Refine
Year of Publication
Document Type
- Peer-Reviewed Article (635)
- Report (526)
- Part of a Book (355)
- Conference Object (351)
- Working Paper (230)
- Contribution to Periodical (188)
- Doctoral Thesis (35)
- Book (29)
- Master Thesis (10)
- Periodical Part (5)
Language
- English (2365) (remove)
Division
Reaching net-zero in the chemical industry : a study of roadmaps for industrial decarbonisation
(2024)
Striving to mitigate climate change, the European Union has adopted net-zero greenhouse gas emissions as a target for 2050. In this paper, European chemical industry roadmaps from the past six years are assessed and compared to uncover how the industry envisions its role in the transition to net-zero emissions. The roadmaps are assessed in terms of ambition level, technology and feedstock strategies, investment needs and costs, agency and dependency on other actors, as well as timeline and concretion. Although net-zero pathways are often drawn out in the roadmaps, some also choose to emphasize and argue for less ambitious pathways with emission reductions of only 40-60 %. The roadmaps vary widely in terms of the importance they assign to mechanical and chemical recycling, switching to biogenic carbon and carbon dioxide as feedstock, electrification and hydrogen, and carbon capture and storage. A commonality though, is that low-tech or near-term mitigation pathways such as demand reduction, reuse or material efficiency are seldom included. High investment needs are generally highlighted, as well as the need for policy to create enabling conditions, whereas the agency and responsibility of the chemical industry itself is downplayed. Our analysis highlights that the chemical industry does not yet have a strong and shared vision for pathways to net-zero emissions. We conclude that such a future vision would benefit from taking a whole value chain approach including demand-side options and consideration of scope 3 emissions.
Green hydrogen and synthetic fuels are increasingly recognized as a key strategic element for the progress of the global energy transition. The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, with its large wind and solar potential, is well positioned to generate renewable energy at low cost for the production of green hydrogen and synthetic fuels, and is therefore considered as a potential future producer and exporter. Yet, while solar and wind energy potentials are essential, other factors are expected to play an equally important role for the development of green hydrogen and synthetic fuels (export) sectors. This includes, in particular, adequate industrial capacities and infrastructures. These preconditions vary from country to country, and while they have been often mentioned in the discussion on green hydrogen exports, they have only been examined to a limited extent. This paper employs a case study approach to assess the existing infrastructural and industrial conditions in Jordan, Morocco, and Oman for the development of a green hydrogen and downstream synthetic fuel (export) sector.
Direct air capture (DAC) combined with subsequent storage (DACCS) is discussed as one promising carbon dioxide removal option. The aim of this paper is to analyse and comparatively classify the resource consumption (land use, renewable energy and water) and costs of possible DAC implementation pathways for Germany. The paths are based on a selected, existing climate neutrality scenario that requires the removal of 20 Mt of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year by DACCS from 2045. The analysis focuses on the so-called "low-temperature" DAC process, which might be more advantageous for Germany than the "high-temperature" one. In four case studies, we examine potential sites in northern, central and southern Germany, thereby using the most suitable renewable energies for electricity and heat generation. We show that the deployment of DAC results in large-scale land use and high energy needs. The land use in the range of 167-353 km2 results mainly from the area required for renewable energy generation. The total electrical energy demand of 14.4 TWh per year, of which 46% is needed to operate heat pumps to supply the heat demand of the DAC process, corresponds to around 1.4% of Germany's envisaged electricity demand in 2045. 20 Mt of water are provided yearly, corresponding to 40% of the city of Cologne's water demand (1.1 million inhabitants). The capture of CO2 (DAC) incurs levelised costs of 125-138 EUR per tonne of CO2, whereby the provision of the required energy via photovoltaics in southern Germany represents the lowest value of the four case studies. This does not include the costs associated with balancing its volatility. Taking into account transporting the CO2 via pipeline to the port of Wilhelmshaven, followed by transporting and sequestering the CO2 in geological storage sites in the Norwegian North Sea (DACCS), the levelised costs increase to 161-176 EUR/tCO2. Due to the longer transport distances from southern and central Germany, a northern German site using wind turbines would be the most favourable.
This paper examines the current and prospective greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of e-fuels produced via electrolysis and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (FTS) for the years 2021, 2030, and 2050 for use in Germany. The GHG emissions are determined by a scenario approach as a combination of a literature-based top-down and bottom-up approach. Considered process steps are the provision of feedstocks, electrolysis (via solid oxide co-electrolysis; SOEC), synthesis (via Fischer-Tropsch synthesis; FTS), e-crude refining, eventual transport to, and use in Germany. The results indicate that the current GHG emissions for e-fuel production in the exemplary export countries Saudi Arabia and Chile are above those of conventional fuels. Scenarios for the production in Germany lead to current GHG emissions of 2.78-3.47 kgCO2-eq/L e-fuel in 2021 as the reference year and 0.064-0.082 kgCO2-eq/L e-fuel in 2050. With a share of 58-96%, according to the respective scenario, the electrolysis is the main determinant of the GHG emissions in the production process. The use of additional renewable energy during the production process in combination with direct air capture (DAC) are the main leverages to reduce GHG emissions.
The establishment of the Leveraging a Climate-neutral Society–strategic Research Network (LCS–RNet) (then named the International Research Network for Low Carbon Societies) was proposed at the Group of Eight (G8) Environment Ministers’ Meeting in 2008. Its 12th annual meeting in December 2021 focused on the discussion on how to transition into a just and sustainable society and how to reduce the risks associated with the transition. This requires comprehensive studies including on the concept of transition, pathways to net-zero societies and how to realise the pathways by collaborating with various stakeholders. This Special Feature provides new insights into sustainability science by linking the scientific knowledge with practical science for the transition through the exploration of studies presented at the annual meeting. Following the opening paper, "A challenge for sustainability science: can we halt climate change?", a wide range of topics were discussed, including practices for sustainable transformation in the Erasmus University, practices in industry, energy transition and international cooperation.
Demand-side mitigation strategies have been gaining momentum in climate change mitigation research. Still, the impact of different approaches in passenger transport, one of the largest energy demand sectors, remains unclear. We couple a transport simulation model to an energy system optimisation model, both highly disintegrated in order to compare those impacts. Our scenarios are created for the case of Germany in an interdisciplinary, qualitative-quantitative research design, going beyond techno-economic assumptions, and cover Avoid, Shift, and Improve strategies, as well as their combination. The results show that sufficiency - Avoid and Shift strategies - have the same impact as the improvement of propulsion technologies (i.e. efficiency), which is reduction of generation capacities by one quarter. This lowers energy system transformation cost accordingly, but requires different kinds of investments: Sufficiency measures require public investment for high-quality public services, while efficiency measures require individuals to purchase more expensive vehicles at their own cost. These results raise socio-political questions of system design and well-being. However, all strategies are required to unleash the full potential of climate change mitigation.
The petrochemical industry is among the most relevant sectors from an economic, energetic and climate policy perspective. In Western Europe, production occurs in local chemical parks that form strongly connected and densely integrated regional clusters. This paper analyzes the structural characteristics of the petrochemical system in Germany and investigates three particularly distinct clusters regarding their challenges and chances for a transition towards climate-neutrality. For this, feedstock and energy supply, product portfolios and process integration as well as existing transformation activities are examined. We find that depending on their distinct network characteristics and location, unique and complex strategies are to be mastered for every cluster. Despite the many activities underway, none of them seems to have a strategic network to co-create a tailored defossilization strategy for the cluster - which is the core recommendation of this paper to develop.
This paper presents a novel governance concept for sustainable development, introducing the "Safe System Approach" as a transformative model that shifts focus from individual behavioural change to systemic transformation. This approach challenges traditional governance models that emphasize individual responsibility in achieving sustainable development and decarbonization. Instead, it advocates for creating an enabling environment that inherently guides individuals and communities towards sustainable actions. The Safe System Approach is centred on delivering low-carbon services across essential sectors, including electricity, mobility, industry, buildings, human settlements, and agriculture, thereby embedding sustainability as a default choice in societal systems. Drawing parallels with successful models in road safety, the paper explores the potential of this approach in urban development and climate action. It emphasizes the need for a broad coalition and integrated approaches in managing shared resources, highlighting the significance of systemic adjustments over individual behavioral change. By proposing a structure where sustainability is facilitated by the system's design, the paper builds on key concepts from seminal works by scholars like Garrett Hardin, Mancur Olson, Elinor Ostrom, and Ahrend Lijphart. It discusses the challenges and opportunities in creating safe operating spaces for sustainable development, emphasizing the need for multi-actor, multilevel governance systems that can manage shared resources sustainably and are resilient to political volatility. The paper aims to offer a robust, efficient, and inclusive pathway to sustainable development, contributing to the global discourse on environmental and social resilience.
Ways of evaluating the societal impact of real-world labs as a transdisciplinary and transformative research format are under discussion. We present an evaluation approach rooted in structuration theory, with a focus on structure-agency dynamics at the science-society interface. We applied the theory with its four modalities (interpretation schemes, norms, allocative and authoritative resources) to the case of the Mirke neighbourhood in Wuppertal, Germany. Six projects promoted the capacity for co-productive city-making. The effects of the projects were jointly analysed in a co-evaluation process. Previously proposed subcategories of the modalities as an empirical operationalisation were tested and confirmed as being applicable. Five new subcategories were generated. The use of the modalities seems appropriate for co-evaluation processes. The tool is practical, focused on real-world effects, and suitable for transdisciplinary interpretation processes. We encourage further empirical testing of the tool, as well as development of the subcategories.
Gaining deep leverage? : Reflecting and shaping real-world lab impacts through leverage points
(2024)
Real-world laboratories (RwLs) are gaining further traction as a means to achieve systemic impacts towards sustainability transformation. To guide the analysis of intended impacts, we introduce the concept of leverage points, discerning where, how, and to what end RwLs intervene in systems. Building on conceptual reasoning, we further develop our argument by exploring two RwL cases. Examining RwLs through the lens of the leverage points opens the way for a balanced and comprehensive approach to systemic experimentation. We invite RwL researchers and practitioners to further advance RwLs' transformative capacity by targeting the design and emerging direction of a system, contributing to a culture of sustainability.
In the energy sector, few topics, if any, are more hyped than hydrogen. Countries develop hydrogen strategies to provide a perspective for hydrogen production and use in order to meet climate-neutrality goals. However, in this topical field the role of water is less accentuated. Hence, in this study, we seek to map the interrelations between the water and wastewater sector on the one hand and the hydrogen sector on the other hand, before reflecting upon our findings in a country case study. We chose the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan because (i) hydrogen is politically discussed not least due to its high potentials for solar PV, and (ii) Jordan is water stressed - definitely a bad precondition for water-splitting electrolyzers. This research is based on a project called the German-Jordanian Water-Hydrogen-Dialogue (GJWHD), which started with comprehensive desk research mostly to map the intersectoral relations and to scope the situation in Jordan. Then, we carried out two expert workshops in Wuppertal, Germany, and Amman, Jordan, in order to further discuss the nexus by inviting a diverse set of stakeholders. The mapping exercise shows various options for hydrogen production and opportunities for planning hydrogen projects in water-scarce contexts such as Jordan.
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.
Sustainable urban mobility : interventions, key measures and solutions, actors, and opportunities
(2023)
Nigeria is Africa's top cement producer and could be on course to be one of the top producers globally. The goal of this study is to identify and critically examine the pathways available to Nigeria to meet its decarbonisation goals in the cement sector. Based on a literature review, the study assesses demand drivers and decarbonisation potentials for the sector. It then presents two different quantitative pathways for growth in production of cement by 2050, and three different pathways for decarbonisation of the sector. Using published data and a scenario analysis tool, the study calculates how the sector's emissions might evolve under each of these pathways. The results indicate that, in the most ambitious scenario, emissions from the sector can plateau by the late 2030s, resulting in an overall increase of 21% by 2050 (compared to 2015 levels). Achieving this scenario is necessary in order to put the sector on a path to net zero emissions beyond 2050. The scenario is driven by reductions in both energy-related and process emissions, as well as a small share of carbon capture and storage and demand management. A moderately ambitious scenario that relies mostly on savings on energy-related emissions results in an 84% increase in emissions by 2050. Finally, the Business-as-Usual scenario results in an almost tripling of emissions by 2050. The results indicate a strong potential for policies to drive improvements in energy efficiency and clinker-to-cement ratio. Critical areas of uncertainty within the assumptions include the production rates (including the evolution of the export market) and the fuel mix.
22 years are left until the German target for climate neutrality should be reached. For the industrial sector, this implies a fundamental change and an acceleration of emission reduction, as from 2000 to 2021 the sector has reduced its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by only 13% (ERK, 2022). For the large structures, plants and assets that are characteristic for the energy intensive industrial sectors, the timespan implies no room for delay. One sector facing particular challenges is the chemical industry. Here, fossil resources are used not only for energetic purposes but for feedstock as well, in the petrochemical industry in particular. The efforts made in the petrochemical sector thereby not only affects the sectors own emissions, but the chemicals value chain at large, including the management of end-of-life products. The dependency on energetic resources for material use also means that there is a particular connection from the chemical industry to the energy system at large, which also entails special consideration.
The chemical industry also has a particular relevance to the Antwerp-Rotterdam-Rhine-Ruhr-Area (ARRRA) which hosts several large petrochemical clusters in Germany as well as the Netherlands and Belgium, with complexly interlinked production chains. In reaching the climate targets, these regions especially face significant changes and may have the opportunity to position themselves as frontrunners for industrial transformation. That is, if a successful strategy can be found.
In the recent years, numerous scenario analyses and roadmaps have been released drawing out pathways for chemical industries to develop in line with national and international climate targets. This can entail mapping of technological options, important prerequisites, particular challenges as well as important opportunities and timeframes. This meta-analysis summarizes and compares the findings of some of the most recent previous works at the national, European and global level. As the goal is to investigate the various strategic options and development paths for Germany and the ARRRA, it has a particular focus on roadmaps for Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. It takes a quantitative as well as qualitative approach, looking both at resource and production volumes, different emission reduction strategies relative importance, as well as policy recommendations and other important framework conditions. A particular focus is put on the use of non-fossil feedstocks to reduce emissions.
To date, the circular economy has fallen short of its promise to reduce our resource demand and transform our production and consumption system. One key problem is the lack of understanding that highly promising strategies such as refuse, rethink, and reduce can be properly addressed using research on sufficiency. This article argues that a shift in focus is required in research and policy development from consumers who buy and handle circularly designed products to consumption patterns that follow the logic of sufficiency and explain how sufficiency-oriented concepts can be incorporated into existing social practices. The authors show that sufficiency is not necessarily as radical and unattractive as is often claimed, making it a suitable yet underrated strategy for sustainability and the transition to an effective circular economy. The case of urban gardening shows that small interventions can have far-reaching effects and transform consumption patterns as the logic of availability is contested by newly developed concepts of "enoughness" and opposition to "über-availability." The authors propose utilizing comprehensive state-of-the-art theories of consumption and human action when developing strategies and policies to make the circular economy sustainable while being more critical of utilitarian approaches. Using social practice theories that have proven to be beneficial allows human actions to be comprehensively analyzed by recognizing their embeddedness in social and material frameworks; addressing the meaning, competences, and materials of routinized human behavior; and examining indirect effects.
