En-ROADS in Korea's 2026 Climate Citizens' Assembly

Korea's first national Climate Citizens' Assembly (2026, 200 members — 20 planning + 180 deliberating, convened under Article 19-2 of the Carbon Neutrality and Green Growth Framework Act) is using En-ROADS as a live, in-room policy laboratory. During breakout sessions, facilitators project the simulator on shared screens; citizens propose policy moves — phase out coal earlier, raise carbon prices, accelerate vehicle electrification — and watch the global temperature curve respond in seconds. This page is the English-language entry point to the Assembly's wiki space for the tool.

What En-ROADS is

En-ROADS (Energy Rapid Overview and Decision-Support) is a system-dynamics climate simulator built by Climate Interactive with MIT Sloan and Ventana Systems. It models the global energy, land, economy, and climate system through 18 policy levers (sliders) and over 100 output graphs. Results return in seconds, making it usable in real-time deliberation rather than as a static report. The model is released under CC BY 4.0.

Why Korea is using it

Korean climate deliberation has a precedent — the 2017 Shin-Kori 5/6 deliberative poll showed that lay citizens can engage with technical scenarios when given good facilitation. But the Shin-Kori poll was a one-shot up-or-down vote on a single project. The 2026 Assembly's mandate is broader: package recommendations that span electricity, transport, industry, buildings, agriculture, and forestry, while the 11th Basic Plan for Electricity Supply and Demand (2024–2038) is being implemented and the 2030 NDC (40% reduction from 2018 levels; 2018 baseline 727.6 Mt CO₂eq) is on the books. En-ROADS lets the Assembly stress-test combinations of levers against a global trajectory rather than debate a single number in isolation.

Korea-specific anchors that show up in deliberation

• 2022 Seoul semi-basement (banjiha) flood deaths are referenced when the Assembly examines the Extreme Heat / Flooding impact graphs.
• 2024 multi-month heatwave (April–September) anchors discussion of the Deaths from Extreme Heat and Outdoor Labor Losses graphs — especially for outdoor gig delivery, construction, and agricultural workers.
• Gyeonggi Climate Citizens' Assembly (province-level model, 120 + 330 members, 90% recommendation-adoption rate) is the domestic precedent for facilitator training and recommendation translation.

What this directory contains

• en/originals/ — The complete English-language En-ROADS User Guide (29 pages), mirrored locally so moderators can reference the official content offline during sessions. Trust label: author-verified. License: CC BY 4.0.
• en/tech-ref-summary.md — A chapter-by-chapter summary of the 131-page Technical Reference, useful for moderators who need to explain why a slider moves the way it does without opening the full PDF.
• ko/ — Korean-language facilitator materials: an 18-lever one-pager, a 100+ term EN-KO glossary aligned with Ministry of Environment standards, scenario explainers, and a moderator's playbook.
• LICENSE.md — CC BY 4.0 text plus Climate Interactive and Assembly-team attribution.

How moderators use it in a session

Sessions where this came up most heavily are 2026's Session 1 (Professor Park Chan, University of Seoul) framing and the breakout deliberations on the 감축1 (Mitigation 1: energy supply) and 감축2 (Mitigation 2: demand-side) tracks. Facilitators are encouraged to:

1. Open with the Baseline Scenario so citizens see the "no new policy" trajectory.
2. Take one citizen-proposed slider move per round (e.g., "phase out coal by 2035").
3. Pause on the Sources of Primary Energy and Temperature Change graphs and read them aloud together.
4. Surface the "squeezing the balloon" and "crowding out" dynamics — these are the Assembly's most common discovery moments.
5. Close each round by saving the shareable scenario URL to the wiki for later citation.

Important caveats — moderator caution

En-ROADS is globally aggregated. It does not model Korea-specific policy details (KEPCO's bidding system, the K-ETS market price, regional grid constraints). Proposals coming out of En-ROADS sessions are framed as global directional analogs, then translated into Korean-context recommendations during downstream working-group meetings with the relevant ministries (환경부, 산업통상자원부, 국토교통부).

Recommendations from this Assembly are not yet government policy. Pages here describe the model and what the Assembly is currently considering — they do not assert that Korea has decided anything.

Related sessions and agendas

• Session 1 — Framing: How Climate Citizens' Assemblies work (Prof. Park Chan)
• Agenda — 감축1: Energy supply mix, 11th Basic Plan trajectory
• Agenda — 감축2: Demand-side efficiency, transport electrification
• Agenda — 적응: Outdoor worker protection, urban flooding

Citation

Climate Interactive. (2026). En-ROADS Climate Solutions Simulator (v26.5.0). https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/
Korea Climate Citizens' Assembly Moderator Team. (2026). En-ROADS in the Korean 2026 Citizens' Assembly. https://climate-assembly.org/en/tools/en-roads