"Climate policy needs to aim at ambitious long-term climate stabilization. This will require managing the transition from carbon intensive to low carbon economies within this century. Research on mitigation pathways to a low carbon society and the associated mitigation costs is indispensable for informing policy makers. The project AMPERE is aiming for a broad exploration of mitigation pathways and associated mitigation costs under various real world limitations, while at the same time generating a better understanding about the differences across models, and the relation to historical trends. Uncertainties about the costs of mitigation originate from the entire causal chain ranging from economic activity, to emissions and related technologies, and the response of the carbon cycle and climate system to greenhouse gas emissions. AMPERE will use a sizable ensemble of state-of-the-art energy-economy and integrated assessment models to analyse mitigation pathways and associated mitigation costs in a series of multi-model intercomparisons. It will focus on four central areas: (i) The role of uncertainty about the climate response to anthropogenic forcing on the remaining carbon budget for supplying societies around the globe with energy, (ii) the role of technology availability, innovation and myopia in the energy sector, (iii) the role of policy imperfections like limited regional or sectoral participation in climate policy regimes, and (iv) the implications for decarbonisation scenarios and policies for Europe."