The Digital Product Passport (DPP) is a concept for collecting and sharing product-related information along the life cycle of a product. DPPs are currently the subject of intense discussion, and various development efforts are being undertaken. These are supported by regulatory activities, especially in the case of the battery passport. The aggregation of product life-cycle data and their respective use, as well as the sharing of these data between companies, entrepreneurs, and other actors in the value chain, is crucial for the creation of a resource-efficient circular economy. Despite the urgent need for such a solution, there is currently little attention given to the digital infrastructure for the creation and handling of the DPPs (i.e., the so-called DPP system). Moreover, there is so far no common understanding of what the requirements for a DPP system are. This is the background and underlying motivation of our paper: we identify the requirements for a DPP system in a structured way, i.e., based on stakeholder involvement and current literature from science and industry. In addition, we compose, categorize, and critically analyze the results, i.e., the list of requirements for DPP systems, in order to identify gaps. Summarized, our research provides insights into the criteria to be considered in the creation of an actual DPP system.
The EU Horizon 2020 project HiEff-BioPower (grant agreement No 727330, duration: 10/2016 - 09/2021) aimed at the development of a new, innovative, fuel flexible and highly efficient biomass CHP technology for a capacity range of 1 to 10 MW total energy output, suitable e.g. for on-site generation at larger residential apartment buildings or local heat grids. The new technology shall define a new milestone in terms of CHP efficiency and contribute to a sustainable energy supply based on renewable energies using otherwise unused residual biomass. It consists of a fuel-flexible updraft gasification technology with ultra-low particulate matter emissions, an integrated gas cleaning system and a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC). The technology shall be applicable for a wide fuel spectrum for residual biomass (wood pellets, wood chips or selected agricultural fuels like agro-pellets) and achieve high gross electric (40%) and overall (90%) efficiencies as well as almost zero gaseous and particulate matter (PM) emissions (close or below the level of detection) as non-energy benefits. At the end of the project, final technology data has become available, as well as techno-economic analyses and market studies. Based on this data, this paper presents final results from the environmental impact assessment of the new HiEff-BioPower technology.
As the climate crisis is accelerating and the pressure to act is steadily increasing, many companies are claiming themselves or their products carbon neutral. This is usually achieved by offsetting residual emissions with carbon certificates (carbon offsetting). However, recent revelations about the inadequate quality of carbon credits and legal uncertainties surrounding the use of such offset claims are increasingly raising doubts about this approach.
This Wuppertal Report examines how the EU can promote integrity in corporate climate action. Taking into account the new framework of the Paris Agreement, the paper outlines various options for how the EU could push for more integrity and effectively combat greenwashing through the targeted use of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.
In their recommendations, the authors advocate addressing the most serious consequences of ongoing offset practices through increased regulation of offset claims. If a ban on offset claims cannot be implemented, claims requirements and carbon offset regulations should be further specified, for example, by prohibiting any type of double counting of emissions reductions. In addition to tightening the rules for corporate offset claims within Europe, the EU could help partner countries make informed decisions when approving climate change mitigation measures and respective carbon credits. The report also emphasizes the EU's special role in international climate negotiations, where it should advocate for a strong legal framework for climate action under Article 6.
Leftovers lovers vs. haters : a latent class analysis on dinner leftover management behaviours
(2023)
Leftovers are particularly at risk of being discarded, and therefore a main component of household food waste. This study provides insights into sources of heterogeneity in leftover management behaviours, with a particular focus on the use of meal kits providing matched portion and ingredient sizes, and identifies consumer segments via a latent class analysis. We investigate whether belonging to a segment with positive attitudes toward leftovers, and engagement in conscious leftover management behaviours decreases the amounts of dinner leftovers and food waste. Besides, we demonstrate that several food waste antecedents, emotions, personal norms, intention and dinner procurement routines elicit leftover management segment membership. In addition to examining such individual differences, we also investigate the role of meal-level determinants, in particular, whether meal kits heterogeneously affect dinner leftovers depending on the consumer's leftover management segment.
Data was collected from 868 households from six countries, using an online survey and diaries. Results of the latent class analysis point towards five consumer segments. We found differences in dinner leftovers amount across classes and detected heterogeneous effects of meal kits. That is, meal kits were able to diminish leftovers in two segments, but not in the other segments. These results provide novel insights into consumer heterogeneity regarding the occurrence, antecedents, and potential solutions of leftovers and resulting household food waste. Implications for both theory and policy are discussed.
The rise of pedal-assisted bicycles (e-bikes) has the potential to contribute to reducing ubiquitous automobility and its negative externalities on the global climate, mobility justice and the quality of urban life. But what makes this new practice so successful in recruiting new practitioners? What policies can ensure that e-bikes are used in a wide range of situations, thus substituting as much car driving as possible - or even reducing the number of cars? The study focuses on commuting as this use case frequently entails the main obstacles to e-biking in daily routines (e.g., sweat, weather, transporting children or goods). The analysis is primarily based on interviews with practitioners and initially provides a thorough depiction of the practice elements (meanings, materials and competences) involved in e-bike commuting. It furthermore elicits key drivers of and barriers to daily e-bike commuting, points to a number of elements that are important to overcome these barriers and develops two tangible policy approaches to foster the substitution of e-biking for car driving.
The word "literacy" has come to be used to describe a wide range of competencies, including design literacy - a term that, despite its presence in design discourse, is still characterised by a certain fuzziness. In this paper, we explore this highly discursive theoretical field in order to gain a more nuanced and expanded understanding of the topic. In doing so, we argue that these divergent positions are also due to the ambiguity of the term “design”.
We understand design as the perpetual de- and reconstruction of the world, as a way of worldmaking, both physically and conceptually. Thus, design literacy can be understood as a way to perceive traces of design and its processes, to perceive the world as contingent: a circular cognitive process of recognising that something - if not everything - in our cultural pluriverse is designed, understanding how it was designed and that it can potentially become the subject of design again and again. In our paper, we emphasise the contingency of design - and the ethical level that can arise from understanding the possibility of a different design.
Ultimately, our aim with this paper is to emphasise that design literacy is a crucial competence for encouraging pluralistic perspectives and initiating transition processes, as it helps to acknowledge the temporary necessity but long-term non-necessity of things (which particularly includes the transitory nature of one's own creations).
The number of motorcycle taxis has soared in East African cities over the last decades, filling a gap in mobility needs while providing revenue opportunities to drivers. However, poor road safety combined with contribution to carbon emissions and air pollution creates a sustainability conundrum, which has led governments to control or repress the mode, yet without much success. After reviewing the characteristics and regulation of motorcycle taxis in Nairobi, Kigali, and Kampala, this study investigates the existence and impacts of two recent trends: digitalization and electrification. A comprehensive approach is adopted with a systematic review of the literature and policies, completed by field research and key informant interviews. We find out that electrification is mostly associated with positive impacts covering a spectrum of environment, economics, health, and social-related benefits, while the benefits of digitalization are more uncertain or contested. Impacts are however limited for both at the time of study as digitalization is highly volatile and electrification nascent. In conclusion, the paper identifies an interlinkage between the trends via the example of data, and further key research needs.
Since the introduction of Germany's first Thermal Insulation Ordinance in the 1970s in response to the oil crisis, requirements for the energy performance of buildings have consistently increased.
Today, these are ruled by the German Building Energy Act, which is currently being amended. Despite this continuous tightening of regulations, the energy consumption in German housing has hardly decreased. The continuous increase in residential space per person is a significant reason for this.
Sufficiency
(2023)
Environmental justice
(2023)
In view of the accelerating climate crisis, the Russian invasion of Ukraine highlighted the dependency of fossil fuels on the part of Germany and the European Union (EU). With the priority aim to reduce the import dependency from the Russian Federation while providing energy security and staying on track with climate mitigation efforts, the Federal Government was presented with major challenges. Prior to the war, an approximate 34% of the mineral oil, 53.6% of the natural gas, and 50% of hard coal supplies to Germany originated from Russian sources. As of 2023, however, Germany is independent from Russian energy imports. This paper examines implications of the global energy crisis induced by the invasion on the energy sector in Germany. As a basis for achieving this analysis, a short overview of the energy situation in the country before the war and a demonstration of the provisional conditions is presented. This is followed by an analysis of the main consequences of the war and medium and long-term strategies to reach Germany's climate goals while maintaining energy security. Lastly, foreseeable consequences regarding the European and German climate goals are discussed.
The production of green hydrogen in Germany is more competitive than expected compared to imports. This is the key finding of a meta-analysis conducted by the Wuppertal Institute on behalf of the North Rhine-Westphalia Association for Renewable Energies (Landesverband Erneuerbare Energien NRW).
The hydrogen study focuses primarily on the year 2030 and beyond - and confirms the advantages of green hydrogen produced in Germany from domestic renewable energies, especially when the evaluation is viewed from a holistic system perspective.
The ecological challenges of this decade have been clearly identified. The pressure of problems is increasing drastically; progress in climate protection or the preservation of biodiversity is insufficient. Little time is left to act. In consequence, we can only achieve and permanently secure social and environmental prosperity through far-reaching changes in economy and society.
As a socio-technical innovation, digitalisation can realise its full ecological potential above all where it helps to profoundly change today's lifestyles, consumption patterns, and economic practices with a clear commitment to sustainability. As the most urgent design task of the 21st century, it is important to put digitalisation's enormous creative power at the service of the great transformation. The "great transformation" refers to the comprehensive restructuring of technology, the economy, and society in order to deal with the social and ecological challenges of the 21st century. This is a task for state action in terms of both regulatory policy orientation and facilitating collective processes of change - new tasks call for new governance.
A digital-ecological statecraft is the indispensable prerequisite for effective state action to shape the social-ecological digital transformation. Using the example of the platform economy, we explore challenges, starting points, and (policy) measures.
The current, private car-based mobility system is not sustainable: it contributes to climate change, it is unjust from gender- and socio-economic perspectives, endangers health and obstructs urban space. To counteract this, mobility data offers entirely new avenues for planning, organizing, and implementing mobility and transport. This strategy paper considers two possible ways to use mobility data for improving environmental sustainability and equitable access to transportation in Germany.
The objectives of the urban mobility transition have been clearly set out: gaining more space for urban living, reducing noise and emissions that have a negative impact on the climate and improving air quality. That means less traffic in cities and more trips made using environmentally-friendly modes of transport - i.e., walking, cycling or foot scooters or public transport. In transport policy, the focus is generally on innovative approaches to shaping the mobility transition.
This paper aims to explain the concept of exnovation in the context of the urban mobility transition and to underpin it using specific practical examples. In the course of this process, it is intended to identify the obstacles that stand in the way of rolling out the concept on an area-wide basis in order to deduce strategies and courses of action for expanding the concept in the future.
"Sustainable Development" can be understood as a widely used discourse that has become even more prominent since the publication of the UN Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development in 2015. In this paper we analyze the way sustainable development discourse unfolds within the context of development aid in Germany by undertaking a discourse analysis of reports on development policy published 1973-2017 by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. Our analysis reveals that the sustainable development discourse is characterized by distinct components and storylines that change over time. We detect, in general, a shift away from a focus on environmental protection toward an emphasis on the role of the private sector in leading sustainable development. We argue, therefore, that although development is now only legitimate if it is "sustainable", the discourse apparently facilitates the uneven allocation of development aid. The concern that arises here is that although Agenda 2030 pledges to take "bold and transformative steps" to secure the planet and to leave "no one behind" the least developed states who cannot provide "private sector opportunities" or fulfil "national self-responsibilities" for sustainable development are indeed being "left behind".
Strengthening global climate governance and international cooperation for energy‐efficient buildings
(2023)
Buildings constitute one of the main GHG emitting sectors, and energy efficiency is a key lever to reduce emissions in the sector. Global climate policy has so far mostly focused on economy-wide emissions. However, emission reduction actions are ultimately sectoral, and opportunities and barriers to achieving emission reductions vary strongly among sectors. This article therefore seeks to analyse to what extent more targeted global governance may help to leverage mitigation enablers and overcome barriers to energy efficiency in buildings. To this end, the article first synthesises existing literature on mitigation enablers and barriers as well as existing literature on how global governance may help address these barriers ("governance potential"). On this basis, the article analyses to what extent this governance potential has already been activated by existing activities of international institutions. Finally, the article discusses how identified governance gaps could be closed. The analysis finds that despite the local characteristics of the sector, global governance has a number of levers at its disposal that could be used to promote emission reductions via energy efficiency. In practice, however, lacking attention to energy efficiency in buildings at national level is mirrored at the international level. Recently, though, a number of coalitions demanding stronger action have emerged. Such frontrunners could work through like-minded coalitions and at the same time try to improve conditions for cooperation in the climate regime and other existing institutions.
The international architecture competition Solar Decathlon Europe was held in Wuppertal in 2022 and focused on sustainable building and living in the city. The student teams participating in the competition developed buildings that would enable climate-friendly living and be tailored to the "Mirke" district in Wuppertal and the individual needs of the residents in this neighborhood. Not only the neighborhood was the focus of the competition, but also the residents of the Mirke district were involved in the project through a neighborhood panel. As part of the Mirke neighborhood panel, three survey waves were conducted between May 2021 and August 2022. The results and insights gained from the neighborhood panel were incorporated into the project and shared with the architectural teams participating in the competition. In addition, the results were shared and discussed with the urban development department of the city of Wuppertal, local initiatives, and other partners in the neighborhood.
There is a growing body of scientific evidence supporting sufficiency as an inevitable strategy for mitigating climate change. Despite this, sufficiency plays a minor role in existing climate and energy policies. Following previous work on the National Energy and Climate Plans of EU countries, we conduct a similar content analysis of the recommendations made by citizen assemblies on climate change mitigation in ten European countries and the EU, and compare the results of these studies. Citizen assemblies are representative mini-publics and enjoy a high level of legitimacy.
We identify a total of 860 mitigation policy recommendations in the citizen assemblies' documents, of which 332 (39 %) include sufficiency. Most of the sufficiency policies relate to the mobility sector, the least relate to the buildings sector. Regulatory instruments are the most often proposed means for achieving sufficiency, followed by fiscal and economic instruments. The average approval rate of sufficiency policies is high (93 %), with the highest rates for regulatory policies.
Compared to National Energy and Climate Plans, the citizen assembly recommendations include a significantly higher share of sufficiency policies (factor three to six) with a stronger focus on regulatory policies. Consequently, the recommendations can be interpreted as a call for a sufficiency turn and a regulatory turn in climate mitigation politics. These results suggest that the observed lack of sufficiency in climate policy making is not due to a lack of legitimacy, but rather reflects a reluctance to implement sufficiency policies, the constitution of the policy making process and competing interests.
The 2015 Paris Agreement relies on Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to outline each country's policies and plans for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. To strengthen global climate action and achieve the Agreement's temperature goal, it is crucial to enhance the ambition level of NDCs every 5 years. While previous studies have explored the ambition of initial NDCs, limited research has delved into the factors driving the enhancement or lack thereof in NDCs' emission reduction plans. This study employs a mixed-method design to investigate the determinants of NDC enhancement. First, we analyse the updated or revised NDCs of 111 countries using quantitative methods. Second, we conduct qualitative case studies focusing on Brazil and South Africa. Our findings reveal that countries that engaged in stakeholder consultations with civil society, business, and labour groups prior to developing their updated or revised NDCs were more likely to enhance their greenhouse gas reduction targets. These results are further supported by the case studies. South Africa conducted comprehensive consultations and submitted an enhanced GHG target, while Brazil, which did not arrange open consultations, did not improve its target. This study underscores the significance of comprehensive and transparent stakeholder engagement processes, highlighting their potential to drive enhanced NDCs. By involving diverse stakeholders, including civil society, business, and labour groups, countries can foster greater ambition and effectiveness in their climate action, ultimately contributing to the global effort to combat climate change.
