What is the Ecohesion toolkit?
Ecohesion explores how environmental sustainability, wellbeing, social justice, and economic stability can be pursued together through alternative transition pathways.The Ecohesion Simulator allows users to actively experiment with policies, build scenarios, compare alternative policy mixes, and explore how ecological transition strategies may affect the economy, inequality, emissions, wellbeing, and regional cohesion over time. The simulator is powered by Eurogreen+, a dynamic macro-simulation model developed for the Italian case by researchers from the Ecohesion Collective at the Department of Economics and Management of the University of Pisa.The simulator should not be read as a machine that predicts a single future or produces easy policy recipes. Its purpose is different. It offers a structured way to test assumptions, activate policies, combine them into alternative policy mixes, and observe how their effects unfold across several connected dimensions. In doing so, it helps users move from isolated policy debates to a more systemic understanding of ecological transition.Why a simulation toolkit is useful
Policies for sustainability rarely act on one variable only. A carbon tax, for example, can reduce emissions, but it can also affect energy prices, household purchasing power, energy poverty, government revenue, and the distribution of costs across income groups. Electrification and renewable electricity policies can accelerate decarbonisation, but they also interact with investment, production costs, energy demand, and employment. Social and fiscal policies can reduce inequality or protect households, while also changing aggregate demand, public budgets, wages, consumption patterns, and wellbeing.The Ecohesion Simulator gives users a synthetic representation of these complex interactions. When a policy or policy mix is introduced, the model traces how its effects propagate through the socio-economic-environmental system over time. The same scenario can then be assessed through different evaluation criteria, so that users can see not only whether a policy improves its direct target, but also what happens to other dimensions that matter for a fair and feasible transition.What users can explore
Users can build scenarios by working with a broad set of policy levers and assumptions. The policy space includes:- • Environmental policies, such as carbon taxation, electrification, renewable electricity transition, and fossil fuel subsidy phase-out.
- • Labour and income policies, such as working time reduction, minimum and maximum wage rules, wage indexation, and labour tax distribution.
- • Fiscal and redistributive policies, such as financial income taxation, wealth taxation, targeted transfers, universal basic income, and consumption caps.
- • Wellbeing-oriented interventions, related to access to public services, social capital, neighbourhood quality, and social relationships
- • Affluence, related to economic performance and material resources, such as GDP, investment, household consumption, labour productivity, and public spending in key services.
- • Fairness, related to distributional outcomes, including income inequality, poverty, wage inequality, income shares, and gender gaps.
- • Mitigation, related to greenhouse gas emissions, renewable energy transition, energy systems, carbon footprints, energy spending, and energy poverty.
- • Wellbeing, related to access to services, trust, social relationships, neighbourhood quality, available free time, local environmental satisfaction, and life satisfaction.
Understanding trade-offs and feasibility
The main value of the Ecohesion Simulator lies in showing that transition policies are embedded in a system of trade-offs, synergies, constraints, and feedbacks. Prioritising one objective can create pressure on another: faster emissions reduction may raise distributional concerns; fiscal discipline may limit public investment; income support may improve social outcomes while affecting public finances; technology transitions may deliver environmental benefits only after a period of adjustment. These tensions are not failures of the model. They are part of the real policy problem the toolkit is designed to make visible.For this reason, the Ecohesion Simulator does not promise simple solutions. Instead, it helps users identify feasible pathways: combinations of policies that appear more coherent, socially acceptable, economically credible, and environmentally effective. It also supports a more informed public conversation by making the consequences of policy choices easier to discuss. Academic experts, policy makers, public administrations, non-governmental organisations, trade unions, associations, and citizens can use the simulator to compare alternatives, clarify priorities, recognise barriers, and improve the quality of collective decision-making.
