The TAPIR framework: A new tool to assess climate and energy demonstration projects

The report introduces the Technology And Project Impact and Readiness (TAPIR) assessment framework, designed to evaluate demonstration project proposals addressing the climate and energy crises. The framework was developed during the first assessment phase of the Coalition for Green Energy and Storage (CGES) initiative. CGES aims to support the rapid development and launch of “catapults”: large-scale demonstrators at the megawatt scale of innovative ways to use existing technologies and demonstrators of promising emerging technologies that could scale up to commercial scale within a few years.

The TAPIR framework integrates assessments at both the project and technology levels, combining qualitative and quantitative data, and considers global and regional contexts, enabling it to address questions about growth potential under deep uncertainty. The framework evaluates the projects and technologies based on two main aspects: impact and viability. The impact assessment looks at economic prospects, climate and energy impacts, regional relatedness, and local embeddedness. Meanwhile, the viability assessment examines maturity, scalability, and feasibility. Projects and technologies can be assessed through complementary methods, such as expert opinion elicitation for projects and multicriteria assessment for technologies.

TAPIR provides a new tool for decision-makers, including governments and philanthropies, who want to prioritize demonstration projects with the potential to become new solutions for the climate and energy crises and to help address some of the most difficult and urgent challenges of our time.

For more details, read the full report:

R. Bouallou, A. Nuñez-Jimenez, and Download M. Aklin, 2025. The TAPIR framework. A new tool to assess climate and energy demonstration projects. Coalition for Green Energy Storage (CGES), Download https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000725840