To combat climate change, it is anticipated that in the coming years countries around the world will adopt more stringent policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase the use of clean energy sources. These policies will also affect the industry sector, which means that industrial production is likely to progressively shift from CO2-emitting fossil fuel sources to renewable energy sources. As a result, a region's renewable energy resources could become an increasingly important factor in determining where energy-intensive industries locate their production. We refer to this pull factor as the "renewables pull" effect. Renewables pull could lead to the relocation of some industrial production as a consequence of regional differences in the marginal cost of renewable energy sources. In this paper, we introduce the concept of renewables pull and explain why its importance is likely to increase in the future. Using the examples of direct reduced iron (DRI) and ammonia production, we find that the future costs of climate-neutral production of certain products is likely to vary considerably between regions with different renewable energy resources. However, we also identify the fact that many other factors in addition to energy costs determine the decisions that companies make in term of location, leaving room for further research to better understand the future relevance of renewables pull.
Analyzing previous international and national policy processes, the study offers recommendations for leveraging the Global Stocktake's (GST) outcomes for national climate action, especially for Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). It emphasizes the need for coordinated efforts to ensure the results of the GST influence national political discourse. It proposes communication strategies tailored to the different stages of the NDC policy process and diverse target audiences. The paper advocates for a nuanced and strategic approach to communication and emphasizes the importance of legitimacy and complexity in engaging stakeholders at different levels of decision-making.
Most air-conditioned buildings in India operate as Mixed-Mode Buildings (MMBs), either fully air-conditioned or with natural ventilation depending on the weather. Energy consumption for space cooling is a vital end-use service in buildings. Air-conditioning is expected to increase significantly due to high growth estimates in building construction, sales of Room Air-Conditioners (RACs), and real income growth. Therefore, this thesis examines the most influential design and control parameters that influence the potential of MMBs in India in relation to their thermal and energy performance. The primary features of MMBs analysed in the research project are as follows: shutting windows at night makes night ventilation redundant; natural ventilation through ceiling fans and windows is utilised to maintain optimal thermal conditions in naturally-ventilated mode and RACs are employed in air-conditioned mode. This thesis poses three research questions and aims to answer them. Firstly, what are the research gaps in assessing thermal and energy performance in mixed-mode buildings in India? Secondly, what is their potential concerning key operating conditions, and which parameters affect this potential? Lastly, how can these influential parameters be optimised? To answer these questions, three research methods were employed: 1) literature review; 2) large-scale simulation of building energy performance combined with uncertainty and sensitivity analysis; and 3) field studies of user behaviour with regards to RACs and the impact of ceiling fans and RACs on indoor conditions and energy consumption. The study identifies the cooling set point temperature as the most influential control parameter. In general, input parameters related to building design, shape and geometry were considered more important than those related to construction parameters. Furthermore, the study highlights that a set point temperature of 28 or 30°C is sufficient to maintain indoor comfort according to the Indian Model for Adaptive Comfort (IMAC) for residential buildings. If a specific airflow is required, it would use the least energy to run the ceiling fan at a low speed, usually set at 1.
Case study on the German discourse of industry decarbonisation : a discourse network analysis
(2023)
The adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015 and the passing of the Climate Action Law in Germany in 2019 established the legal need for the basic material industry in Germany to decarbonise. For the industry sector, the target is sets at a 49-51% GHG reduction by 2030 compared to 1990. Even though the sector specific targets are likely to become obsolete, a Hydrogen Strategy, Industry Strategy and Climate Protection Contracts are currently being developed or elaborated on. These are to further ensure and enable the basic material industry in Germany to decarbonise. These developments are emphasising the relevance of studying the industry decarbonisation at the time of conducting this research.
As the institutionalisation of the industry decarbonisation is influenced by discourse, the analysis of the discourse is an important tool for studying the power effects produced by and built into the discourse. This is the first research aiming to provide a structured analysis of the discourse on industry decarbonisation in Germany. Drawing on discourse analysis and the Multilevel-Perspectives framework, this research investigated the power and dominance of storylines to influence the discourse of the industry transformation towards decarbonisation. In this research insights were obtained into the storylines used in this discourse, the actors who are part of this discourse, the frequency of storylines used and the percentage of actors making use of these storylines. Additionally, insights were generated into the discursive network and potential coalitions.
This research made use of the Discourse Network Analysis software in combination with Visone and Excel for data collection, analysis, and visualisation. Based on 117 documents of various categories from the years 2012 to 2023, the discourse on German industry decarbonisation is discovered to be dominated by storylines of mainly technological or economic nature. The general sentiment discovered by the different actors is positive with the storylines focusing on establishing the conditions for the industry to decarbonise and no resistance being communicated. The discourse is furthermore dominated by most storylines. 18 out of 27 storylines are being used by more than 56% of all actors. The high overlap in storyline indicates discursive homogeneity. The homogeneity is further indicated through the lack of emerging discourse coalitions and the therewith connected lack of struggles for discursive dominance. One coalition can be defined with some actors being deeper involved and some being less involved in the discourse.
As decisions on the transition path for Germany's industry to decarbonise are still to be taken the lack of discursive struggles has come to my surprise. In the discussion I reflect on how the positive sentiment, the discursive homogeneity and the great number of dominant storylines may come about.
As investors and financial intermediaries, private banks are increasingly confronted with climate change concerns. But to what extent do banks identify as the changemakers driving climate alignment forward? To advance this question, this paper analyzes the South African banking sector with a specific focus on Standard Bank and Nedbank as exemplary case studies. Relying on the concept of "climate mainstreaming", we critically assess the banks' annual reports and compare their self-portrayal with publicly available sources on the bank's business practices, chiefly provided by non-governmental organizations and media. We find that Nedbank pushes a holistic narrative of climate change as an inevitable business opportunity. Standard Bank, in turn, relies on a "narrative of balance" between climate change and other profit-oriented investments to safeguard its stakes in the fossil industry. In so doing, this paper sheds light on greenwashing practices within disclosure specifically and the lack of binding corporate regulation more generally.
Power-law city-size distributions are a statistical regularity researched in many countries and urban systems. In this history of science treatise we reconsider Felix Auerbach’s paper published in 1913. We reviewed his analysis and found (i) that a constant absolute concentration, as introduced by him, is equivalent to a power-law distribution with exponent ≈1, (ii) that Auerbach describes this equivalence, and (iii) that Auerbach also pioneered the empirical analysis of city-size distributions across countries, regions, and time periods. We further investigate his legacy as reflected in citations and find that important follow-up work, e.g. by Lotka (Elements of physical biology. Williams & Wilkins Company, Baltimore, 1925) and Zipf (Human behavior and the principle of least effort: an introduction to human ecology, Martino Publishing, Manfield Centre, CT (2012), 1949), does give proper reference to his discovery - but others do not. For example, only approximately 20% of city-related works citing Zipf (1949) also cite Auerbach (Petermanns Geogr Mitteilungen 59(74):74–76, 1913). To our best knowledge, Lotka (1925) was the first to describe the power-law rank-size rule as it is analyzed today. Saibante (Metron Rivista Internazionale di Statistica 7(2):53–99, 1928), building on Auerbach and Lotka, investigated the power-law rank-size rule across countries, regions, and time periods. Zipf's achievement was to embed these findings in his monumental 1949 book. We suggest that the use of “Auerbach–Lotka–Zipf law” (or "ALZ-law") is more appropriate than "Zipf's law for cities", which also avoids confusion with Zipf’s law for word frequency. We end the treatise with biographical notes on Auerbach.
This Wuppertal Paper analyses the energy transition models of Colombia and Germany. The emphasis of the exercise is on an analysis of options for the complete decarbonization of the energy system in Colombia as a Global South country. To this end, it analyses the current situation, projections, public policy and narratives, and contrasts it with Germany as one of the countries of the Global North with which Colombia has historically maintained energy trade relations and is currently collaborating in the exploration of energy alternatives for decarbonization.
Detailed analysis of sectoral energy consumption in Colombia shows the sectors with the highest fossil energy consumption (in this order): transport (fuels), industry (gas, coal), electricity generation (gas, coal) and residential (gas). We show the projected increase in demand for fuels and electricity, and calculate the amount of electricity theoretically needed to substitute fossil sources in each sector. We estimate the total electricity required for decarbonization via sector coupling and derive a first estimation of the range of additional renewable energy capacities needed to supply this demand. We find that required capacities are expectedly large (56-110 GW), depending on decarbonization pathways, and that export capacity beyond national demand may be limited.
Our analysis of the policy and scenario arena in both countries finds that Colombia is still lacking both sector-specific decarbonization strategies and an embedding in a systemic vision of a systemic energy transition. Germany has more advanced sector strategies and (national) systemic visions, but lacks embedding assumptions on energy imports in a global-system analysis, i.e. in the analysis of an energy transition in potential exporting countries like Colombia. We formulate requirements to close these gaps in our conclusions.
Better integration of climate action and sustainable development can help enhance the ambition of the next nationally determined contributions, as well as implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Governments should use this year as an opportunity to emphasize the links between climate and sustainable development.
Studies show that people can tolerate elevated temperatures in the presence of appreciable air movement (e.g., from using ceiling fans). This minimises the use of air-conditioners and extends their set-point temperature (Tset), resulting in energy savings in space cooling. However, there is little empirical evidence on the energy savings from using ceiling fans with Room Air-Conditioners (RACs). To address this gap, we analysed the energy performance of RACs with both fixed-speed compressors and inverter technology at different set-point temperatures and ceiling fan speed settings in 15 residential Mixed-Mode Buildings (MMBs) in India. Thermal comfort conditions (as predicted by the Indian Model for Adaptive Comfort-Residential (IMAC-R)) with minimum energy consumption were maintained at a set-point temperature (𝑇set) of 28 and 30 C and a fan speed setting of one. Compared with a Tset of 24 °C, a 𝑇set of 28 and 30 °C resulted in energy savings of 44 and 67%, respectively. With the use of RACs, a configuration with a minimum fan speed was satisfactory for an optimal use of energy and for maintaining the conditions of thermal comfort. In addition, RACs with inverter technology used 34-68% less energy than fixed-speed compressors. With the rising use of RACs, particularly in tropical regions, the study's outcomes offer a significant potential for reducing space-cooling energy consumption and the resultant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Rising energy costs have led to increased discussion about the social impact of the energy transition in Germany in recent years. In 2021, a gradually increasing CO2 tax was introduced. This paper analyzes the question of whether a CO2 tax can be socially just. Using data analysis and desk research, correlations between income and energy consumption in Germany are shown. In a short analysis, it is investigated which additional burdens different types of private households have to expect in the coming years due to the introduction of CO2 pricing on energy. In particular, the introduction of a per capita flat rate fed by CO2 tax revenues could be a suitable way to reduce the burden on low-income households.
At the next United Nations (UN) climate conference in the United Arab Emirates at the end of 2023, the first Global Stocktake (GST) of the Paris Agreement is due to conclude. The main goal of this process is to feed into a new round of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) by Parties to the Agreement for 2035. In addition, the GST is aimed at identifying opportunities for strengthening international cooperation to achieve the Paris goals. The GST represents the first opportunity for Parties and other stakeholders to collectively highlight opportunities for international climate cooperation. Specifically, outcomes should plant the seeds for the development of concrete sectoral decarbonization roadmaps that could guide international cooperation in years to come.
In recent years, the public discourse on the phase-out of carbon-intensive technologies and practices has come to a near consensus that a "just transition" is required. Yet, this term seems to have as many meanings as there are stakeholders using it. The purpose of this paper is to unpack the different meanings that regional stakeholders assign to it and the underlying dimensions of in(justice) that they invoke in their political communication.
To this end, we employ a policy narrative analysis to study and compare the political discourse in four European coal and carbon-intensive mining regions: Ida-Virumaa (Estonia, oil shale), the Rhenish mining region (Germany, lignite), Upper Silesia (Poland, hard coal) and Western Macedonia (Greece, lignite). Specifically, we address the following research questions: Which narratives are characterising the political discourse around just transition? Which (in)justices are being invoked? Which patterns, similarities or differences are recognizable between regions?
We found that hopeful narratives describing structural change as an opportunity to reinvent the region are prevalent in all regions. Strong narratives of resistance only prevail in Upper Silesia and Ida-Virumaa where a phase-out decision has not yet been adopted. In terms of injustices, we find surprisingly little evidence that injustices related to the immediate effects of the transformation (e.g. lay-offs and compensation for workers and companies) play an important role. Instead, the aspects related to the historical injustices produced by the legacy industrial system prevail. And perhaps most importantly, questions about access and allocation of the opportunities of the imminent transition are key and should be addressed more explicitly.
Biodiversity is under threat all over the planet. Implementing sustainable out-of-home catering (OHC) is a key way to reduce the environmental impact of the agri-food sector. Thus far, there have been no studies that show the impact of food on biodiversity at the menu level in Germany. This means that neither commercial kitchens nor their patrons can record the biodiversity impact of the menus or dishes served there. This article describes the development of an assessment framework and some initial findings. The framework was developed on the basis of a systematic literature review and expert interviews. Taking this as a starting point, an indicator-based approach was developed with a focus on land use. The approach was then validated by assessing recipes used at OHC facilities. The results show that using the BiTe Biodiversity Index (BBI) that was developed, it is possible to assess the biodiversity impacts of meals and optimize them at the level of the dish. The article outlines the possible areas for improvement. Overall, it is clear that this approach can already be used in the OHC context today.
How do recent changes in consumption in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic affect the avoidance of packaging waste? How can an increase in packaging waste be countered and the previous trend towards unpackaged and reusable solutions be revived and promoted?
To tackle these questions, we use a systemic approach that regards packaging as a network of interrelated interests of industry (manufacturing and logistics), trade (retail and catering), consumers and the waste management sector. To analyse this network, we applied three methods. First, we analysed secondary sources such as surveys. Second, we conducted semi-structured interviews with seven actors from industry, consumer education and waste management in May and June 2020. Third, we used the questions from the interview guideline to do an online survey among representatives of the public waste management industry.
Cities around the globe are implementing innovative transport solutions as part of measures to address pertinent socio-economic and environmental challenges in urban areas and help drive the transition to low carbon development. Planning and implementing such solutions require an effective and collective approach that includes the needs and aspirations of all relevant stakeholders. In the planning and implementation of urban transport projects, capacity building components have assumed great significance but seem to be the most eluded activity for project implementers. The Living Lab concept, which allows for co-creation in innovation development, presents the opportunity to adopt innovative participatory approach in capacity building activities in transport projects; and is largely seen as a potential catalyst for rapid transformation to low carbon and sustainability transitions in cities. To this end, this paper highlights the usefulness of the Living Lab approach and provides some perspectives on how key elements of the approach are adapted in the process of assessing the capacity needs of nine (9) cities in planning and implementing e-mobility innovations. The cities are participating in an innovation research project. In the case studied, the project’s capacity needs assessment process was analyzed using an assessment framework built on four (4) key elements of the Living Lab approach, namely: extent of real-life contextualization, level of participation, diversity of stakeholders, and the time span of engagement. Insights from the assessment suggest that relevant project partners and city representatives with diverse expertise were actively involved from the onset and throughout the first 5 months of the project in defining and refining the capacity needs of partner cities based on local e-mobility conditions. This co-creative process helped determine priority areas where the need for capacity building mostly lied. Designing and operationalizing capacity building interventions tailored to the identified needs, as realized in the project, could therefore help build the necessary capacity and complement other measures aimed at developing e-mobility in the project’s partner cities.
