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In this paper three approaches on transitions pathways are combined to study the role of agricultural nature conservation in the Dutch land use domain for achieving internationally agreed climate and biodiversity targets. The three perspectives used are the Multilevel Perspective (MLP), Initiative Based Learning (IBL) and Integrated Assessment Modelling (IAM). The analysis provides insights in how the combination of different research approaches can lead to more comprehensive policy advice on how agricultural nature conservation could help to achieve internationally agreed sustainability goals related to climate change and biodiversity. IAM shows under which conditions agricultural nature conservation could be consistent with European and global long-term goals regarding food security, biodiversity and climate. MLP provides insight into the extent in which agricultural nature conservation has affected or changed the existing nature and agricultural regimes. IBL, finally, reveals the challenges of encouraging agricultural nature conservation with policy measures. Our analysis shows that a combined perspective provides a deeper understanding of the underlying processes, reasons and motives of agricultural nature conservation, leading to more comprehensive policy recommendations.
The Port of Rotterdam is an important industrial cluster, comprising mainly oil refining, chemical production and power generation. In 2016, the port's industry accounted for 19% of the Netherlands' total CO2 emissions. The Port of Rotterdam Authority is aware that the cluster is heavily exposed to future decarbonisation policies, as most of its activities focus on trading, handling, converting and using fossil fuels. Based on a study for the Port Authority using a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods, our article explores three pathways whereby the port's industry can maintain its strong position while significantly reducing its CO2 emissions and related risks by 2050. The pathways differ in terms of the EU's assumed climate change mitigation ambitions and the key technological choices made by the cluster's companies. The focus of the paper is on identifying key risks associated with each scenario and ways in which these could be mitigated.
The German Energiewende is a deliberate transformation of an established industrial economy towards a nearly CO2-free energy system accompanied by a phase out of nuclear energy. Its governance requires knowledge on how to steer the transition from the existing status quo to the target situation (transformation knowledge). The energy system is, however, a complex socio-technical system whose dynamics are influenced by behavioural and institutional aspects, which are badly represented by the dominant techno-economic scenario studies. In this paper, we therefore investigate and identify characteristics of model studies that make agent-based modelling supportive for the generation of transformation knowledge for the Energiewende. This is done by reflecting on the experiences gained from four different applications of agent-based models. In particular, we analyse whether the studies have improved our understanding of policies' impacts on the energy system, whether the knowledge derived is useful for practitioners, how valid understanding derived by the studies is, and whether the insights can be used beyond the initial case-studies. We conclude that agent-based modelling has a high potential to generate transformation knowledge, but that the design of projects in which the models are developed and used is of major importance to reap this potential. Well-informed and goal-oriented stakeholder involvement and a strong collaboration between data collection and model development are crucial.
Decarbonizing transportation in emerging economies will be one of the key challenges in global climate change mitigation efforts. In this paper, pathways are developed towards achieving a 1.5° degree scenario for land-transport for four emerging economies (Brazil, India, Kenya and Vietnam). The aim is to highlight the key opportunities and challenges for low-carbon transport in countries with rapidly growing mobility demand. The main focus of this paper is to reconcile actual and required emission reduction targets and develop plausible pathways to achieve these targets. The paper also identifies potential strategies and measures for these countries to follow these pathways. The analysis considers the contributions of "avoid" (cutting travel growth), "shift" (to lower CO2 modes) and "improve" (vehicle and fuel CO2 characteristics) interventions to decarbonisation scenarios. These scenarios aim to inform renewed Nationally Determined Contributions and shed light on the feasibility of deep decarbonisation pathways that would be in line with the Paris Agreement. Results from this study show that achieving 1.5DS would require dramatic changes in travel patterns, technology and fuels, and major intensification of current policy approaches. Decarbonization solutions will need to include greater use and investment of efficient modes, major shifts toward near-zero carbon fuels such as clean electricity, systems integration, modal shift and urban planning solutions. Although the socio-economic situations and national transport systems differ between the selected countries, some fairly similar strategies appear likely to be core to the mitigation effort, such as rapid growth in light- and heavy-duty vehicle electrification and investments in public transit systems.
