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"Aktualisierte Erklärung der deutschen Wirtschaft zur Klimavorsorge" : Große Worte, keine Taten?
(1997)
"Mehr Wohnen - weniger Auto"
(2000)
"Selbst-Check Handwerk" : Selbstbewertung zum nachhaltigen Wirtschaften in Handwerksbetrieben
(2007)
Both focus group discussions and information-choice questionnaires (ICQs) have previously been used to examine informed public opinions about carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS). This paper presents an extensive experimental study to systematically examine and compare the quality of opinions created by these two research techniques. Depending on experimental condition, participants either participated in a focus group meeting or completed an ICQ. In both conditions participants received identical factual information about two specific CCS options. After having processed the information, they indicated their overall opinion about each CCS option. The quality of these opinions was determined by looking at three outcome-oriented indicators of opinion quality: consistency, stability, and confidence. Results for all three indicators showed that ICQs yielded higher-quality opinions than focus groups, but also that focus groups did not perform poor in this regard. Implications for the choice between focus group discussions and ICQs are discussed.
A discussion on the potential for the development of hydrogen as an energy carrier in Portugal
(2005)
The use of materials and the generation of waste are linked to economic activities and in many projections these are assumed to be a constant ratio of the economic activities. This may be the case considering detailed economic activities and unchanged technology. However, the assumption of constant coefficients is questionable when linking material use and waste generation to aggregated economic activities. Therefore, in this paper, econometrics is used to test the assumption of constant waste coefficients empirically. The analyses show that an assumption of constant waste coefficients is not supported, generally, and amodel allowing for trendwise changing coefficients is developed and used for projections of waste and material flows in 25 European countries.
A global collaborative accounting network to calculate the resource use of products and services
(2015)
Sustainability as defined by the Brundtland Commission, is a composite and thus ambitious policy target. It comprises environmental, economic, social, and institutional criteria with equal importance. Because of this complexity the first step of a (Local) Agenda 21 process should be to develop a vision of a sustainable society - a "leitbild" - useful as a compass, not a road map (or, even worse, a blueprint), attached by indicators that help to measure progress, distance to target, and failures of plans or their implementations. In the following article a model is proposed how local sustainability indicators can be developed and how they can help to reduce the complexity of sustainability and to concretize a program for the Local Agenda 21. To get a practical impression of the theoretical presentation an example is given in the last part of the article. It shows the experiences made while developing sustainability indicators in the City of Iserlohn.
Agriculture is a major sector responsible for greenhouse gas emissions. Local food production can contribute to reducing transport-related emissions. Since most of the worldwide population lives in cities, locally producing food implies practicing agriculture in urban and peri-urban areas. Exemplary, we analyze the potential to produce fresh vegetables within Berlin, Germany. We investigate the spatial extent of five different urban spaces for soil-based agriculture or gardening, i.e., non-built residential areas, allotment gardens, rooftops, supermarket parking lots, and cemeteries. We also quantify inputs required for such food production in terms of water, human resources, and investment. Our findings highlight that up to 82% of Berlin’s vegetable demand could be produced within the city, based on a reasonable validation of existing areas. Meeting this potential requires 42 km2 of urban spaces for cultivation, a considerable amount of irrigation water, around 17 thousand gardeners, and over 750 million EUR of initial investments. The final vegetable cost would be around 2 EUR to 10 EUR per kg without any profit margin. We conclude that it is realistic to produce a significant amount of Berlin's vegetable demand within the city, even if it comes with great challenges.
Optimization and simulation models are fit to work on a multitude of technical, economic, and techno-economic questions. However, they are by now not able to satisfactorily include societal aspects like acceptance, spatial implications and legal frameworks. In order to advance scope and explanatory power of simulation models, collaboration in interdisciplinary research teams is needed. Yet the exchange in such teams and its coordination can prove challenging. Furthermore, disciplinary approaches and methods for simulation and optimization might not be familiar to all participants.