The idea for the Green Recovery Tracker was born in spring 2020 when governments started making announcements on economic Corona recovery measures. From a climate and resilience perspective it is key that those recovery packages, investments and subsidies are in line with long-term climate and sustainability targets. Thus, recovery packages should not only boost the economy in the short-term, but also strike the path to a just transition towards climate neutrality.
Against this background, Wuppertal Institute and E3G have launched the Green Recovery Tracker project in late summer 2020 to shed light on the following questions: What can be considered an effective green recovery? What are good examples, which can be used as an inspiration for recovery programs aiming to support sustainable development? Where do the individual Member States stand with respect to aligning their recovery activities with the climate policy agenda?
In this report, you will find our Methodology as well our Policy Briefing highlighting our key takeaways of our country and sectoral analyses. It further includes a section on "What can we learn from our experience with the Green Recovery Tracker?". The briefing concludes with a "Guidance for future funding programs and achieving climate targets overall".
The sales of pedelecs are currently skyrocketing in Germany and in many other places. As a low-carbon means of mobility, pedelecs have the potential to make a substantial contribution to the mobility transition.
This thesis employs practice theory as proposed by Shove et al. (2012) to investigate this quickly evolving phenomenon. The analysis is based on interviews with e-bike commuters which were investigated using template analysis and exploratory memos. To obtain a broad picture the practice, a maximum variance sampling strategy was carried out in two cities that vary substantially with regard to velomobility: Wuppertal and Münster.
This thesis one hand presents the first encompassing account on the practice elements which commuting by pedelec is composed of. It hence contributes to the debate about the depiction of practices. Furthermore, the thesis finds that pedelec commuting should be conceptualized as a variant of velomobility and not as a variant of motoring or as an independent practice. Yet, the elements integrated in pedelec-commuting are found to clearly differ from those of cycling, so that pedelec-commuting meets the requirements of everyday life much better than commuting on non-electrified bikes.
The findings of this thesis suggest several pathways to strengthening this novel practice. The capacity of e-biking to serve mundane trips can for example be supported through the normalization of the use of weather- and transport relevant materials and competences. Deeper linkages with interacting practices from other sectors, such as an integration of cycling materials (GPS-trackers) into policing practices, can also con-tribute to this goal.
With regard to research, the present work offers starting points for quantifications, for example on the relative importance of single elements as well as on the characteristics of their relations among each other or with regard to typical constellations of elements.
The impending climate catastrophe gives rise to an increased environmental awareness among many designers, who direct their work towards the paradigm of sustainability. While designing with an "ecological lens" is necessarily oriented towards the future, we highlight the past as an inspiring realm to explore. Rather than recycling materials, we encourage the recycling of ideas as a combination of historiographic and speculative design methods.
We will present a framework that extends the idea of design as a "projecting" activity into the idea of design as a constant negotiation process about the relevance and appropriateness of current and past technologies. Design revolves not just about what will be, but to a large extent about what should remain and what should recur, or as Jan Michl put it: "seeing design as redesign" (Michl 2002). We will illustrate the thought of designing futures with pasts by means of a research project that aims at developing a refrigerator for circular economy. The refrigerator - as the currently dominant technology to preserve food - will serve as a starting point to show how artefacts and architecture as well as human skills and knowledge in the preparation and preservation of food are historically interlinked. The history of food preservation unfolds not only along the evolution of the refrigerator, but encompasses household techniques like smoking, curing and fermenting, as well as long-forgotten architectural "answers" such as deep-freeze community buildings. We will revisit three historical examples of food preservation and present the method ‘throwing’ past ideas into the future.
Three main arguments are presented in this richly illustrated paper: First, that historiography is a form of designing, second, that designing is constituted and influenced by path dependencies (cf. David 1985) that are deeply rooted in the past and third, that the past is a valuable source of inspiration when designing for sustainable development. Looking at history becomes a way of "mental window shopping" (Simon 1985, 188) for approaches that are to be reactivated and transformed.
In his essay, the author presents a stock-taking of the debate on Green Deals. The starting point of this personal assessment is a brief outline of the content and impact of a study in which the author and colleagues published a first outline of a "Green New Deal for Europe" as a political response to the 2008 financial crisis. 2008 had been a critical juncture for mainstream economics: however, from the perspective of policy-learning, the period after has been a lost decade. The European Green Deal as presented by the European Commission in 2019 can be perceived as a historic milestone and confirmation of a regime change in mainstream economic policy in which ecological considerations gain in importance. Yet, the Deal suffers from major deficits. In sum, the European Green Deal could be interpreted as an insufficient attempt to take advantage of the rapidly closing windows of opportunity for a peaceful transition towards sustainability. On the eve of a planetary crisis, the governance of economic transitions towards sustainability needs to be improved and accelerated. Reflecting on the 2009 study A Green New Deal for Europe, this essay attempts to draw a few lessons and frugal heuristics for the policy-design of Green Deals.
At the end of March 2022, the European Commission published its new EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles. Its ambitious vision is to reduce textile waste, promote circular measures and minimise the negative environmental impacts of the textile industry. But what would a textile industry that keeps textiles in a closed loop look like, and what political conditions would be required in Germany? This Zukunftsimpuls paper by the Wuppertal Institute points to the role that Germany could play in the transformation towards a circular textile industry.
Enhancing evaluations of future energy-related product policies with the digital product passport
(2022)
The circle is a ubiquitous metaphor in the current scientific and political debate on possible strategies for coping with the changes brought by the so-called "Anthropocene". Terms such as "recycling", "upcycling", "downcycling", "life cycle" or "circular economy" all refer to the same geometric shape, which in turn can be found in numerous diagrams illustrating the respective design approaches and political strategies. But how does the circle shape the way we think and act as designers? Is it an appropriate metaphor to guide us to feasible actions, or is its degree of simplification too far removed from reality? In this article we look at the circular economy as a designed model, and question the circle as a communication tool for the cultural project of sustainability. As the circle may carry the risk of an oversimplified, unattainable, even disillusioning ideal, we discuss various alternative images and forms for their potential to become metaphors of alternative models. The hole, the plate, the pasture, the wheel, the mill wheel, the hamster wheel, the vortex, the double helix, the spider web and the rhizome - as metaphors, they each open up different perspectives and approaches to reality, they each construct different relationships and dependencies between nature and culture. The aim of this article is less about postulating the end of the circle as a metaphor in the sustainability debate, as it is about to fathom the circle's ends as a metaphorical tool. In other words, when does the metaphor of the circle become too abstract? As designers we can say that falling in love with a form right at the beginning of a design process can be rather limiting, as hardly any alternatives will be considered, and all further decisions are subordinated to achieving the desired shape. Therefore, we would like to emphasise the contingency of the circular economy as a model. We would like to welcome the thought that the circle has an "end".
The food system faces a multitude of challenges, including high greenhouse gas emissions, threats to biodiversity, increased diet-related diseases due to unbalanced diets, and socially problematic complex supply chains. This requires not only a transformation of the agricultural economy but also a change in the diet and lifestyles of all consumers. Developing and using digital and technological innovations can help to solve these challenges. In this context, the study provides impulses on how digitalisation can contribute to transforming production and consumption and which prerequisites have to be given to achieve this.
The study describes the approaches for digitalisation along the value chain. These include optimising the use of resources in agriculture - for example with the help of smart farming - and supporting consumers with digital tools and assistance systems - such as apps designed to support grocery shopping. In addition, new business models and a better connection between production and consumption processes are also possible. This includes, for example, new digital sales channels or tracking and communicating sustainability indicators such as CO2 emissions across all steps of the value chain in order to enable all stakeholders to take reliable action.
Offsetting enables countries and companies to meet part of their climate change mitigation obligations by using mitigation outcomes generated elsewhere - in lieu of own emission reductions. This report explores the future role of offset approaches and how they could be successfully integrated into a post-2020 climate regime by focusing both the supply and demand side. For this purpose, the report develops a conceptual approach that derives a normative vision of what should be considered a successful offset use in a top-down manner to then link this vision to specific factors on the ground in sectors and jurisdictions where offsets will be generated and used. It explores how these factors influence the successful operationalisation of the offset approach and how they can inform its design. In addition, the report also explores six conceptual design aspects to providing recommendations on how to take these factors into account during the design of the offset approach. Based on these findings, the authors derive overarching policy recommendations on the integration of offsets into carbon pricing schemes.
This report develops an evaluation framework that policymakers can use to identify whether offsets can add value and uphold environmental integrity of a compliance scheme. It uses a scoring framework on factors to: (1) identify which sectors have hard-to-abate emissions that can justify demanding offsets as cost-containment measures for ambitious climate policies; and (2) identify mitigation activities that are otherwise inaccessible, fosters sustainable development, and the extent to which it enables transformative sectoral action to be eligible to supply offsets. This evaluation framework identifies the optimal conditions that make factors successful in either having sectors demand offsets, or specific mitigation activities supply offsets. Sectoral emissions that are hard-to-abate are those that are technically unavoidable due to a lack and maturity of technologies, and therefore should be allowed to have cost-containment measures - such as offsets - to avoid adverse economic ramifications such as carbon leakage. Mitigation activities that can supply offsets are those that are currently inaccessible to local actor’s due to lack of access to technology, finance or capabilities. Allowing these mitigation activities to be eligible to supply offsets allows to pilot such activities and realize mitigation outcomes outside the original scope of the compliance scheme. This report has chosen selected sectors and mitigation activities to illustrate how this framework can be applied at the global level. It recognizes that country-specific factors can change the assessment of whether the offset approach will add value and uphold environmental integrity to proposed compliance schemes of a country. The report further proposes practical steps policymakers can do to undertake an evaluation at the national level.
More and more cities are setting themselves ambitious climate protection targets, including CO2 neutrality. Schools are important institutions of cities and therefore they have to play a central role in achieving this goal.
With the investment backlog building up and pressure from the Friday for Future movement increasing, the Wuppertal Institute and Büro Ö-quadrat have initiated the project Schools4Future, aiming to support secondary schools to become climate-neutral. In cooperation with secondary school students and teachers, the project team evaluated the existing situation of the participating schools and developed GHG-balances and feasible climate protection concepts. For this purpose, an Excel-based carbon footprint (CF) assessment tool for schools has been developed which is freely available. The tool covers all important emission areas, including heating energy, electricity use, travel to and from schools, school trips, the school canteen and paper consumption. The students were found capable to conduct the CF assessment with the guidance of the teacher, information materials and support of the researchers. So far, six pilot schools have completed their CF assessment with emissions ranging between 335 and 944 kg CO2 per person.
In this paper we present the tool and compare the CF assessment of some schools. We further elaborate on how the tool and project has increased the climate awareness and self-efficacy of students and even stimulated measures by the school board.
A clear understanding of socio-technical interdependencies and a structured vision are prerequisites for fostering and steering a transition to a fully renewables-based energy system. To facilitate such understanding, a phase model for the renewable energy (RE) transition in MENA countries has been developed and applied to the country case of Yemen. It is designed to support the strategy development and governance of the energy transition and to serve as a guide for decision makers.
The transition towards REs is still at a quite early stage in Yemen. The military conflict has prevented the implementation of most of the planned large-scale renewable projects. The political instability, the high dependence on fossil fuels, and poor administrative performance are the most pressing concerns for Yemen's electricity sector. At an operational level, Yemen requires a total retrofit of the electricity infrastructure and needs to expand its overall capacity while improving its efficiencies.
Despite these challenges, rebuilding the energy system after the political turmoil and the subsequent violent conflicts could offer Yemen the capability to transition towards renewables. This will provide short-term and long-term opportunities and avoid stranded investments in fossil-fuel capacities.
The priority is to improve the framework conditions for RE in Yemen, starting with the development of a long-term strategy up to 2030 and beyond. Also, an appropriate and transparent legislation must be created. Furthermore, based on the legislation, clear regulations for REs must be introduced, and a realistic timeframe for expansion must be established in order to promote acceptance and market development on a large scale.
The results of the analysis along the transition phase model towards 100% RE are intended to stimulate and support the discussion on Yemen's future energy system by providing an over-arching guiding vision for the energy transition and the development of appropriate policies.
A clear understanding of socio-technical interdependencies and a structured vision are prerequisites for fostering and steering a transition to a fully renewables-based energy system. To facilitate such understanding, a phase model for the renewable energy (RE) transition in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries has been developed and applied to ten countries: Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Tunisia, and Yemen. This report synthesises the results of these ten studies.
The analysis shows that the state of the energy sector in the MENA region varies from country to country, but some underlying trends are present in all countries. In the majority of countries, energy prices are subsidised, and energy markets are mostly not liberalised. The energy demand in all analysed countries is growing and most grid systems are poorly interconnected across borders. Still, the expansion of RE in the MENA region can benefit from significant global progress and cost reductions in RE technologies.
Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is not the only key driver for energy transition. In fact, the main motives for transition are that RE can help to meet growing demand, reduce dependence on imports, increase energy security, and provide opportunities for economic development.
All countries studied have RE targets. While some countries are on track to meet these targets, others need to increase their efforts to expand renewable electricity generation in order to meet their goals. Strong progress has been made in countries with limited fossil energy resources, while in some countries that produce and export large amounts of fossil energy resources, the energy transition is progressing rather slowly.
Energy Efficiency First (EEF) is an established principle for European Union (EU) energy policy design. It highlights the exploitation of demand-side resources and prioritizes cost-effective options from the demand-side over other options from a societal cost-benefit perspective. However, the involvement of multiple decision-makers makes it difficult to implement. Therefore, we propose a flexible decision-tree framework for applying the EEF principle based on a review of relevant areas and examples. In summary, this paper contributes to applying the EEF principle by defining and distinguishing different types of cases - (1) policy-making, and (2) system planning and investment - identifying the most common elements, and proposing a decision-tree framework that can be flexibly constructed based on the elements for different cases. Finally, we exemplify the application of this framework with two example cases: (1) planning for demand-response in the power sector, and (2) planning for a district heating system.
This thesis conceptualizes the school as a socio-technical system, in which change towards sustainable development and a transition towards more climate awareness are necessary. The multi-level perspective (MLP) framework is applied to the German school system and to climate protection projects (CPPs) as examples of niche activities integrating climate protection (CP) in the school. The thesis utilizes the analytical levels of the MLP (landscape, regime, and niche) and the concept of regulative, cognitive, and normative rules and addresses the question: How do actors in CPPs perceive drivers and barriers for transitioning towards more climate awareness in the German school system? The data were collected through expert interviews and analyzed by conducting a qualitative content analysis.
The results show that the German school system is characterized by an inherent rigidity, deep-set normative role dynamics, and an unappreciated role of schools in society. They also highlight the importance of public pressure, strategic CP orientation, and hands-on approaches. CPPs can be a driving force for this in individual schools, but, overall, CP needs to be addressed more systematically in the school and more substantial efforts and reforms are necessary. Highly motivated niche actors play an important role and represent key drivers for such developments.