In order to achieve the UNFCCC Paris Agreement goals, climate policies worldwide require considerable ratcheting-up. Policy sequencing provides a framework for analysing policy process dynamics that facilitate ratcheting-up. We apply a sequencing perspective to two key EU climate and energy policies, the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) and the Renewable Energy Directive (RED), to comparatively test the empirical relevance of sequencing for single policies - in addition to sequencing across policies, which has been the focus of sequencing theory so far - and to uncover specific mechanisms. Our results confirm that sequencing, based on triggering positive and controlling negative feedback, is relevant both within and across policies. Policy choices that may facilitate ratcheting-up include tools to control costs, the possibility to centralise and harmonise in a multi-level governance context, options for compensation of reluctant actors, and the encouragement of learning processes.
Non-residential buildings in the European Union consume more than one third of the building sector's total. Many non-residential buildings are owned by municipalities. This paper reports about an energy saving competition that was carried out in 91 municipal buildings in eight EU member states in 2019. For each public building an energy team was formed. The energy teams' activities encompassed motivating changes in the energy use behaviour of employees and small investments. Two challenges added an element of gamification to the energy saving competition. To assess the success of the energy saving competition, an energy performance baseline was calculated using energy consumption data of each public building from previous years. Energy consumption in the competition year was monitored on a monthly base. After the competition the top energy savers from each country were determined by the percentage-based reduction of energy consumption compared to the baseline. On average, the buildings had an electricity and heat consumption in 2019 that was about 8 % and 7 %, respectively, lower than the baseline. As an additional data source for the evaluation, a survey among energy team members was conducted at the beginning and after the energy competition. Support from superiors, employee interest and motivation and behaviour change as assessed by energy team members show a positive, if weak or moderate, correlation with changes in electricity consumption, but not with changes in heat consumption.
Driving forces of changing environmental pressures from consumption in the European food system
(2020)
The paper provides an integrated assessment of environmental and socio-economic effects arising from final consumption of food products by European households. Direct and indirect effects accumulated along the global supply chain are assessed by applying environmentally extended input-output analysis (EE-IOA). EXIOBASE 3.4 database is used as a source of detailed information on environmental pressures and world input-output transactions of intermediate and final goods and services. An original methodology to produce detailed allocation matrices to link IO data with household expenditure data is presented and applied. The results show a relative decoupling between environmental pressures and consumption over time and shows that European food consumption generates relatively less environmental pressures outside Europe (due to imports) than average European consumption. A methodological framework is defined to analyze the main driving forces by means of a structural decomposition analysis (SDA). The results of the SDA highlight that while technological developments and changes in the mix of consumed food products result in reductions in environmental pressures, this is offset by growth in consumption. The results highlight the importance of directing specific research and policy efforts towards food consumption to support the transition to a more sustainable food system in line with the objectives of the EU Farm to Fork Strategy.
At the heart of transition research lies the question of how to "scale up" sustainable alternatives from a protected niche to the creation of mainstream practices. While upscaling processes are often seen as an essential element that contributes to societal transformation, upscaling itself remains a fuzzy concept. We argue that some fundamental dilemmas of upscaling can be identified, for example, the different understanding of the concept by researchers and practitioners. The dilemmas should be addressed in a more reflexive way by those from the worlds of science and practice who are involved in collaborative research settings.
Industrial demand response can play an important part in balancing the intermittent production from a growing share of renewable energies in electricity markets. This paper analyses the role of aggregators - intermediaries between participants and power markets - in facilitating industrial demand response. Based on the results from semi-structured interviews with German demand response aggregators, as well as a wider stakeholder online survey, we examine the role of aggregators in overcoming barriers to industrial demand response. We find that a central role for aggregators is to raise awareness for the potentials of demand response, as well as to support implementation by engaging key actors in industrial companies. Moreover, we develop a taxonomy that helps analyse how the different functional roles of aggregators create economic value. We find that there is considerable heterogeneity in the kind of services that aggregators offer, many of which do create significant economic value. However, some of the functional roles that aggregators currently fill may become obsolete once market barriers to demand response are reduced or knowledge on demand response becomes more diffused.
