The Centre for Technology Management (CTM), in collaboration with the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands, was commissioned by the United Nations to research how technology roadmapping could help tackle one of the world's most pressing problems: greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has the objective of stabilising greenhouse gas concentrations to prevent dangerous climate change. The Technology Executive Committee (TEC) division approached CTM in 2012 to write a report on how technology roadmaps (TRMs) could help it achieve this objective and, in particular, how they could be used to speed up the development and application of technologies that reduce further emissions (such as renewable energy) and those that help adapt to climate-related changes (such as coastal zone protection).

Elliott More and Dr Rob Phaal worked in collaboration with Dr Marc Londo (ECN) to co-author the report. Over 2,000 TRMs were analysed to determine the quality, authorship and number of TRMs relating to these technologies. The key finding was the distinct lack of recent TRMs on adaptation technologies developed for developing countries, which was of major concern to the TEC. Thus, the report identified best practice principles from existing TRMs to help the TEC promote adaptation technology roadmaps through its existing work with developing countries.

Draft findings of the report were presented at the 4th TEC meeting in September 2012 in Bangkok, before the final report was submitted in November. The report has recently been published following approval and discussion at the 5th TEC meeting in March this year in Bonn.

Read the report here.