This thesis reveals the complex and systemic nature of the challenges the German school system is faced with. It highlights the difficulties of integrating CP and the importance of substantial and transformative political action. The thesis demonstrates the crucial need to recognize the significance of schools and their actors for society and to integrate new methods and approaches into the school. This thesis also contributes to the body of literature on socio-technical systems and sustainability transitions. It offers an operationalization of the MLP and reveals strengths and limits as well as future research outlooks.
This paper discusses options to increase mitigation ambition in crediting mechanisms that serve the Paris Agreement (PA), such as the Article 6.4 mechanism. Under the Clean Development Mechanism and other crediting mechanisms, baselines have been specified in the form of greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity factors and linked to business-as-usual developments. This means that with increasing production of goods and services through carbon market activities, absolute emissions may increase or fall only slowly. At a global level, such an approach widens the "emissions gap". To enable continued use of emissions intensity baselines in crediting mechanisms while being in line with the PA’s goal to pursue efforts to limit temperature rise to 1.5˚C, we propose to apply an "ambition coefficient" to emissions intensities of technologies when establishing the baseline. This coefficient would decrease to reflect increasing ambition over time, and reach zero when a country needs to reach net zero emissions. Due to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, the coefficient would fall more quickly for developed than for developing countries. The latter would be able to generate emission reduction credits well beyond 2050, while for the former, crediting would stop around 2035 or before. An ambition coefficient approach would generate certainty for carbon market investors and preserve trust in international carbon markets that operate in line with the agreed, long-term ambition of the international climate regime.
A large number and variety of activities are being undertaken to introduce Digital Product Passports (DPPs). However, only a few DPPs have made it into practice so far, so there is some uncertainty about which impact DPPs will actually have. With this paper, we aim to provide a structured overview of the current development of DPPs. We provide insights of 76 current corporate, policy, and research activities that exist and their objectives. To allow for a structured assessment and discussion of the diverse approaches we defined 13 criteria for a comparable description, categorization and evaluation. We expect that this overview will not only encourage feedback and contributions from the DPP community, as well as valuable discussions with and among experts. It is also intended to help promote and facilitate the adoption of DPPs for the Circular Economy by facilitating collaborations and suggestions for ongoing activities.
What is necessary to reach net zero emissions in the transport sector on a global level? To keep limiting global warming to 1.5° C within reach, the world has to decarbonise by mid-century, with every sector contributing as much as possible as soon as possible. This paper identifies what has to be done in road transport, aviation, and shipping to achieve net zero emission in the transport sector.
For this purpose, it first sets the scene by providing an overview of the origins and impacts of the concept of net zero emissions in international climate policy as well as of the current state and future prospects of global transport emissions using currently available scenarios for low-emission and net zero transport.
While for staying below 1.5° C, the basic approach to reducing transport emissions remains unchanged from what has been suggested in the past, the set, intensity and pace of actions as to shift fundamentally. Without first drastically reducing traffic volume and shifting transport demand to low-emission modes, reaching net zero transport will not be feasible: the amount of additional electricity required to fully electrify the sector with renewable energy is otherwise just too huge.
After portraying key instruments for achieving net zero emissions in land transport, aviation, and shipping, this paper identifies key barriers for net zero transport. Based on this analysis, the authors recommend the following to be able to move transport to net zero:
1. Adapt Decarbonisation Strategies to Different Transport Sub-sectors
2. Prioritise and Significantly Increase Investment in Zero-/low-carbon Infrastructure
3. Massively Invest in the Development and Roll out of Zero-/low-emission Technologies
4. Focus on a Just Transition to Overcome Social and Political Barriers
5. Increase International Support and Cooperation
Community-based approaches to natural resource management are being discussed and experienced as promising ways for pursuing ecological conservation and socio-economic development simultaneously. However, the multiplicity of levels, scales, objectives and actors that are involved in sustainability transformations tends to be challenging for such bottom-up approaches. Collaborative and polycentric governance schemes are proposed for dealing with those challenges. What has not been fully explored is how knowledge from local contexts of community-based initiatives can be diffused to influence practices on higher levels and/or in other local contexts. This study explores how theoretical advances in the diffusion of grassroots innovation can contribute to understanding and supporting the diffusion of knowledge and practices from community-based initiatives and proposes a transdisciplinary approach to diffusion. For that aim, we develop an analytical perspective on the diffusion of grassroots innovations that takes into consideration the multiplicity of actors, levels and scales, the different qualities/types of knowledge and practices, as well as their respective contributions. We focus on the multiplicity and situatedness of cognitive frames and conceptualize the diffusion of grassroots innovations as a transdisciplinary process. In this way three different diffusion pathways are derived in which the knowledge and practices of grassroots initiatives can be processed in order to promote their (re)interpretation and (re)application in situations and by actors that do not share the cognitive frame and the local context of the originating grassroots initiative. The application of the developed approach is illustrated through transdisciplinary research for the diffusion of sustainable family farming innovations in Colombia. This conceptualization accounts for the emergence of multiplicity as an outcome of diffusion by emphasizing difference as a core resource in building sustainable futures.
Transponder-based Aircraft Detection Lighting Systems (ADLS) are increasingly used in wind turbines to limit beacon operation times, reduce light emissions, and increase wind energy acceptance. The systems use digital technologies such as receivers of digital transponder signals, LTE/5G, and other information and communication technology. The use of ADLS will be mandatory in Germany both for new and existing wind turbines with a height of >100 m from 2023 (onshore) and 2024 (offshore), so a nationwide rollout is expected to start during 2022. To fully realize the benefits while avoiding risks and bottlenecks, a thorough and holistic understanding of the efforts required and the impacts caused along the life cycle of an ADLS is essential. Therefore, this study presents the first multi-aspect holistic evaluation of an ADLS. A framework for evaluating digital applications in the energy sector, previously developed by the authors, is refined and applied. The framework is based on multi-criteria analysis (MCA), life cycle assessment (LCA), and expert interviews. On an aggregated level, the MCA results show an overall positive impact from all stakeholders’ perspectives. Most positive impacts are found in the society and politics category, while most negative impacts are of technical nature. The LCA of the ADLS reveals a slightly negative impact, but this impact is negligible when compared to the total life cycle impact of the wind turbines of which the ADLS is a part. Besides the aggregated evaluation, detailed information on potential implementation risks, bottlenecks, and levers for life cycle improvement are presented. In particular, the worldwide scarcity of the required semiconductors, in combination with the general lack of technicians in Germany, lead to the authors’ recommendation for a limited prolongation of the planned rollout period. This period should be used by decision-makers to ensure the availability of technical components and installation capacities. A pooling of ADLS installations in larger regions could improve plannability for manufacturers and installers. Furthermore, an ADLS implementation in other countries could be supported by an early holistic evaluation using the presented framework.
Digital product passport : the ticket to achieving a climate neutral and circular European economy?
(2022)
The introduction of a Digital Product Passport (DPP) is an opportunity to create a system that can store and share all relevant information throughout a product's life cycle. This would provide industry stakeholders, businesses, public authorities and consumers with a better understanding of the materials used in the product as well as their embodied environmental impact.
With the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the cost-of-living crisis, now is a critical moment to transform our economic and business models, while also addressing the huge scale of material emissions. DPPs can be a pivotal policy instrument in this goal. Furthermore, DPPs can accelerate the twin green and digital transitions as part of EU efforts to deliver positive climate action and sustainable economies.
In 2020, the European Commission (EC) adopted a new Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP), which emphasised the need for circular economy initiatives to consider the entire life cycle of products, from the production of basic materials to end-of-life disposal. The Circular Economy Package published in March 2022 includes a proposal for an Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), which builds upon the Ecodesign Directive that covers energy-related products.
A DPP will form a key regulatory element of the ESPR by enhancing the traceability of products and their components. This will provide consumers and manufacturers with the information needed to make better informed choices by taking their environmental impact into consideration.
As discussed in the report, there is widespread agreement amongst business leaders that a well-designed DPP could have both short- and longer-term benefits, improving access to reliable and comparable product sustainability information for businesses, consumers and policymakers.
A well-designed DPP can unify information, making it more readily accessible to all actors in the supply chain. This will support businesses to ensure an effective transformation towards a decarbonised industry. It could also create incentives for companies to make their products more sustainable, as improving access to reliable and consistent information across supply chains will make it easier for customers to make comparisons.
Causal strands for social bonds : a case study on the credibility of claims from impact reporting
(2022)
The study investigates if causal claims based on a theory-of-change approach for impact reporting are credible. The authors use their most recent impact report for a Social Bond to show how theory-based logic models can be used to map the sustainability claims of issuers to quantifiable indicators. A single project family (homeownership loans) is then used as a case study to test the underlying hypotheses of the sustainability claims. By applying Bayes Theorem, evidence for and against the claims is weighted to calculate the degree to which the belief in the claims is warranted. The authors found that only one out of three claims describe a probable cause–effect chain for social benefits from the loans. The other two claims either require more primary data to be corroborated or should be re-defined to link the intervention more closely and robustly with the overarching societal goals. However, all previous reported indicators are below the thresholds of the most conservative estimates for fractions of beneficiaries in the paper at hand. We conclude that the combination of a Theory-of-Change with a Bayesian Analysis is an effective way to test the plausibility of sustainability claims and to mitigate biases. Nevertheless, the method is - in the presented form - also too elaborate and time-consuming for impact reporting in the sustainable finance market.
Household food waste is determined by a complex set of routinized behaviors, and disruption of these routines may allow for a decrease in this vast amount of food waste. The current study examines such a disruption of household routines: the meal box. The potential of meal boxes to diminish different types of household food waste is investigated for the first time, across different countries. After providing a framework comparing the effects of different types of meals on food waste, we subsequently examine the effects of subscription-based food supply (i.e., meal boxes) on total meal waste as well as on the different types of food waste: preparation, cooking, and plate waste. Our dataset contains 8747 meal observations from 955 households in six countries. Results from a Bayesian multilevel hurdle-lognormal model with random intercept show that, overall, meal boxes reduce total meal waste in comparison to traditionally cooked dinners (38% reduction). Meal boxes especially lower the occurrence and amount of pan-and-pot food that is wasted (i.e., cooking waste), and also lower the amount of meal preparation waste, yet lead to a higher occurrence of both preparation and plate waste compared to traditional meals. This shows how differences between meals affect household food waste, something that has received little prior research attention. Furthermore, whereas most prior research has focused on overall household food waste, our study illustrates that distinguishing between different types of household food waste can provide important new insights.
Food and nutrition systems are linked to all Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which makes their transition toward social-ecological behavior patterns crucial for an overarching sustainability transformation. The perspective of (urban) logistics is of special interest. It couples the production and consumption physically and virtually. In this context, we shed light on the design of the turnover point of food in urban areas from the supply chain toward consumers and contribute to an overarching systemic perspective toward establishing a sustainable multilevel food system. We describe current patterns in urban food systems and propose several principles for sustainable design of (urban) food systems based on concepts such as (regional) collaboration and food literacy. Using these principles, we provide four design scenarios that concretely imagine future urban food consumption and production patterns titled "slow stock supply service," "deliver into the daily walk," "central district food depot," "super food action place." With this work we provide a starting for reflecting whether certain combinations of principles actually lead to patterns of daily life that are feasible, acceptable, or desirable. Moreover, we provide an initial qualitative assessment to stimulate further research that explores scenario pathways and incorporates additional indicators regarding the impact on social-ecological. We open up various research questions with regard to the overarching question of how urban food logistics should be designed to be consistent with the SDGs.
The war in Ukraine is changing the political landscape at breakneck speed. How should politics and society react to high energy prices and a precarious dependence on fossil fuels imports? Can modern societies get by with much less energy? Energy sufficiency can play an important role in answering these questions. The contributions in this Special topic explore sufficiency as an interdisciplinary research topic for energy modeling, scenarios, and policy.
Impact chains are used in many different fields of research to depict the various impacts of an activity and to visualize the system in which this activity is embedded. Research has not yet conceptualized impact chains specifically for energy sufficiency policies. We develop such a concept based on current evaluation approaches and extend these by adding qualitative elements such as success factors and barriers. Furthermore, we offer two case studies in which we test this concept with the responsible climate action managers. We also describe options for integrating these impact chains into different types of energy models, which are key tools in policy consulting.
Accelerating circular economy solutions to achieve the 2030 agenda for sustainable development goals
(2022)
Circular economy seems a vital enabler for sustainable use of natural resources which is also important for achieving the 2030 agenda for sustainable development goals. Therefore, a special session addressing issues of "sustainable solutions and remarkable practices in circular economy focusing materials downstream" was held at the 16th International Conference on Waste Management and Technology, where researchers and attendees worldwide were convened to share their experiences and visions. Presentations focusing on many key points such as new strategies, innovative technologies, management methods, and practical cases were discussed during the session. Accordingly, this article compiled all these distinctive presentations and gave insights into the pathway of circular economy towards the sustainable development goals. We summarized that the transition to circular economy can keep the value of resources and products at a high level and minimize waste production; the focus of governmental policies and plans with the involvement of public-private-partnership on 3Rs (reduce, reuse, and recycle) helps to improve the use of natural resources and take a step ahead to approach or achieve the sustainability.
In Germany, the number of renewable energy prosumers has increased rapidly since 2000. However, the development of prosumers has faced and will continue to face various economic, social, and technological challenges, which have triggered the emergence of a number of innovative business models (BM). This paper enriches the empirical basis for prosumer-oriented BMs by investigating two BM innovations in Germany (P2P electricity trading and aggregation of small-size prosumers) drawing on business model and socio-technical transition theories. A mix of qualitative data collection methods, including document analysis and semi-structured expert interviews, was applied. We found that while both BMs can potentially address the challenges associated with renewable energy prosumer development in Germany, small-scale prosumers’ participation in both BMs has been limited so far. We identified various internal and external drivers and barriers for scaling up these BMs for prosumer development in Germany. Despite these barriers, both aggregation and centralized P2P targeting prosumers may potentially be also taken up by incumbent market actors such as utilities. Decentralized P2P on the other hand still faces significant internal and external barriers for upscaling. Based on the analysis, the paper provides policy recommendations with respect to the identified drivers and barriers. From a theoretical perspective, our findings provide further evidence to challenge the dichotomous understanding of niche actors and incumbents, the latter of which are often theorized to be resistant to radical innovations.
The food system plays a crucial role in mitigating climate change. Even if fossil fuel emissions are halted immediately, current trends in global food systems may prevent the achieving of the Paris Agreement's climate targets. The high degree of variability and uncertainty involved in calculating diet-related greenhouse gas emissions limits the ability to evaluate reduction potentials to remain below a global warming of 1.5 or 2 degrees. This study assessed Western European dietary patterns while accounting for uncertainty and variability. An extensive literature review provided value ranges for climate impacts of animal-based foods to conduct an uncertainty analysis via Monte Carlo simulation. The resulting carbon footprints were assessed against food system-specific greenhouse gas emission thresholds. The range and absolute value of a diet carbon footprint become larger the higher the amount of products with highly varying emission values in the diet. All dietary pattern carbon footprints overshoot the 1.5 degrees threshold. The vegan, vegetarian, and diet with low animal-based food intake were predominantly below the 2 degrees threshold. Omnivorous diets with more animal-based product content trespassed them. Reducing animal-based foods is a powerful strategy to decrease emissions. However, further mitigation strategies are required to achieve climate goals.