Last year's conference of the global climate change regime took place from 2 until 15 December 2019 in Madrid, Spain. Despite marking a new record for overtime in the history of the UNFCCC, the conference did not only fail to meet the increasing public demand for swift and strong climate action, it also failed on its formal mandate to finalise the Paris rulebook. A record number of issues were left unresolved and shelved for the next session. COP25 thereby highlighted how much work still lies ahead both domestically and internationally if 2020 is to see a step-up in climate action that is consistent with the long-term goal of the Paris Agreement.
Biomass-fueled combined heat and power systems (CHPs) can potentially offer environmental benefits compared to conventional separate production technologies. This study presents the first environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) of a novel high-efficiency bio-based power (HBP) technology, which combines biomass gasification with a 199 kW solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) to produce heat and electricity. The aim is to identify the main sources of environmental impacts and to assess the potential environmental performance compared to benchmark technologies. The use of various biomass fuels and alternative allocation methods were scrutinized. The LCA results reveal that most of the environmental impacts of the energy supplied with the HBP technology are caused by the production of the biomass fuel. This contribution is higher for pelletized than for chipped biomass. Overall, HBP technology shows better environmental performance than heat from natural gas and electricity from the German/European grid. When comparing the HBP technology with the biomass-fueled ORC technology, the former offers significant benefits in terms of particulate matter (about 22 times lower), photochemical ozone formation (11 times lower), acidification (8 times lower) and terrestrial eutrophication (about 26 times lower). The environmental performance was not affected by the allocation parameter (exergy or economic) used. However, the tested substitution approaches showed to be inadequate to model multiple environmental impacts of CHP plants under the investigated context and goal.
Every diet has an impact on an individual’s health status, the environment, as well as on social concerns. A growing number of meals are consumed in the out-of-home catering sector, in which a systematic sustainability assessment is not part of common practice. In order to close this gap, an instrument was developed as part of the NAHGAST project. After more than one year of using the NAHGAST online tool, it needs to be assessed what positive environmental influences can be realized by using the tool. For this reason, this article deals with the question of whether an online tool can enable stakeholders from the out-of-home consumption sector to revise their meals with regard to aspects of a sustainable diet. In addition, it will be answered how precise recipe revisions of the most popular lunchtime meals influence the material footprint as well as the carbon footprint. In conclusion, an online tool can illustrate individual sustainability paths for stakeholders in the out-of-home consumption sector and enables an independent recipe revision for already existing meals. The results show that even slight changes in recipes could lead to savings of up to a third in carbon footprint as well as in material footprint. In relation to the out-of-home consumption sector, this results in the potential for substantial multiplication effects that will pave the way for the dissemination of sustainable nutrition.
We conducted a random allocation experiment at fashion week in Berlin in 2017, testing how face-to-face (f2f) communication affects sales of a fashion start-up focusing on second-hand. The experiment revealed that 11% of guests of an f2f event afterwards turned paying customers with an average basket size 11.8% higher than the overall sales event average. We add insights to research on entrepreneurial practice as well as on offline operations in the context of circular consumption in fashion, exposing the leveraging effect of f2f communication for customer acquisition and revenue of start-ups in the field of sustainable fashion.
Participatory modeling - the involvement of stakeholders in the modeling process - can support various objectives, such as stimulating learning processes or promoting mutual understanding of stakeholders. Participatory modeling approaches could therefore be useful for the governance of transitions, but a systematic account of potential application areas of participatory modeling methods in transition governance is still lacking. This article addresses this gap by providing a review of participatory modeling methods and linking them to phases and objectives of transition governance. We reviewed participatory modeling studies in transition research and related fields of social-ecological modeling, integrated assessment and environmental management. We find that participatory modeling methods are mostly used for participatory visioning and goal setting as well as for interactive strategy development. The review shows the potential for extending the application of participatory modeling methods to additional phases of transition governance and for the exchange of experiences between research fields.