To this end, a new conceptual model is introduced. The conceptual model employs few basic elements and concepts for describing and explaining arbitrary societal and technical relationships. Most notably, the conceptual model is general in its design, so contributions to the problem formulation and design components can be made by all team members regardless of their discipline. The procedure is based on common agent-based concepts without using their terminology. Consequently, an exchange among all team members becomes possible without them necessarily being proficient in agent-based modeling. A reduced presentation of workshop results exemplifies the use of novel elements for deriving an emergent agent-based simulation.
A policy mix for resource efficiency in the EU : key instruments, challenges and research needs
(2019)
Against the background of an often wasteful use of natural resources, the European Union has made resource efficiency a top policy priority. Policy formulation is, however, at a very early stage in many Member States, with often vague notions of what resource efficiency means, characterised by fragmented instruments and overlapping competencies. This paper develops a conceptual framework for defining, assessing and developing resource efficiency policy mixes. It argues that a mix of policies and instruments is best suited to overcoming the complex challenges of the 21st Century. Such a mix addresses multiple resource domains at a strategic, high level and contains interacting instruments targeting multiple actors, levels of governance and sectors and life-cycle stages of resource use. This paper looks at criteria for effective resource efficiency policy instruments, presents both an indicative policy mix across 9 policy domains and case studies (on environmental harmful subsidies, supply chain efficiency in food systems and product-service systems) and identifies key challenges to overcome trade-offs in instrument design, maximise synergies, reduce conflicts, promote coherence, coordinate activities and move from theory to practice. Research needs are discussed regarding who shall devise, implement, and coordinate such a policy mix, considering negotiating power, timing and complexity.
A number of "roadmapping" activities are being carried out internationally with the aim of planning and facilitating transitions to hydrogen energy systems. However, there is an evident discrepancy between the treatment of quantitative and qualitative information in the majority of roadmapping efforts. Whilst quantitative information is frequently analysed in numerical and computational models, conversely qualitative information tends to be incorporated on a significantly more ad hoc basis. Previous attempts at incorporating qualitative considerations have not usually been systematised. In this paper we present a methodology aimed at increasing the rigour with which qualitative information is treated in hydrogen roadmapping activities. The key changes and actor mapping (KCAM) methodology was developed as the primary qualitative component of the European Hydrogen Energy Roadmap project "HyWays". KCAM, developed from a well known general systems development model, constitutes a means of qualitatively analysing variable hydrogen supply chains that is structured, systematic and flexible.
This thesis justifies and develops a sustainable level of Lifestyle Material Footprint (LMF) as a benchmark for designing sustainable lifestyles. It shows the application of the benchmark in a Household-level Sustainability Transition method and presents a framework for inspiring design solutions towards a Design for One Planet (Df1P).
The thesis shows how the Material Input per unit of Service (MIPS) concept has developed from product orientation to the application to household consumption and from technically-focused measurement into an integral part of methods for designing one-planet lifestyles and supporting solutions. This provides both an advanced application of the concept and its opening to new purposes and users.
The core of the thesis is the suggestion of a sustainable material footprint benchmark of 8 tonnes per person per year as a resource cap target for household consumption in Finland, an 80% (factor 5) reduction from present average. The 8 tonnes benchmark opens the possibility for a target-oriented, planned reduction of LMFs by target-setting, experimenting and up-scaling of sustainable solutions. The method enabled the participating households to perform footprint reductions of 26–54% during the one-month experiment phase. Notable footprint reductions are thus possible even in the short term, which is an important message to other households and other actors in society. Calculating households' LMFs makes visible the structures underlying household consumption and the need for change not only in household consumption but also in the supply of products, services and infrastructure, and thus systemic changes initiated by others than households.
The orientation framework of Df1P suggests measures that could be promoted by means of design, and structures them in a matrix incorporating priority action areas in the fields of housing, nutrition and mobility, and the domains of product design, service design, infrastructure planning and communication design. Mainstreaming sustainable lifestyles will potentially require a new design culture, but at least significant efforts in product design, service design and infrastructure planning as well as in making sustainable solutions attractive to consumers and disrupting existing routines. The more technology and infrastructure can be integrated into this change, the more space will be left for individual diversity in achieving sustainable household consumption. The orientation framework could provide a first step towards Df1P practice by inspiring designers to integrate the recognition of the planetary boundaries into their work.