Research on environmental behaviour is often overlooked in literature on regime destabilization in energy transitions. This study addresses that gap by focusing on socio-political and demographic factors shaping support for carbon regime destabilization policies in one of the most carbon-intensive regions of Europe. Carbon-intensive industries, especially coal mining and coal-based power generation, are often concentrated in a few carbon-intensive regions. Therefore, decarbonization actions will affect those regions particularly strongly. Correspondingly, carbon-intensive regions often exert significant political influence on the two climate mitigation policies at the national level. Focusing on Poland, we investigate socio-political and demographic factors that correlate with the approval or rejection of the two climate mitigation policies: increasing taxes on fossil fuels such as oil, gas, and coal and using public money to subsidize renewable energy such as wind and solar power in Poland and its carbon-intensive Silesia region. Using logistic regression with individual-level data derived from the 2016 European Social Survey (ESS) and the 2014 Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES), we find party-political ideology to be an important predictor at the national level but much less so at the regional level. Specifically, voting for right-wing party is not a divisive factor for individual support of the two climate mitigation policies either nationally or regionally. More interestingly, populism is a strong factor in support of increasing taxes on fossil fuel in the carbon-intensive Silesia region but is less important concerning in support of using public money to subsidize renewable energy in Poland overall. These results show the heterogeneity of right-wing party and populism within the support for the two climate mitigation policies. Socio-demographic factors, especially age, gender, education level, employment status, and employment sector, have even more complex and heterogeneous components in support of the two climate mitigation policies at the national and regional levels. Identifying the complex socio-political and demographic factors of climate mitigation policies across different national versus carbon-intensive regional contexts is an essential step for generating in situ decarbonization strategies.
The steel industry is responsible for a quarter of all industrial greenhouse gas emissions. So far, the environmental savings are mainly due to steel recycling. Besides recycling, the circular economy offers strategies to increase material efficiency and thus decrease the primary raw material demand. However, the potentials remain unexploited because circular economy concepts with a higher degree of circularity are not considered. The presented case study of an industrial machining knife illustrates how the production process can be improved by implementing various circular strategies. The environmental performance is analyzed by calculating and comparing the carbon footprint, the cumulative energy demand and the material footprint, and the material efficiency indicator. The results show that the implementation of the three overarching strategies of the circular economy - narrowing, closing, and slowing - contributes to a significant increase in material efficiency. The implementation also has a positive effect on the overall environmental performance. The circular production processes require less energy and resources and cause fewer emissions. Auxiliary processes such as additional transport routes are relevant, as they can reduce or even overcompensate for savings. These processes must be adequately considered and designed.
In the coming years, we must set a course that will allow as to protect our climate, reduce resource consumption, and preserve biodiversity. A profound ecological system change is on the horizon in all central areas of action of the economy and society, or transformation arenas.
Digitalisation is a prerequisite for the success in this change and will impact these arenas at multiple levels: Digital technologies and applications will make it possible to improve current procedures, processes, and structures (Improve) and help us take the first steps towards new business models and frameworks (Convert). Despite this, digitalisation itself must be effective enough to facilitate a complete ecological restructuring of our society and lives to achieve more far-reaching economic transformation and value creation (Transform).
The ability to obtain, link, and use data is a basic prerequisite for tapping into the potential of digitisation for sustainability transformation. However, data is not a homogeneous raw material. Data only gains value when we know the context in which it was collected and when we can use it for a specific purpose.
The discussion on what structures and prerequisites are necessary for the system-changing use of data has only just begun. This study was conducted to serve as a starting point for this discussion as it describes the opportunities and prerequisites for a data-based sustainability transformation. This study focuses on environmental data, data from plants, machines, infrastructure, and IoT products. Our task will be to increase the use this data for systemic solutions (system innovation) within transformation arenas where different stakeholders are working together to initiate infrastructure, value chain, and business model transformation.
The European Landscape Convention urges countries to involve stakeholders including citizens in the governance of ordinary (urban) landscapes. This paper studies conflicting stakeholder perspectives on urban landscape quality in the context of urban sustainability transitions in six European urban regions in the Netherlands, Italy, France, Croatia, Belarus and the Russian Federation. Repertory grid technique helped to identify the dimensions through which persons evaluate urban landscape quality. Ninety-three (93) interviewees elicited 1400 bipolar constructs, such as "Edible green - Concrete" or "Community, group - Loneliness". They then selected two constructs they consider most relevant in the context of urban sustainability transitions, and ranked all pictures on a 10-points scale. The rankings were analyzed using Multiple Correspondence Analysis. We find that, in spite of the many social and cultural differences between the regions, stakeholders largely agree on the preferred direction of urban transitions; more green and blue spots where people can meet and undertake joint (leisure) activities. The main conflict is between, on the one hand, a preference for organized development and beautification and, on the other hand, naturalness (permeability of soil) and organic development. The paper considers several challenges for transition governance.
In material development processes, the question if a new alloy is more sustainable than the existing one becomes increasingly significant. Existing studies on metals and alloys show that their composition can make a difference regarding the environmental impact. In this case study, a recently developed air hardening forging steel is used to produce a U-bolt as an example component in automotive engineering. The production process is analyzed regarding the environmental performance and compared with the standard quench and tempering steels 42CrMo4 and 33MnCrB5-2. The analysis is based on results from applying the method of Life Cycle Assessment. First, the production process and the alterations on material, product, and process level are defined. The resulting process flows were quantified and attributed with the environmental impacts covering Carbon Footprint, Cumulative Energy Demand, and Material Footprint as they represent best the resource-, energy- and thus carbon-intensive steel industry. The results show that the development of the air hardening forging steel leads to a higher environmental impact compared to the reference alloys when the material level is considered. Otherwise, the new steel allows changes in manufacturing process, which is why an additional assessment on process level was conducted. It is seen that the air hardening forging steel has environmental savings as it enables skipping a heat treatment process. Superior material characteristics enable the application of lightweight design principles, which further increases the potential environmental savings. The present work shows that the question of the environmental impact does not end with analyzing the raw material only. Rather, the entire manufacturing process of a product must be considered. The case study also shows methodological questions regarding the specification of steel for alloying elements, processes in the metalworking industry and the data availability and quality in Life Cycle Assessment.
The gap between the internationally agreed climate objectives and tangible emissions reductions looms large. We explore how the supreme decision-making body of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Conference of the Parties (COP), could develop to promote more effective climate policy. We argue that promoting implementation of climate action could benefit from focusing more on individual sectoral systems, particularly for mitigation. We consider five key governance functions of international institutions to discuss how the COP and the sessions it convenes could advance implementation of the Paris Agreement: guidance and signal, rules and standards, transparency and accountability, means of implementation, and knowledge and learning. In addition, we consider the role of the COP and its sessions as mega-events of global climate policy. We identify opportunities for promoting sectoral climate action across all five governance functions and for both the COP as a formal body and the COP sessions as conducive events. Harnessing these opportunities would require stronger involvement of national ministries in addition to the ministries of foreign affairs and environment that traditionally run the COP process, as well as stronger involvement of non-Party stakeholders within formal COP processes.
The Fit for 55 package stipulates a fair, competitive and green transition by 2030 and beyond. As part of this, increasing attention is given to the decarbonisation of the building stock: only 1 % of buildings in Europe are retrofitted each year, a number which must double if the EU is to meet its 2050 targets. Significant energy efficiency investments are needed, whilst the planned expansion of the EU-ETS to the building sector in 2026 will likely pass the carbon cost onto the consumer. This will increase the cost burden placed on low-income households, exacerbating energy poverty, if these two strategies are not counterbalanced by adequate policies and support mechanisms.
The European Private Rented Sector (PRS) is often side-lined by policymakers when implementing energy efficiency policies to tackle energy poverty. As many as 1 in 10 Europeans spend 40 % or more of their income on housing costs, with those in the PRS struggling with energy-related problems, such as poor energy efficiency and maintenance, to a much greater degree than the general population. Understanding these challenges and creating targeted policies is of critical scientific and policy importance.
To date, a pan-European policy on how to address energy poverty and energy efficiency improvements in the PRS is lacking; current European Union instruments to address such issues (including the Fit for 55, and the Clean Energy Package that preceded it) lack a dedicated approach towards the complex structural issues embedded in the European PRS. What is more, there is a limited understanding of the character of energy poverty in such residential dwellings, as well as policies to address energy injustices. We therefore examine current and historical disparities in energy poverty between the EU's PRS tenants and the general population by analysing a variety of quantitative indicators which reflect different dimensions of energy poverty. We then take stock of the policy landscape, identifying energy efficiency policies tailored to alleviate energy poverty in the PRS and common challenges. We subsequently interrogate possible solutions, drawing on existing good practice policies. In so doing, we aim to reduce the sector's political invisibility by addressing the lack of disaggregated, targeted data and dismantling barriers that currently lead to the PRS being disproportionately affected by energy poverty.
Sufficiency measures are potentially decisive for the decarbonisation of energy systems but rarely considered in energy policy and modelling. Just as efficiency and renewable energies, the diffusion of demand-side solutions to climate change also relies on policy-making. Our extensive literature review of European and national sufficiency policies fills a gap in existing databases. We present almost 300 policy instruments clustered into relevant categories and publish them as "Energy Sufficiency Policy Database". This paper provides a description of the data clustering, the set-up of the database and an analysis of the policy instruments. A key insight is that sufficiency policy includes much more than bans of products or information tools leaving the responsibility to individuals. It is a comprehensive instrument mix of all policy types, not only enabling sufficiency action, but also reducing currently existing barriers. A policy database can serve as a good starting point for policy recommendations and modelling, further research is needed on barriers and demand-reduction potentials of sufficiency policy instruments.
A sectoral perspective can help the Global Stocktake (GST) to effectively achieve its objective to inform Parties' in enhancing subsequent NDCs and in enhancing international cooperation. Specifically, granular and actionable sectoral lessons, grounded in country-driven assessments, should be identified and elaborated. To be effective, conversations on sectoral transformations need to synthesise key challenges and opportunities identified in the national analyses and link them to international enablers; focus on systemic interdependencies, involve diverse actors, and be thoroughly prepared including by pre-scoping points of convergences and divergence across transformations. We specifically recommend that:
the co-facilitators of the Technical Dialogue use their (limited) mandate to facilitate an effective conversationon sectoral transformations e.g. by organising dedicated informal seminars in between formal negotiation sessions;
key systemic transformations necessary toachieve net-zero by mid-century should be spelled out and included in the final decision or political declaration of the GST; and
the political outcome of the GST should mandate follow-up processes at the regional level and encourage national-level conversations to translate the collective messages from GST into actionable and sector-specific policy recommendations.
To achieve the EU's energy efficiency targets, both the rate of building energy renovation and its depth, i.e., the amount of energy savings post renovation need to be improved. Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) are key to make energy efficiency measures transparent for the building market and to promote the energy efficiency of buildings through renovation. The revision of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) is seen as a pre-condition to meet the Renovation Wave objectives and to reach a highly energy efficient and decarbonized building stock by 2050. One focus of the current revision of the EPBD is therefore the improvement of EPCs. QualDeEPC - High-quality Energy Performance Assessment and Certification in Europe Accelerating Deep Energy Renovation, funded under the EU's Horizon 2020 programme, is a project that aims to improve EPCs. Following an EU-wide review of existing EPC schemes, and extensive stakeholder discussions in the seven partner countries, QualDeEPC found that EPCs and EPC schemes need to enhance particularly in the following three ways:
1. Establish a close link between EPCs and deep energy renovation
2. Improve the quality of EPC schemes, i.e., both the EPCs and their data, and the processes of assessment, certification, verification
3. Improve cross-EU convergence of EPC schemes.
The EU aims to become the first climate neutral continent. To achieve this goal, the industry sector needs to reduce its GHG emissions to net zero or at least close to net zero. This is a particularly challenging task due to the high energy demand especially of primary materials production and the little potential to reduce this energy intensity when switching to other production processes based on electricity or hydrogen. In order to identify robust strategies for achieving a net-zero-compatible industry sector, the paper at hand analyses the transformation of the industry sector as described by a number of recent climate neutrality scenarios for Germany. Apart from overall industry, a focus is set on the sectors of steel, chemicals and cement. The analysed scenarios show very deep GHG emission reductions in industry and they appear to be techno-economically feasible by the mid of the century, without relying on offsets or on shifts from domestic production to imports. The scenarios agree on a suite of core strategies to achieve this, such as direct and indirect electrification, energy efficiency and recycling as well as new technological routes in steel making and cement. The scenarios differ, however, regarding the future mix of electricity, hydrogen and biomass and regarding the future relevance of domestic production of basic chemicals.
Innovative digital technologies open up new opportun ities for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to improve energy efficiency and energy management behavior. The question is: How far will SMEs be capable of profiting from the benefits of these new technologies? Using technology screening, this study identifies smart metering and mobile energy monitoring as digital technologies best addressing SMEs' specific demands. In addition, potentials and limitations of the technologies are investigated in two qualitative in-depth field trials. Barriers to adopting digitally enabled energy management practices are examined. The results indicate that visualising energy data enables SMEs to pursue new energy management practices for reducing energy consumption and costs (such as peak load analysis). SMEs need extensive guidance to identify and pursue these strategies. In conclusion, an exploratory adoption model for digitally enabled energy management practices is developed. Hypotheses for future experimental studies and policy implications are derived.
The transformation of society into sustainable structures is one of the most important tasks for the future. That cities have a decisive role to play in this transformation process has been known at least since Rio 1992. They have enormous pressure to act for change: They are at the same time problem and solution for sustainable development. Currently there is another significant development for cities - the need and external pressure to be "smart", often understood merely as applying the latest digital technologies to become more efficient. The Smart City and the Sustainable City can work hand in hand or hinder each other, depending on their interpretation. In this study we focus on five Smart Cities in Western Germany to get a closer look at how they shape their processes and whether the underlying motivation is to become a technologically Smart City, focus on sustainable development, or both. With the help of the innovation biography research method, we show how cities shape the dynamic process towards forming a Smart City, the role sustainable urban development plays in the process, who the actors involved are, and the important role improved knowledge management then plays for the diffusion of the Smart Sustainable City within the region. It becomes clear how important communication and narratives are both in the process within each City towards forming a Smart Sustainable City and for the first step of diffusion, the adaptation of other cities within the region. This study is intended to serve both as a basis for cross-regional consideration and dialogue for the transfer of successful processes.
The objective of this report is to use historical analysis to identify conditions that determine when offsets add value to compliance schemes while upholding environmental integrity. The indicators of success include: increased acceptance of introducing compliance schemes; raising ambition in subsequent compliance periods; the possibility to drive emission reductions outside the compliance sectors; promoting investments in sustainable development; and avoiding perverse incentives that undermine the stringency of the compliance scheme or compliance actors’ efforts in reducing their own emissions. Through undertaking in-depth case study analyzes on the effects of offsets in the European Union, Alberta, Australia, Colombia and Japan, the report identifies common conditions that explain why offsets were successful (or not) in achieving individual indicators. The report further identifies two common conditions that can help explain when offsets achieve all five indicators of success. The first is that policymakers need to be willing to design the compliance scheme to set and maintain a strong compliance price signal that justifies the need for incorporating cost containment measures, such as offsets, to avert negative political and economic ramifications. Relatedly, the second condition requires institutions, processes and infrastructure that govern both the compliance scheme and offsets to be well developed so that they can ensure offsets uphold the principles of environmental integrity, achieve sustainable development benefits, and act as a reliable cost containment measure to high compliance prices. The findings also highlight how difficult it is to achieve both conditions, as both domestic and international political economy factors determine whether policymakers and voters are willing to introduce and maintain compliance schemes that deliver effective action on climate.