Businesses like Airbnb have shown that a successful circular economy (CE) business can operate exclusively online. Although online communication and web appearance attributes have been subject to academic research given accelerated digitization, there is still a lack of knowledge about online attributes and their role in facilitating CE. We close the portrayed knowledge gap by conducting a discrete-choice experiment with best to worst scaling and focusing on the effect of CE experience on the perception of a CE website by ranking nine online attributes, grouped in three subsets. We therefore contribute by identifying online attributes that are perceived as favorable for CE businesses and detect how participation in CE activities affects the perception of these attributes. We find that third-party associated online attributes (e.g., user reviews or third-party guarantees) rank significantly higher throughout CE consumption patterns of the sample, being always amongst the top three attributes. This novel finding on online preferences opens a new direction for further research, as well as allows practitioners to optimize online operations accordingly. Furthermore, we find that users without prior touchpoints with CE have a higher need for information about the business model as compared to CE active users who are more interested in community related attributes.
Effective actions to mitigate climate change are urgently needed, especially in the context of cities, which are major sources of global CO2 emissions. Establishing and managing knowledge systems that integrate local knowledge can contribute to establishing more effective responses to climate change as well as transformative change towards sustainability. However, it is still unclear how new forms of urban governance should acquire, store, create, or disseminate knowledge for fostering sustainability transitions effectively. In this study, we present a multilevel knowledge system approach based on design principles informed especially by the knowledge management literature. These address (i) working environments across multiple levels, (ii) knowledge forms and types, and (iii) knowledge processes. We apply this approach to municipal climate action in the German energy transition. In particular, we focus on the operational work of municipal climate action managers of regional centers of Lower Saxony, one of the largest of the 16 federal states, and investigate their involvement in knowledge processes. Based on semi-structured interviews in 14 of the 17 regional centers, we show that structural pre-conditions for successful knowledge management and organizational learning are present. However, we also show that there is a need for improvement regarding (i) the multilevel coordination for accelerating routine operation, (ii) the persistence of local operational knowledge, and (iii) the exploitation of local innovations. Relying on these results, we offer general recommendations for municipal climate action and suggest that policies should (i) rely on local knowledge for effective decision-making, (ii) foster multilevel exchanges of explicit and tacit knowledge for implementation, and (iii) enable open-ended learning processes that leverage local innovations for creating usable transformational knowledge.
Many technical solutions have been developed to enhance the energy efficiency in buildings. However, the actual effectiveness and sustainability of these solutions often do not correspond to expectations because of the missing perspective of design, user's real needs, and unconsidered negative side effects of their use (rebounds). With the aim to help address these challenges, this paper presents results of a longitudinal living lab study and proposes a user-centered building management system (UC-BMS) as a prototype for office buildings. Based on mixed methods, UC-BMS was co-developed, tested, and evaluated in Germany in up to six office buildings, 85 offices, and within two heating periods. The results demonstrate that such user-oriented approach can save up to 20% of energy while maintaining or even improving comfort and work productivity. The findings show three main areas of intervention and elements of UC-BMS: (1) How interactive design and feedback systems (e.g., air quality) can stimulate ventilation practices and energy efficiency in offices and (2) supporting heating system optimization e.g., by better understanding office behavior. (3) Finally, an office comfort survey was conducted to enable communication between facility management and office users and thus limiting complaints and adapting the heating system towards actual office user needs.
In order to ensure security of supply in a future energy system with a high share of volatile electricity generation, flexibility technologies are needed. Industrial demand-side management ranks as one of the most efficient flexibility options. This paper analyses the effect of the integration of industrial demand-side management through the flexibilisation of aluminium electrolysis and other flexibilities of the electricity system and adjacent sectors. The additional flexibility options include electricity storage, heat storage in district heating networks, controlled charging of electric vehicles, and buffer storage in hydrogen electrolysis. The utilisation of the flexibilities is modelled in different settings with an increasing share of renewable energies, applying a dispatch model. This paper compares which contributions the different flexibilities can make to emission reduction, avoidance of curtailment, and reduction of fuel and CO2 costs, and which circumstances contribute to a decrease or increase of overall emissions with additional flexibilities. The analysis stresses the rising importance of flexibilities in an energy system based on increasing shares of renewable electricity generation, and shows that flexibilities are generally suited to reduce carbon emissions. It is presented that the relative contribution towards the reduction of curtailment and costs of flexibilisation of aluminium electrolysis are high, whereby the absolute effect is small compared to the other options due to the limited number of available processes.
