Public Lecture: Responsive, Transparent, and Legitimate Decision Support for Climate Policy

Effective decision support is more important than ever for enabling ambitious climate policy in the EU. As competitiveness concerns push the European Commission to streamline processes, its Better Regulation reform aims at more focused impact assessments, which raises the bar for the evidence that informs them. Although well equipped to provide the needed insights, the European research community often struggles to respond to shifting policy priorities, involve stakeholders, and communicate clearly, partly owing to demanding project cycles, disciplinary silos, and black-box models.

In this talk, Dr Xexakis will focus on how decision support for climate and energy policy can become more responsive, transparent, and legitimate: fast and relevant enough for dynamic policy timelines, comprehensible and trustworthy to policymakers and decision-makers in industry and civil society, and procedurally fair, so that different stakeholders meaningfully shape the analysis rather than merely receiving outputs.

The talk will first review the state of the art in decision support processes for climate and energy policy and discuss common methods, including integrated assessment and energy-system models, multi-criteria decision analysis, and participatory modelling. It will then present examples of studies that aim to address challenges in decision-making related to global, European, national, and regional policies. It will conclude with a research agenda built on transdisciplinary deliberation, responsive technoeconomic assessments, user-tailored decision-support toolboxes, and trustworthy communication of results.

Dr Georgios Xexakis is Climate Research Director at HOLISTIC S.A., a research and consultancy firm providing decision support on climate and energy topics. He holds a PhD in Environmental Sciences from the University of Geneva (Renewable Energy Systems group) and an MSc in Building Engineering from TU Delft.

His research focuses on evaluating and improving decision support processes and systems for climate and energy policy. Combining engineering with the natural and social sciences, he works with scenario analysis, climate-energy-economy models, participatory methods, and operational research techniques. He has contributed to 14 EU Horizon-funded projects and has also worked as a consultant for national and local policy actors.