Food production is responsible for approximately 17% of Germany's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. After retail, out-of-home catering is the second largest food sales channel in Germany. A variety of means on both the supply and demand side are necessary to stimulate, facilitate and encourage a more sustainable development and minimise GHG emissions in this sector. Nudges are one of these. This paper's focus lies on the demand side. Set in real-world laboratories, we use a standardised empirical approach to compare different nudging interventions belonging to the area of physical environment and consumers’ choice making process. We compare the effects of the same intervention across different settings and the effect of different, sequential nudging interventions in the same setting. Data was collected in eight workplace and school cafeterias in Germany over two project iterations (2016/2017; 2019/2020). A similar intervention design was applied. Comparability was assured by a harmonised menu. The first project iteration revealed that only one nudge (top menu position, +22.5%) led to significant increases in sustainable food choices, while results from the second iteration showed that all nudge interventions (best counter position, +11.6%; top menu position, +6,9%; label plus information, +15.9%) positively influenced consumer choice. Possible explanations such as the stricter compliance to the experimental design in the cafeterias but also societal developments such as the appearance of the Fridays for Future movement are discussed. As results vary between specific locations and settings, our findings suggest that nudges need to be adjusted to situational conditions for achieving highest efficacy.
This article enriches the existing literature on the importance and role of the social sciences and humanities (SSH) in renewable energy sources research by providing a novel approach to instigating the future research agenda in this field. Employing a series of in-depth interviews, deliberative focus group workshops and a systematic horizon scanning process, which utilised the expert knowledge of 85 researchers from the field with diverse disciplinary backgrounds and expertise, the paper develops a set of 100 priority questions for future research within SSH scholarship on renewable energy sources. These questions were aggregated into four main directions: (i) deep transformations and connections to the broader economic system (i.e. radical ways of (re)arranging socio-technical, political and economic relations), (ii) cultural and geographical diversity (i.e. contextual cultural, historical, political and socio-economic factors influencing citizen support for energy transitions), (iii) complexifying energy governance (i.e. understanding energy systems from a systems dynamics perspective) and (iv) shifting from instrumental acceptance to value-based objectives (i.e. public support for energy transitions as a normative notion linked to trust-building and citizen engagement). While this agenda is not intended to be—and cannot be—exhaustive or exclusive, we argue that it advances the understanding of SSH research on renewable energy sources and may have important value in the prioritisation of SSH themes needed to enrich dialogues between policymakers, funding institutions and researchers. SSH scholarship should not be treated as instrumental to other research on renewable energy but as intrinsic and of the same hierarchical importance.
Public catering has become increasingly important in recent years. With increasing annual customers, the sector's impact on the environment is also growing continuously. At the same time, public catering offers a lever to promote sustainable nutrition that has rarely been used so far. Small changes in kitchen practices and food offers can thus be multiplied into a significant positive impact on environmental challenges, such as climate change or loss of biodiversity due to the large number of servings. In contrast to private households, management decisions in public catering can influence the food-related environmental impact of thousands of customers. This article deals with the nationwide level of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and resource use in the German public catering segment "business" and its saving potentials by different scenarios of unsupported and supported recipe revision. In this paper, we define "unsupported" as the intuitive optimization of recipes by employees of public catering businesses. In contrast, "supported" approaches had to meet specific target goals, for example of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Ernährung; engl. German Nutrition Society or the sustainable level. Specifically, we will test how (A) an unsupported recipe revision, (B) a recipe revision based on dietary recommendations and (C) a recipe revision using scientific guidance affect the environmental impact of a dish. As a methodological framework, an online survey of public catering companies was conducted as well as a scenario analysis at menu level and at nationwide level. The results are based on empirical data on the one hand, and on extrapolations on the other. The results show that the nationwide implementation of recipe revision according to scientific guidance-such as concrete target goals for the GHG emissions per serving-can save up to 44% of resource use in the German business catering sector (which corresponds to 3.4 million tons of resources per year) and as much as 40% of GHG emissions (0.6 million tons GHG emissions per year). Even in the scenario of unsupported recipe revision, GHG and resource savings of up to 20% can be realized. The results show that public catering can reduce its material and carbon footprint by 20% overnight. Moreover, the findings show indications for the sustainable transformation of public catering. Nevertheless, it must be noted that these are some first steps of the transformation, which will require further changes with even greater impacts and political activities.
Direct Air Capture (DAC) is increasingly being discussed as a possibility to limit climate change. In this study, a possible rollout of the DAC technology at German coastal areas is analysed based on an existing climate neutrality scenario. For the year 2045 the resulting costs as well as land, water and energy consumption are examined. It is concluded that a realization of the DAC technology in Germany might be possible from a technical point of view. However, there is a high demand for land and energy. Since a rollout is needed to start in 20 years at the latest, the required discussion and evaluation should be initiated as quickly as possible.
In Argentina, renewable energies are promoted as a way of decarbonising the electricity mix and providing reliable energy services. The national goal is to generate 20% of electricity from renewable sources by 2025. However, despite significant natural potential, solar photovoltaic still represents only a small share of Argentina's total electricity generation. Although this picture may look bleak, a wide range of market segments relating to decentralised photovoltaic generation in Argentina have developed. The general objective of this study is to examine the dynamics that currently enable or constrain the diffusion of distributed photovoltaic systems in Argentina. By applying the Technical Innovation System (TIS) approach, the aim is to understand which functions of the system are strong/weak and how these are influenced by endogenous/exogenous system strengths and weaknesses. To that end, a mixed method research strategy is applied. The exploratory sequential research design allows first to explore system strengths and weaknesses based on qualitative approaches, and then to further analyse the contextual embeddedness and the level of importance of the identified variables using quantitative survey instruments. Thereby, this study provides an important analytical method that contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the interdependencies of the TIS. The empirical results indicate that system weaknesses are shaped to a large extent by the overall contextual dynamics - such as political instability, energy subsidies and high inflation rates. System strengths relate to both the TIS itself (particularly knowledge development through pilot projects and market formation through provincial and national support programmes), to contextual relationships (linked to the availability of educational institutions that enable the rapid diffusion of knowledge) and to the importance of rural areas as protected spaces for the application of photovoltaic systems. Consequently, the study highlights the challenges to overcome for the broader diffusion of distributed photovoltaic generation.
Governance policies for a "just transition" : a case study in the Rhineland lignite mining district
(2022)
This paper develops policy measures for a "just transition" based on a case study conducted in Germany's Rhineland lignite mining district. Semi-structured guided interviews served as the methodological approach. Expert interviews were conducted with representatives of citizen initiatives, trade unions and the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia. The results reveal the need for policy measures in different areas: First, employees working for subcontractors of the lignite industry have a high risk of losing their jobs because there are virtually no support policies for them. Second, there needs to be more input by civic initiatives regarding the process of structural change. And last, land needs to be prevented from becoming a scarce resource in the Rhineland area due to current mining legislation. We use an actor-centred institutionalist framework to derive governance approaches in line with the needs of various stakeholders.
The ambition to reach climate-neutral energy systems requires profound energy transitions. Various scenario studies exist which present different options to reach that goal. In this paper, key strategies for the transition to climate neutrality in Germany are identified through a meta-analysis of published studies, including scenarios which achieve at least a 95 % greenhouse gas emissions reduction by 2050 compared to 1990. It has been found that a reduction in energy demand, an expansion of domestic wind and solar energy, increased use of biomass as well as the importation of synthetic energy carriers are key strategies in the scenarios, with nuclear energy playing no role, and carbon capture and storage playing a very limited role. Demand-side solutions that reduce the energy demand have a very high potential to diminish the significant challenges of other strategies, which are all facing certain limitations regarding their sustainable potential. The level and and type of demand reductions differ significantly within the scenarios, especially regarding the options of reducing energy service demand.
To address climate change, the decarbonisation of Germany's existing building stock urgently needs to be prioritised. However, the rate and depth of refurbishment has lagged behind official targets for years. This is a particular problem in the rental sector, where the costs and benefits of energy efficiency measures tend to be unevenly distributed between landlords and tenants (the so-called "landlord-tenant dilemma"). Within the context of the current policy landscape, investments in energy efficiency consequently make most sense for landlords if the upfront costs can be refinanced via increased rental income or reduced vacant periods. This paper seeks to investigate the validity of this statement at city level by using a large dataset from one of Germany’s main internet property platforms to examine how the willingness of tenants to pay for energy efficiency varies across residential locations in the city of Wuppertal.
The small-scale spatial analysis highlights the existence of a price premium for energy efficiency in the rental market for apartments; however, this premium is generally small (especially in comparison to other property enhancements, especially visible improvements) or even non-existent in some residential areas. Consequently, investing in energy efficiency is rarely an attractive option for landlords. Therefore, strong policy action, aligned with social and urban development policy objectives, is necessary to establish an effective incentive structure in the market and make investing in energy efficiency more attractive for both landlords and tenants.
Course change: navigating urban passenger transport toward sustainability through modal shift
(2022)
Staying within the 2 °C (preferably 1.5 °C) limit requires fast and fundamental system changes, also in urban passenger transport. Shifting car traffic to environmentally friendly transport modes is one central strategy to make urban transport more sustainable and climate friendly. However, in most cities car use remains high. Therefore, this paper analyzes what course change is needed regarding direction, scale and speed of change for urban sustainability and climate protection reasons. The paper analyzes the role of modal shift as a strategy in itself and in relation to land-use (avoid) and efficiency (improve) measures. The paper draws on insights from European frontrunning cities and explorative forecasting scenarios calculated with the sophisticated integrated land-use transport model "Ruhr Region 2050". The paper suggests that a significant reduction of urban car use is needed (direction) that roughly equals a fast halving of car use (scale), which has proven feasible under the current socio-political conditions by annual reduction rates of 0.5 to 1.5 percentage points of the trip-based modal share of car use (speed). Significantly reducing car use requires comprehensive and high-intensive measures that go far beyond usual practices. Modal shift measures need to play a crucial role in integrated approaches with land-use (avoid) and efficiency (improve) measures because they have the potential to significantly reduce car use and CO2 emissions and because they can produce comparatively fast effects - which makes modal shift measures first aid approaches to achieve a fast "bending of the curve" of excessive car use and growing CO2 emissions.
This paper analyses the potential of digital information technology to enable the reliable provision of product information along the plastics supply chain. The authors investigate the possible contribution of a product passport equipped with decentralised identifiers and verifiable credentials to overcome information deficits and information asymmetry in the circular plastics economy. Through this, high-quality plastics recycling could be enabled on a larger scale than currently possible.
Effective policies to mitigate climate change need to be accompanied by a socially just transition. Based on experiences of past and ongoing transition policies in coal regions in Europe and with indications to the specificity of framework conditions and challenges and to the potential effectiveness and transferability of approaches, this paper presents lessons learnt which can be inspirational for similar transitions in other coal regions and for transitions in other sectors.
This case study examined the structural change in Lusatia caused by the system change from a centrally planned economy to a market economy in the period 1990-2015. It analysed the structural change process and the structural policies implemented as a reaction to this process with the objective to make this knowledge available for future structural change processes in other (coal) regions by deploying various qualitative and quantitative methods of empirical social and economic research. A discourse analysis helped to recognise who supported which structural policy approaches and why - and thus gives indications of the possible relevance of experiences for other regions.
Analysis of the historical structural change in the German hard coal mining Ruhr area (case study)
(2022)
This case study examined the structural change in the Ruhr area caused by the low international competitiveness of German hard coal mining over the period from the late 1950s to 2015. It analysed the structural change process and the structural policies implemented as a reaction to this process with the objective to make this knowledge available for future structural change processes in other (coal) regions by deploying various qualitative and quantitative methods of empirical social and economic research. A discourse analysis helped to recognise who supported which structural policy approaches and why - and thus gives indications of the possible relevance of experiences for other regions.
This chapter reconstructs the main actors, objectives and the pertinent contextual factors that co-determined the German coal phase-out. The German decision to phase out coal no later than 2038 was prepared by intense negotiations under the German "coal commission". It was tasked with finding an end date for coal-fired electricity generation and proposing ways and means to support coal workers and the affected regions. This latter objective was the dominant one, supported by a coalition of trade unions, industry, state-level governments as well as major political parties fearing a surge of far-right populism. Meanwhile, meeting the German climate targets was a key condition in the mandate of the coal commission. Yet, the German targets date back to 2010 and are not aligned with the more ambitious objectives enshrined in the Paris Agreement. This explains why the German coal phase-out schedule is so late and so expensive.
With the move to a hydrogen-based primary steel production envisioned for the near future in Europe, existing regional industrial clusters loose major assets. Such a restructuring of industries may result in a new geographical distribution of the steel industry and also to another quality of vertical integration at sites. Both implications could turn out as drivers or barriers to invest in new technologies and are thus important in respect to vertical integration of sites and to regional policy. This paper describes an approach to model production stock invest for the steel industries in North-Western Europe. Current spatial structures are reproduced with capacity, technical and energy efficiency data on the level of single facilities like blast furnaces. With the model developed both investments in specific technologies and at specific production sites can be modelled. The model is used to simulate different possible future scenarios. The case with a clear move to hydrogen-based production is compared to a reference scenario without technological shift. The scenarios show that existing trends like movement of production to the coast may be accelerated by the new technology but that sites in the hinterland can also adapt to a hydrogen economy. Possible effects of business cycles or a circular economy on regional value chains are explored with a Monte-Carlo analysis.
Variations in quantity, quality and time availability of input materials pose a major risk to circular supply chains (CSC) and require new models for creating and evaluating adaptive and resilient CSC in the circular economy (CE). This can be achieved through consistent modelling of the overarching relationship between resource input- and output streams, without neglecting the associated risks.
The model proposed below consists of five components based on five resilience requirements for supply-chains (SCs). It provides a data-based recommended course of action for managers with a low entry-barrier. It consists of a CSC visualization, safety stock calculation, risk monitoring for each SC node, reporting logic, and a measurement catalogue. The inspiration for this model came from an innovative case study ("Zirkelmesser") in the metal processing industry, where secondary products and materials are used to produce new products. Here, the problem of maintaining the resource supply arose and led to resilience issues. The mentioned case study serves as an application example for the model application and contributes to making emerging circular supply chains predictable and more controllable, thus increasing their resilience.
As the worldwide remaining carbon budget decreases rapidly, countries across the globe are searching for solutions to limit greenhouse gas emissions. As the production and use of coal is among the most carbon-intensive processes, it is foreseeable that coal regions will be particularly affected by the consequences of a transformation towards a climate-neutral economy and energy system.
Challenges arise in the area of energy production, environmental protection, but also for economic and social aspects in the transforming regions - often coined with the term "Just Transition". For the decision makers in coal regions, there is an urgent need for support tools that help to kick off measures to diversify the local economies while at the same time supporting the local workers and communities.
The Wuppertal Institute aims to support coal regions worldwide by developing a Just Transition Toolbox, which illustrates the challenges and opportunities of a sustainable transition for a global audience. It comprises information about strategy development, sets recommendations for governance structures, fostering sustainable employment, highlights technology options and sheds light on the environmental rehabilitation and repurposing of coal-related sites and infrastructure. The toolbox builds on the work of the Wuppertal Institute for the EU Initiative for Coal Regions in Transition and takes into account country-specific findings from the SPIPA-partner countries India, Indonesia, South Africa, Japan, South Korea, Canada and the USA. The acronym SPIPA is short for "Strategic Partnerships for the Implementation of the Paris Agreement" an EU-BMU programme co-financed by the GIZ.