Electricity generation requires water. With the global demand for electricity expected to increase significantly in the coming decades, the water demand in the power sector is also expected to rise. However, due to the ongoing global energy transition, the future structure of the power supply - and hence future water demand for power generation - is subject to high levels of uncertainty, because the volume of water required for electricity generation varies significantly depending on both the generation technology and the cooling system. This study shows the implications of ambitious decarbonization strategies for the direct water demand for electricity generation. To this end, water demand scenarios for the electricity sector are developed based on selected global energy scenario studies to systematically analyze the impact up to 2040. The results show that different decarbonization strategies for the electricity sector can lead to a huge variation in water needs. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) does not necessarily lead to a reduction in water demand. These findings emphasize the need to take into account not only GHG emission reductions, but also such aspects as water requirements of future energy systems, both at the regional and global levels, in order to achieve a sustainable energy transition.
Integrated assessment models (IAMs) are commonly used by decision makers in order to derive climate policies. IAMs are currently based on climate-economics interactions, whereas the role of social system has been highlighted to be of prime importance on the implementation of climate policies. Beyond existing IAMs, we argue that it is therefore urgent to increase efforts in the integration of social processes within IAMs. For achieving such a challenge, we present some promising avenues of research based on the social branches of economics. We finally present the potential implications yielded by such social IAMs.
With regard to residential energy use in the European Union (EU), most studies consider potential adopters of the technology (e.g., private owners) as being the sole decision-makers in the technology selection. However, during an integrated decision-making process (e.g., a construction project) multiple stakeholders will interact, influencing each other's judgement, thereby making it difficult to discern who is affecting the final decision, and to what extent. The goal of this study is to outline the full network of stakeholders involved in the decision-making process, along with their degree of power and interaction in the technology choice. For this purpose, empirical evidence from a multi-country survey is examined using social network analysis (SNA). The information is compared across building typologies, project types and countries (i.e., Italy, Spain, Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom, France, Belgium and the Netherlands). The results demonstrate that, in EU residential buildings, potential adopters of the technology are not the only stakeholders involved in the technology selection. They are in all instances in communication with multiple stakeholders, some of whom also hold a high level of power in the decision (i.e., key persuaders). Furthermore, their level of power and communication varies substantially across building typologies, project types and countries.
Organic waste to energy (OWtE) technologies have been developed and implemented in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) countries. However, they are still far away to significantly contribute not only to treat the ever-increasing waste volumes in the region but also to supply the regional energy demand and meet national carbon emission goals. The technical complexity of these technologies aligned with lack of research, high investment costs and political deficiencies have not allowed for an appropriate implementation of OWtE in the region, where the applicability of large-scale plants remains to be demonstrated. This research presents the state-of-the art of OWtE technologies in the context of the LAC countries based on archival research method. In addition, it presents challenges and opportunities that the region is facing for an adequate implementation of these technologies. The main findings show that OWtE have the potential to improve waste and energy systems in the region by reducing environmental impacts along with a series of social and economic benefits, such as increasing access to a sustainable energy supply. Diverse researches indicate principally anaerobic digestion, fermentation (e.g. 2G bioethanol, etc.), microbial fuel cells, gasification and pyrolysis as efficient technologies to treat solid organic wastes and produce bioenergy.
Global climate
(2020)
The annual Climate Change Conference took place on 2-15 December in Katowice, Poland. It included the twenty-fourth Conference of the Parties (COP-24) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the fourteenth Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (MOP-14), the resumed first Meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (MOP-1), and their subsidiary bodies. The conference had two main objectives: operationalizing the Paris Agreement by adopting detailed rules for its implementation and starting the process of strengthening the parties' climate protection contributions.
On September 17, 2019, EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager allowed the electricity company Eon to take over and break up RWE subsidiary Innogy under lenientconditions. But there are numerous experts who have a different opinion and argue that the EU Commission approval is a "decision of enormous importance" that will "fundamentally change the entire sector". The result of this decision is that this mega-deal creates two monolithic giants in the German energy sector with unprecedented market power. If one compares the situation with the purchase of the electricity supplier Nuon by Vattenfall in 2009, questions arise. Back then, the competition authorities forced Vattenfall to divest parts of Nuon's business in individual cities, which resulted in the supplier "lekker energie". Following this example, the competition authorities should have consistently forced Eon to sell parts of the business, such as larger distribution companies.
