General objectives
AdJUST engages European public bodies, industry, civil society and researchers—i.e. the quadruple helix—to design and promote a shared vision, inspiring them towards the common goal of achieving climate neutrality. It relies on state-of-the-art economic assessment tools, statistical analysis, and research approaches from other Social Sciences & Humanities (SSH) disciplines—including political science, business management, public administration, political theory, philosophy and ethics—to generate methodologically-sound research results on the full range of challenges of the just transition. These comprise technical, economic, and social/equity dimensions for firms, workers, households and public bodies, and the potential distributional impacts of the EU Green Deal, NextGenerationEU and Fit for 55—EU Packages. AdJUST thus combines research approaches from complementary disciplines with a continuous social dialogue, ensuring that the project practices open science, models procedural justice, and builds understanding, trust and capacity among citizens and other stakeholders concerning the transition to climate neutrality.

CMCC role 
CMCC is the Coordinator of the project. Furthermore, CMCC co-leads the WP1 “Building a shared vision and narratives for the just transition”, it is the leader of WP5 “Synthesis, dissemination and communication” and WP6 “Management and coordination 1”.

Activities
AdJUST activities will develop into six workpackages, one of which (WP6) is devoted to Management and Coordination).

WP1 contributes to the overall project’s objective by finding a common understanding of Just Transitions, that includes multiple stakeholder perspectives. It increases the relevance and legitimacy of the project research through systematic stakeholder engagement and dialogue; it provides a common ground for all research-related dissemination and communication activities in the project. It has the following objectives:
1. Develop a new analytical tool to map the varying conceptions of just transition in policy, stakeholder and academic discourse;
2. Co-design a vision of a European just transition with stakeholders; receive feedback on research results from stakeholders;
3. Mobilize the representatives of the quadruple helix throughout the project, embed and coordinate stakeholder input into project research
4. Translate the co-design process in the three sample countries into a shared actionable vision of the EU Just Transition; identify key indicators to monitor its achievement.

WP2 employs quantitative and qualitative tools (such as surveys, interviews, climate-energy-economy models and econometric analysis) to showcase the challenges and opportunities associated with the transition for EU firms, sectors and labor markets. It achieves the following specific objectives:
1. Quantify the impact of the low-carbon transition on the competitiveness of European national and regional economies, including through the trade channel;
2. Analyse firms’ levels of awareness about the transition, its perceived effects on their business, and their internal and external responses;
3. Assess the impact of the low-carbon transition on labour skills and employment, the associated challenges and opportunities for the EU labor force, and potential instruments to mitigate these impacts;
4. Analyse the responses of labor unions to the green transition measures in specific European labor markets (Germany, Romania, Spain, and the UK).

WP3 quantifies the social distributional impacts and explores possible co-benefits of climate policy on households and individuals, combining analysis at the EU level and in the focus regions. It achieves the following specific objectives:
1. Develop new modelling tools for the quantification of the impact of decarbonization policies on different households and countries.
2. Quantify the distributional impacts of EU Green Deal policies (and potential policies) on European households and assessing the effectiveness of the different transitional assistance measures identified through the stakeholder workshops.
3. Perform analyses of horizontal inequality, beyond distributional impacts through income and with a special focus on gender, to identify the socio-economic characteristics that make households more likely to suffer the consequences of climate policies; assess citizens’ support for alternative policy menus.
4. Evaluate the distributional repercussions of trade-related measures both in industrialized and in developing countries

WP4 analyses the capacities and motivations of public bodies to formulate and implement policies and projects to decarbonize the economy in a just and timely way; it identifies what can be done to increase their ability to do so. It achieves the following specific objectives:
1. Develop a theory of public bodies’ capacity to design and implement a just and timely low-carbon transition, including a typology of public bodies that are key to a just transition.
2. Analyse the capacity gaps of key public bodies in the focus countries of Germany, Romania and Spain.
3. Identify which aspects of institutional design increase or undermine support for a just transition amongst households and firms.
4. Conceptualize and describe dominant ideologies and policy paradigms in public bodies of the EU and the gaps, if any, between the views of key stakeholders and those of public bodies.

WP5 will synthesize project findings, monitor and maximise the project’s results.

The kick-off meeting of the AdJUST project will take place on 24-26th of October, 2022 in Milan, Italy.

Expected results
AdJUST will use this knowledge to produce a set of actionable and context-specific policy recommendations – complementing the Just Transition Fund and the Social Climate Fund – to effectively manage competitiveness and distributional trade-offs associated with the transition across Europe, and in specific countries and sectors.