanding of the possible future energy trajectories and GHG emissions.
• Maximum short-term impact – if you want to concentrate on an outcome with maximum impact in the short term, we suggest you focus on the stakeholders who’re likely to have the largest influence in rapidly decarbonising a sector(s) and implementing effective mitigation strategies, for example, government officials. There are also other stakeholders, which differ from country to country, who could make a significant contribution at a particular time, for example, private sector developers implementing projects incentivised by government policy.
• Engage business leaders – private sector business leaders are likely to be interested in profitability, growth, and shareholder value. There’s a broad range of attitudes in the private sector towards wider sustainability issues. If these issues affect consumer behaviour, leaders will pay closer attention to how their companies are perceived. Some leaders might see climate mitigation efforts as business unfriendly; others see them as a growth opportunity. Low carbon growth offers the potential to secure investment to achieve that growth and employment potential. Outputs from the Calculator can help to show where sectoral investment could help drive mitigation.
• International showcase – most countries want to be seen in a good light. They want to impress other nations and show global climate leadership and ambition. Clear outputs from the Calculator can help with this and countries can learn from the work done by others.
• Impress multilateral funders – to help secure funding for capacity building, and investment in climate relevant technologies, create a simple, visually-attractive narrative. The outputs from the Calculator can make it clear what options are available to reduce emissions and can show that you have determined that these are suitable for your country.
• Inform generations of the future – ensuring the next generation is well educated and informed about ways to reduce the risks of climate change will help lead to sustainable, lower carbon growth. The messages from, and challenges highlighted by the Calculator can inform and inspire people in primary, secondary, and tertiary education.

Countries that have developed a Calculator will have undertaken a stakeholder mapping exercise already and will have identified stakeholders during the development of their tools, including during the co-design and expert workshops. Creating a community of best practice and excellence is an important co-benefit. Also, the list of users and stakeholders will change over time, so it’s a good idea to continually review the list.

To effectively identify and map stakeholders, you can use a list, or even better, create a visual. As an example:

Stakeholders can help refine your choice of outputs

Different audiences and stakeholders will require different outputs. Outputs must be driven by user need following stakeholder engagement. You could organise a workshop and/or collect information from stakeholders to help decide and define the outputs needed.

For some, the most important consideration will be how the outputs can help influence policy. Internationally, this is about nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and the progress towards those goals. Calculator outputs can also be used to show how climate related key performance indicators (KPIs) could be met for a country and to influence domestic climate policies. Domestically, the Calculator can feed into sectoral policies such as energy plans, industrial strategies, or heating/cooling, and transport plans.

You can find further views and considerations about choosing and engaging with stakeholders in our How to build a Calculator guide, as well as the article – An early evaluation of the 2050 Calculator international outreach programme.

The questions you are trying to answer will determine your outputs

The 2050 Calculator can help answer fundamental questions such as:

• How far could renewables satisfy energy demand in the future?
• What could be the impact of individual behavioural change?
• How much fossil fuel will need to be imported in the future?
• What’s the impact of eating more meat on land use?
• What’s the impact of improved forest management on emissions?
• Which pathways could achieve an x% emissions reduction target?
• What’s the impact of delaying action?
• How diverse will my energy supply be in 2050?
• Will supply meet demand?

Decide which outputs to use

Once you’ve decided who the outputs are for, the next step is to plan which outputs to generate.

The Excel and web-based versions of the Calculator have a range of convenient pre-defined outputs ready to use, and you can create your own from the data that the Calculator generates.

It’s not possible to please everyone, so let’s remind ourselves of the four core principles of the 2050 Calculator to help sharpen our focus. An ideal 2050 Calculator will: Create ‘ah-ha’ moments and start great debates; Thrive in government; Be maintained and updated; Be only as complex as needed – and no more.

The first principle – creating ‘ah ha’ moments – is the most important to inform and inspire stakeholders, stimulating debates, and providing clearer or new insight into short, medium, and long term GHG reduction strategies.

Good practice and accessibility

What are the overarching principles? We suggest the following:

• Speak to a specific audience
• Choose the right visual
• Provide context
• Keep things simple and digestible
• Design for user engagement and to keep users engaged.

As an example, see 5 Data Visualization Best Practices.

When you generate outputs, consider how accessible the outputs will be. Ensuring accessibility means making your content and design clear and simple enough for most people to be able to use it without the need for adaptation, while also supporting those who’ll need to adapt things. See guidance on Understanding accessibility requirements for public sector bodies.

Output ideas

Consider publishing some example pathways at the same time as the actual model. Although one of the bene?ts of the Calculator is that there’s no ‘right’ answer, supplying users with options is a good way to promote thinking about the model’s implications. Example pathways could include having a ‘maximum supply, no demand e?ort’ and conversely ‘no supply, maximum demand e?ort’, and pathways that meet national targets. Pathways don’t need to be labelled as ‘o?cially approved’ if politically di?cult. Instead, stress that they’re examples only. Key stakeholder groups could even design their favourite pathways for the future. This would provide stakeholders with a concrete way to engage with the Calculator project, and to show that the tool is useful for a variety of audiences.

It can be extremely powerful to publish key messages from Calculator use. The team who developed the model will have spent a lot of time exploring the impact of various levers and combinations of levers, as well as the possible overall trajectories for supply, demand, and emissions. These messages from lessons learned are particularly useful for policy makers who have limited time to use the Calculator, as they can bene?t from the experiences of the development team when planning policy.

Output examples

Our examples show two extreme differences in Calculator outputs.

The first is from the web-based version of the UK MacKay Carbon Calculator. There’s a lot of detail – the status of each of the levers is shown, along with two detailed charts of data, and one gauge of GHG emissions. This form of output would be more suited to a technically well-informed audience.

The second form of output is very different. The two images below are from the UK’s My2050 tool. The first output uses graphics in a much more user-friendly way, and the user interface is simpler. The trade-off is there is much less detail in the output.

Promoting outputs

Outputs need an audience to have an impact. Some of the outputs from the Calculator might be for internal government use only; others might be intended for a much wider audience. The approach you take to promoting outputs would be very different for these two examples. For internal use, outputs could be promoted through an internal briefing session or email notification. For external use, you could prepare a public update, such as a short webinar, an article, or a website.

Final thoughts

• Keep a register of the publication date and time of your outputs, and the version of the Calculator used to generate them. This will help track changes and revisions.
• Always include a source for outputs, stating the version, configuration and link to the Calculator used.
• Track views and engagement to understand whether your outputs are engaging your target audience.

Further support

We invite you to visit the 2050 Calculator website and to join us on LinkedIn for news, updates, and discussion.

The 2050 Calculator Programme is a technical assistance programme (valued at £3.1m), funded by the UK Government’s International Climate Finance. It has helped countries to build their own version of the UK’s 2050 Calculator interactive energy model since 2012.