A transaction of this magnitude should always be viewed critically in competition law. The legitimate question therefore arises as to why the German and European competition authorities (the Federal Cartel Office, the Federal Network Agency, the Monopolies Commission and the European Competition Commission) faced this deal with barely audible criticism and why they did not react with far-reaching prohibition requirements. "Competition doubts are certainly justified". Because if the two largest German energy groups completely eliminate each other's competition and completely divide up their business areas among themselves, this will have far-reaching consequences for the energy sector. Especially against the background that the energy transition in Germany has so far been characterised by decentralised structures and civic participation (especially in the case of electricity generation from renewable energies). In this paper, the authors will demonstrate what this Eon/RWE deal means for competition and the energy transition.
This theory note develops a theoretical approach which integrates the negative spillovers that international institutions often impose on each other into our thinking about their normative legitimacy. Our approach draws on the political philosophy of Rainer Forst which revolves around the right to justification. It suggests that regime complexes facilitate the breakup of institution-specific orders of justification by prompting invested actors to justify negative spillovers vis-a-vis each other. Thus, regime complexes enable more encompassing justifications of negative spillovers than stand-alone international institutions. Against this backdrop, we submit that the proliferation of regime complexes represents normative progress in global governance.
There is urgent need to change the way we make use of non-renewable resources, especially metals, to sustain their availability for vital technologies associated with achieving change towards sustainability, but also to minimize negative impacts and to achieve a fair distribution of the wealth and burdens associated with their production and use. Especially public actors (state governments and administrations) have recently formulated strategies as a means to guide action fostering these goals. Yet, these strategies are very different in their character, which makes it difficult to compare them and learn how to best design strategies for a given context to contribute to the necessary change. To approach this question, we analyzed 37 national mineral resource-related strategy documents worldwide concerning their contextual conditions, motivation, and objectives. Following the general inputs for transition strategies (current and target state, transition strategy), we identified four clusters of strategy documents that share similarities in their approaches and support the development of specific recommendations for future strategy design in terms of both content and process. Designing strategies with a clear structure that interlinks a systems-based description of the current state, a clear vision (oriented at sustainability principles) and a sufficiently differentiated but at the same time flexible transition pathway improves their potential to contribute to more sustainable metal production and use.
It has been widely recognized that there is an urgent need for more sustainable urban transport policy and planning. To understand ambitious policy approaches, "relatively successful" cities are regularly subject of analyses. This paper also focuses on relatively successful cities - by reviewing the application documents of the winner cities of the European Green Capital Award (EGCA). Award schemes not only aim to reward leading participants, but likewise aim to contribute to knowledge transfer and the dissemination of good practice examples to non-participants. So far award schemes and good practice approaches have received limited attention by research. This paper reviews and analyses the application forms of the EGCA winning cities to learn about ambitious policy approaches to sustainable and climate-friendly urban transport.
In the light of Germany's chosen path towards the energy transition, the regulatory framework has changed considerably. New players have succeeded in entering the market, and renewable energies have become increasingly competitive. Greater electrification of the transport and heating sectors will be needed in the future to achieve national climate targets. Against this background, Germany's big energy companies need to be sure that their sales will increase. However, they were unable to anticipate this development, and made strategic mistakes in the past. The development of sustainable business models in line with the energy transition failed to materialize. Now it is becoming increasingly clear that companies must create new business models to survive in the long term. These business models have to keep with the tradition, whilst meeting the needs of low-carbon power supplies. In this paper, we will examine the past and future challenges of the four energy companies and develop a proposal for evaluating sustainable business models. For this purpose, we use the multi-level perspective to categorize developments in the electricity market over the last 50 years, and then apply a multi-criteria analysis to derive five suitable business models from the results.
