The scope of the metastudy is to make a contribution to the Roadmap 2050 debates within the European Union in 2011 and to produce literature which can be used in other debates or analytical work.

The following steps are being conducted:
(1) Development of a comprehensive analytical framework for a systematic comparison of decarbonisation studies for the power sector with regard to technical structures, economic aspects, implementation issues, etc.
(2) Appliance of this analytical framework to existing studies in a second phase. This phase of analysis will focus on existing studies with regard to the European Union as well as selected studies on specific Member States.
(3) Extention of this analysis to results from modelling exercises which will became available during the course of 2011. The focus of this phase is to frame the debate on these studies and to create additional evidence on the issue of decarbonisation of the power sector, thus advancing the policy debate. Furthermore, the work should result in a peer-reviewed publication on power sector decarbonisation strategies at this point.
(4) Focusing on the lessons learnt from this project in terms of methodologies, data and information. As a result of this phase the study will create a recommendation on the issues which are of significant importance for the longer-term debate on decarbonisation on the one hand and where more analytical work could help to advance strategic and policy planning as well as policy implementation on the other hand.

The strategic goal of this study is to frame and advance the emerging debates on decarbonisation in the European Union as well as the EU Member States in the foreseeable phases in the course of 2011 and to make contributions to the scientific literature on this topic.

Meanwhile an interim report has been published which summarises the key results of the comparison of six climate mitigation scenarios from three different studies. The report points out important similarities and differences between the scenarios in regard to electricity demand and supply and emphasises the respective role of key mitigation options in the scenarios. Furthermore, the normative assumptions about which potential mitigation options should be used (to what extent) and which ones should not be used as well as the differences in technology costs assumptions are highlighted as these are important factors explaining the differences in the electricity supply mix.
Alongside the interim report two background papers have been published. One of them extensively describes the applied CO2 decomposition method, while the other contains more detailed scenario-by-scenario results of the decomposition analysis.