Mixed-method research to foster energy efficiency investments by small private landlords in Germany
(2020)
The decarbonisation of the building stock is an important element for the success of the German Energiewende (energy transition). Despite some progress having been made, the rate of energy renovation falls below the level required to meet political commitments. This gives rise to the question: what deters property owners from making energy efficiency investments and how can the policy framework foster such investments? To answer this question, the paper focuses on a widely neglected property owner group: small private landlords (SPL). Although they manage 37% of all residential rental properties in Germany, very little is known about their decision-making processes for energy efficiency investments. We applied a mixed-method design to identify factors that hindered and supported their investments. In an explorative study, we initially conducted 18 problem-centred interviews. Subsequently, we carried out a postal survey and analysed the questionnaires using a hierarchical linear regression model. The results show that energy renovation is a multi-dimensional decision-making process, which can only be adequately addressed by a comprehensive policy package. To develop such a package, the author recommends that the specific investment behaviour of SPL must be better targeted, their knowledge about energy efficiency investments must be improved through exchange and networking, a sense of responsibility for the neighbourhood must be fostered, and greater focus must be placed on improving local framework conditions
Every diet has an impact on an individual's health status, the environment as well as on social aspects. In particular, ecological and social concerns are usually only vaguely assessed in the daily routines of out-of-home catering and a systematic sustainability assessment of meals is usually not carried out. Since May 2018, the menu calculator presented in this paper has been supporting stakeholders in various catering establishments with their sustainability assessment. The tool was developed within the NAHGAST project (www.nahgast.de) in cooperation with five practice partners and tested and validated by a total of 120 recipes. This article provides an overview of selected recipes' sustainability assessments (meals with fish and meat as well as vegetarian and vegan meals) and highlights the effects on the ecological, health and social dimensions.
Nigeria is Africa's largest economy and home to approximately 10% of the un-electrified population of Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2017, 77 million Nigerians or 40% of the population had no access to affordable, reliable and sustainable electricity. In practice, diesel- and petrol-fuelled back-up generators supply the vast majority of electricity in the country. In Nigeria's nationally-determined contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement, over 60% of the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) reductions are foreseen in the power sector. The goal of this study is to identify and critically examine the pathways available to Nigeria to meet its 2030 electricity access, renewables and decarbonization goals in the power sector. Using published data and stakeholder interviews, we build three potential scenarios for electrification and growth in demand, generation and transmission capacity. The demand assumptions incorporate existing knowledge on pathways for electrification via grid extension, mini-grids and solar home systems (SHS). The supply assumptions are built upon an evaluation of the investment pipeline for generation and transmission capacity, and possible scale-up rates up to 2030. The results reveal that, in the most ambitious Green Transition scenario, Nigeria meets its electricity access goals, whereby those connected to the grid achieve a Tier 3 level of access, and those served by sustainable off-grid solutions (mini-grids and SHS) achieve Tier 2. Decarbonization pledges would be surpassed in all three scenarios but renewable energy goals would only be partly met. Fossil fuel-based back-up generation continues to play a substantial role in all scenarios. The implications and critical uncertainties of these findings are extensively discussed.
New options are needed to reduce the impact of motor vehicles on climate change and declining fossil fuel resources. Cars which are fueled by hydrogen could be a sustainable method of transportation if suitable technologies can be devised to produce hydrogen in an environmentally benign manner along with the provision of the necessary fueling infrastructure. This paper assesses size, space, and cost requirements of bioreactors as a decentralized option to supply hydrogen powered cars with biohydrogen produced from algae or cyanobacteria on a theoretical basis. Decentralized supply of biohydrogen could help to reduce the problems that hydrogen cars face regarding market penetration. A feasibility study for decentralized biohydrogen production is conducted, taking the quantity of hydrogen which is needed to fuel current hydrogen cars into account. While this technology is, in theory, feasible, sizes, and costs of such reactors are currently too high for widespread adoption. Thus, more R&D is needed to close the gap and to approach marketability.
The mass roll out of solar PV across the Global South has enabled electricity access for millions of people. In the right context, Small Wind Turbines (SWTs) can be complementary, offering the potential to generate at times of low solar resource (night, monsoon season, winter, etc.) and increasing the proportion of the total energy system that can be manufactured locally. However, many contextual factors critically affect the viability of the technology, such as the extreme variability in the wind resource itself and the local availability of technical support. Therefore, performing a detailed market analysis in each new context is much more important. The Wind Empowerment Market Assessment Methodology (WEMAM) is a multi-scalar, transdisciplinary methodology for identifying the niche contexts where small wind can make a valuable contribution to rural electrification. This paper aims to inform the development of WEMAM with a critical review of existing market assessment methodologies. By breaking down WEMAM into its component parts, reflecting upon its practical applications to date and drawing upon insights from the literature, opportunities where it could continue to evolve are highlighted. Key opportunities include shifting the focus towards development outcomes; creating community archetypes; localised studies in high potential regions; scenario modelling and MCDA ranking of proposed interventions; participatory market mapping; and applying socio-technical transitions theory to understand how the small wind niche can break through into the mainstream.
Given large potentials of the MENA region for renewable energy production, transitions towards renewables-based energy systems seem a promising way for meeting growing energy demand while contributing to greenhouse gas emissions reductions according to the Paris Agreement at the same time. Supporting and steering transitions to a low-carbon energy system require a clear understanding of socio-technical interdependencies in the energy system as well as of the principle dynamics of system innovations. For facilitating such understanding, a phase model for renewables-based energy transitions in MENA countries, which structures the transition process over time through the differentiation of a set of sub-sequent distinct phases, is developed in this article. The phase model builds on a phase model depicting the German energy transition, which was complemented by insights about transition governance and adapted to reflect characteristics of the MENA region. The resulting model includes four phases ("Take-off renewables", "System integration", "Power to fuel/gases”, "Towards 100% renewables”), each of which is characterized by a different cluster of innovations. These innovations enter the system via three stages of development which describe different levels of maturity and market penetration, and which require appropriate governance. The phase model has the potential to support strategy development and governance of energy transitions in MENA countries in two complementary ways: it provides an overview of techno-economic developments as orienting guidelines for decision-makers, and it adds some guidance as to which governance approaches are suitable for supporting those developments.
Energy service companies (ESCOs) play crucial role in building energy efficiency retrofit sector. However limited access to green financing has prevented ESCOs in their expansions in China. This paper, based on a survey of 469 samples and on-site visiting to and interviewing relevant 50 actors of ESCOs, financial institutions and local housing authorities, identifies main barriers of accessing to green financing at both systemic policy level and operational meso and micro level in China, and analyzes good practices at local level that overcome the barriers. The paper concludes that, although there are barriers existing at the policy level in China, substantial attentions and priorities should be given to take actions for overcoming the barriers existed at the operational meso and micro level. The paper suggests that the good practices of capacity building for ESCOs and local financial sector, intensifying participation of intermediate organizations or facilitators and diversifying financial sources and funding mechanisms and models that emerge from the local level should be disseminated in China.
This paper explores how the European Commission promotes the concept of Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning (SUMP) among European cities. Despite the strong uptake of the SUMP concept, mobility-related problems persist in European municipalities. Linking theoretical approaches to understand the diffusion of policies with empirical findings from working with cities in the SUMP context, this article explores channels of policy diffusion and investigates shortcomings related to the respective approaches. Studies on the diffusion, the transfer and the convergence of policies identify formal hierarchy, coercion, competition, learning and networking, and the diffusion of international norms as channels for policy transfer. The findings which are presented in this paper are twofold: First, the paper finds evidence that the Commission takes different roles and uses all mechanisms in parallel, albeit with different intensity. It concludes that the approaches to explain policy diffusion are not competing or mutually exclusive but are applied by the same actor to address different aspects of a policy field, or to reach out to different actors. Second, the article provides first evidence of factors that limit the mechanisms' abilities to directly influence urban mobility systems and mobility behaviour.
Recent research on the natural resource use of private consumption suggests a sustainable Material Footprint of 8 tons per capita by 2050 in industrialised countries. We analyse the Material Footprint in Germany from 2015 to 2020 in order to test whether the Material Footprint decreases accordingly. We studied the Material Footprint of 113,559 users of an online footprint calculator and predicted the Material Footprint by seasonally decomposed autoregressive (STL-ARIMA) and exponential smoothing (STL-ETS) algorithms. We find a relatively stable Material Footprint for private consumption. The overall Material Footprint decreased by 0.4% per year between 2015 and 2020 on average. The predictions do not suggest that the Material Footprint of private consumption follows the reduction path of 3.3% per year that will lead to the sustainable consumption of natural resource