The construction sector is the second largest area for the application for plastics. Due to the long life times of construction products, the implementation of the circular economy faces its own challenges. To investigate this challenge, the study covers a market study for Germany, voluntary take-back and recycling schemes of construction products, as well as the use of plastic recyclates in construction products. In addition, plastic packaging of construction products is covered. Opportunities and barriers to the use of recycled plastics in construction products are derived from the intersection of available technologies, recyclate supply, and technical requirements for construction products. The report concludes with recommendations to various stakeholders on how to promote the use of recyclates in construction products and their packaging. Important points here are the introduction of a recyclate quota for films as construction product packaging and the description of recycling possibilities and recyclate content in the technical documentation of construction products.
When dealing with the Great Transformation towards a sustainable world (WBGU 2011), one defining factor is the stark contradiction in the availability of knowledge: While there is almost unlimited knowledge on many technical and economic aspects of the sustainability transformation, while in some way all the tools are available and we, in theory, know exactly how to use them, there is a lack of action at all levels. If we assume that in principle a majority of decision-makers has understood the necessity to act, this ultimately points to a lack of knowledge on how major transformations can be triggered. To use a common distinction, we have solid knowledge of the systems at play, we know the targets society should be heading for, and these targets have been globally and politically agreed to, but our knowledge on transformations, while growing, is obviously lacking. While this is true for all forms of knowledge to some extent, especially transformation knowledge requires more than just disciplinary or interdisciplinary research because it depends on transdisciplinary approaches that integrate the knowledge of practitioners from politics, administration, civil society and business.
Technological breakthroughs and policy measures targeting energy efficiency and clean energy alone will not suffice to deliver Paris Agreement-compliant greenhouse gas emissions trajectories in the next decades. Strong cases have recently been made for acknowledging the decarbonisation potential lying in transforming linear economic models into closed-loop industrial ecosystems and in shifting lifestyle patterns towards this direction. This perspective highlights the research capacity needed to inform on the role and potential of the circular economy for climate change mitigation and to enhance the scientific capabilities to quantitatively explore their synergies and trade-offs. This begins with establishing conceptual and methodological bridges amongst the relevant and currently fragmented research communities, thereby allowing an interdisciplinary integration and assessment of circularity, decarbonisation, and sustainable development. Following similar calls for science in support of climate action, a transdisciplinary scientific agenda is needed to co-create the goals and scientific processes underpinning the transition pathways towards a circular, net-zero economy with representatives from policy, industry, and civil society. Here, it is argued that such integration of disciplines, methods, and communities can then lead to new and/or structurally enhanced quantitative systems models that better represent critical industrial value chains, consumption patterns, and mitigation technologies. This will be a crucial advancement towards assessing the material implications of, and the contribution of enhanced circularity performance to, mitigation pathways that are compatible with the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement and the transition to a circular economy.
Within the Shaping Digitalisation project, we aim to highlight and discuss the opportunities that digitalisation can bring to Germany. In particular, we are discussing three stand-out areas where action is most needed to achieve ecological transformation: mobility, the circular economy, and agriculture and food.
This report addresses the second area in need of action. Up until now, discussions on the circular economy have been limited to recycling and the re-use of materials. We must expand the scope of these discussions to include new, resource-efficient business models and the comprehensive transformation of value chains and industrial structures. Our analysis has found that digitalisation is indispensable for this transformation if used properly.
We hope this report will provide the impetus needed to kick-start a climate- and resource-friendly industrial transformation in Germany. Here, we have incorporated the findings of our interdisciplinary workshop on "Shaping the Digital-Ecological Industrial Transformation - Business Models and Political Framework Conditions for Climate and Resource Protection" that was attended by experts from international research institutes, civil organizations, public authorities, and private companies.
Although smart energy technologies (SETs) can fulfill multiple tasks in increasingly decarbonized and digitalized energy systems, market diffusion is still limited. This study investigates which beliefs influence consumers' intention to adopt two smart-energy offerings, whether the rapid growth of the smart home market will now drive SET adoption, and if consumer-driven diffusion will lead to sustainability potentials being realized. Building on UTAUT2, a new theoretical model is proposed, and a consumer acceptance survey was conducted in Germany (n = 700). Results indicate that a growing smart home market will not increase SET adoption and that "adjustable green defaults" should be introduced.
Model-based scenario analyses of future energy systems often come to deviating results and conclusions when different models are used. This may be caused by heterogeneous input data and by inherent differences in model formulations. The representation of technologies for the conversion, storage, use, and transport of energy is usually stylized in comprehensive system models in order to limit the size of the mathematical problem, and may substantially differ between models. This paper presents a systematic comparison of nine power sector models with sector coupling. We analyze the impact of differences in the representation of technologies, optimization approaches, and further model features on model outcomes. The comparison uses fully harmonized input data and highly simplified system configurations to isolate and quantify model-specific effects. We identify structural differences in terms of the optimization approach between the models. Furthermore, we find substantial differences in technology modeling primarily for battery electric vehicles, reservoir hydro power, power transmission, and demand response. These depend largely on the specific focus of the models. In model analyses where these technologies are a relevant factor, it is therefore important to be aware of potential effects of the chosen modeling approach. For the detailed analysis of the effect of individual differences in technology modeling and model features, the chosen approach of highly simplified test cases is suitable, as it allows to isolate the effects of model-specific differences on results. However, it strongly limits the model's degrees of freedom, which reduces its suitability for the evaluation of fundamentally different modeling approaches.
The COVID-19 pandemic has jolted societies out of normality, possibly creating new conditions for sustainability transformations. What does this mean for sustainability research? Because of the scope of the crisis, researchers have been heavily involved: not only have they had to speed up the pace of scientific production to provide urgently needed COVID-19 knowledge, but they have also been affected citizens. For sustainability science, this calls for an experience-based reflection on the positionality and orientation of research aiming to support sustainability transformations. Twenty sustainability researchers discussed their sustainability research on COVID-19 in three workshops based on the following questions: How does the pandemic - and the measures taken to deal with it - affect sustainable development? What can we learn from the pandemic from the perspective of societal transformation? The present discussion paper emerged from this multidisciplinary exchange among sustainability researchers, considering five topics: impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on sustainability transformations; learning for sustainability transformations; the role of solidarity; governance and political steering; and the role of science in society. Our discussions led to a meta-level reflection on what sustainability research can learn from research on COVID-19 regarding topics and disciplinary angles, time dimensions, the role of researchers, and how adequate preparation for both crises and long-term transformations requires interdisciplinary interaction.
In warm and hot climates, ceiling fans and/or air conditioners (ACs) are used to maintain thermal comfort. Ceiling fans provide air movement near the skin, which enhances the evaporation of sweat, reduces heat stress, and enhances thermal comfort. This is also called the cooling effect. However, AC usage behaviour and the effects of elevated air speed through the use of ceiling fans on indoor operative temperature during AC usage are not widely studied. This study investigated the optimum AC (cooling) set point temperature and air velocity necessary for maintaining thermal comfort while achieving energy conservation, in mixed-mode buildings in India, through field studies by using used custom-built Internet of Things (IOT) devices. In the current study, the results indicate a 79% probability that comfort conditions can be maintained by achieving a temperature drop of 3K. If this drop can be achieved, as much as possible, through passive measures, the duration of AC operation and its energy consumption are reduced, at least by 67.5 and 58.4%, respectively. During the air-conditioned period, there is a possibility that the cooing effect is reduced because of increase in operative temperature due to ceiling fan operation. Therefore, the optimum solution is to maintain the highest AC set point and minimum fan speed setting that are acceptable.
The QualDeEPC project is aiming to both improve quality and cross-EU convergence of Energy Performance Certificate schemes, and the link between EPCs and deep renovation: High-quality Energy Performance Assessment and Certification in Europe Accelerating Deep Energy Renovation. The objective of the project is to improve the practical implementation of the assessment, issuance, design, and use of EPCs as well as their renovation recommendations, in the participating countries and beyond.
This report serves as a compilation of the project's proposal for an enhanced and converging EPC assessment and certification scheme. It aims to provide a detailed description on the set of practical concepts, policy proposals, and tools for an enhanced EPC scheme towards deep renovation, developed by the QualDeEPC project. The project's substantial proposals both on EU and national level are presented in a comprehensive and rational way, guiding the relevant stakeholders, in particular the policy makers and competed bodies, on which steps need to be followed so as the proposals to be adapted and how the specific values can be determined in MSs. Furthermore, this report includes the project's proposal for defining "Deep Energy Renovation" based on a modified nZEB-based approach.
The project's priorities A) to G) addressed are presented in the following order in this document, reflecting the importance of the enhanced EPC template form and the training of EPC assessors in such schemes:
A) Improving the recommendations for renovation, which are provided on the EPCs, towards deep energy renovation;
E) High user-friendliness of the EPC, by way of an enhanced EPC template form, including an introduction of the proposed "Energy Rating" indicator;
D) Regular mandatory EPC assessor training or examination on assessment and renovation recommendations, required for certification/accreditation and registry;
B) Online tool for comparing EPC recommendations to deep energy renovation recommendations;
C) Creating Deep Renovation Network Platforms (DRNPs);
F) & G) Voluntary/mandatory advertising guidelines for EPCs and Improving compliance with the mandatory use of EPCs in real estate advertisement.
The original objectives for introducing Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) were 1) to make energy performance transparent in the building market, as a measure of energy costs of using a building that a potential buyer or tenant would be interested in; and 2) to encourage energy efficiency renovation. However, the current implementation of EPC schemes in the Member States still shows significant challenges in achieving these two objectives. The recast of the EU Directive on the Overall Energy Performance of Buildings (EPBD) provides a chance to enhance both the usefulness and quality of EPCs and the EPC schemes overall.
This document aims to inform both the debate on the recast of the EPBD and the enhancement of national EPC schemes in EU Member States. It presents the draft policy recommendations of the Horizon 2020 QualDeEPC project for making the EPBD and the national schemes more effective, particularly for deep renovation, and enhance their quality overall. The policy recommendations particularly target the link between EPCs and deep (energy) renovation1, while increasing the levels of ambition and convergence across the EU in terms of building renovation. Deep (energy) renovation is crucial for mitigating climate change and for energy security. The EPBD and all of its articles, as well as national EPC schemes, should aim to make deep (energy) renovation the default. This objective would be embedded and ensured in EPC schemes, if the policy recommendations provided in this document were adopted and implemented.
The project "Plastic Credits - Financing the Transition to the Global Circular Economy" supports the implementation of a waste management structure in India's rural regions. By that it aims to improve the current waste collection and treatment structures in the pilot regions Goa, Maharashtra, and Kerala. Herein, the project focuses on low value plastics (LVP), and especially multi-layer plastics (MLP), that have no market value. In order to analyze the environmental impacts of the project, an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) was conducted. The considered environmental components comprise: greenhouse gas emissions, usage of primary resources, impacts on marine and terrestrial wildlife, standard of living, and economic costs.
A clear understanding of socio-technical interdependencies and a structured vision are prerequisites for fostering and steering a transition to a fully renewables-based energy system. To facilitate such understanding, a phase model for the renewable energy (RE) transition in MENA countries has been developed and applied to the country case of Morocco. It is designed to support the strategy development and governance of the energy transition and to serve as a guide for decision makers. Such a phase model could be shared widely as part of Morocco's engagement in international platforms of multilateral collaboration, such as the Energy Transition Council (chaired by the United Kingdom (UK) and managed by the British Embassy - Rabat).
The analysis shows that Morocco has fully embarked on the energy transition. According to the MENA phase model, Morocco can be classified as being in the second phase "System Integration of Renewables". Nevertheless, Morocco plans to considerably increase the use of natural gas in order to back up intermittent solar and wind energy sources. The diversification of energy sources and a diverse portfolio of storage options, including solar thermal power and hydrogen, can foster flexibility options. To this end, a roadmap for power-to-X (PtX) should be considered for a smooth transition of the Moroccan energy supply and demand system.
The expansion of local REs can significantly contribute to reducing Morocco's high fossil fuel imports that are causing a high fiscal burden. With this regard, energy security can be strengthened. Next to large-scale deployment, decentralisation of the energy system must be built to encourage an energy transition on all societal levels. The results of the analysis along the transition phase model towards 100% RE are intended to stimulate and support the discussion on Morocco's future energy system by providing an overarching guiding vision for energy transition and the development of appropriate policies.
The twenty-seventh Conference of the Parties (COP27) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Sharm el-Sheikh made history by for the first time ever discussing and ultimately even agreeing to establish a fund to address loss and damage caused by climate change. However, the conference did little to limit the occurrence of loss and damage in the first place by containing the extent of climate change. This article discusses the conference's outcomes in the areas of mitigation and adaptation, loss and damage, the Global Stocktake, cooperation under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, climate finance, and gender-responsiveness. While modest progress can be observed, it is too slow to actually achieve the objectives of the Paris Agreement. This pace is leading many, not least the most vulnerable countries, to search for parallel arenas of cooperation.
This study presents in detail: the use of plastic products and the opportunities for recyclate use in the construction sector, quantities of plastic used, take-back systems, recycling techniques, current recyclate use and plastic construction product packaging.Potentials for increasing high-quality recyclate use were identified. Existing hurdles and options for action for industry and politics are presented. Current recyclate use as well as its potential use are strongly dependent on the application area of plastics. The biggest hurdles for the use of recycled materials are product life time, dismantling and technical requirements.
By use of macro-economic model EXIOMOD, the expected impacts of actions described in the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) have been analyzed. The results of this analysis show that the R&I actions described in the SRIA contribute to decoupling economic growth from resource use. The actions are expected to cause an increasing gross domestic product and a decreasing raw material demand. This results in an increasing extracted resource productivity, a measure used to show the decoupling of economic growth and resource use. It can however be questioned whether the actions in the SRIA - or the measures implemented in the model - assume a strong enough pace for decoupling economic growth and material use. The actions contribute to the climate goals of the European Commission, by showing a pathway through which the emissions of greenhouse gas can be reduced.
The impacts of the COVID-19 crisis and the global response to it will co-determine the future of climate policy. The recovery packages responding to the impacts of the pandemic may either help to chart a new sustainable course, or they will further cement existing high-emission pathways and thwart the achievement of the Paris Agreement objectives. This article discusses how international climate governance may help align the recovery packages with the climate agenda. For this purpose, the article investigates five key governance functions through which international institutions may contribute: send guidance and signals, establish rules and standards, provide transparency and accountability, organize the provision of means of implementation, and promote collective learning. Reflecting on these functions, the article finds that the process under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), together with other international institutions, could promote sustainable recovery in several ways.
Quantitative environmental assessments are crucial in working effectively towards sustainable production and consumption patterns. Over the last decades, life cycle assessments (LCA) have been established as a viable means of measuring the environmental impacts of products along the supply chain. In regard to user and consumption patterns, however, methodological weaknesses have been reported and, several attempts have been made to improve LCA accordingly, for example, by including higher order effects and behavioural science support. In a discussion of such approaches, we show that there has been no explicit attention to the concepts of consumption, often leading to product-centred assessments. We introduce social practice theories in order to make consumption patterns accessible to LCA. Social practices are routinised actions comprising interconnected elements (materials, competences, and meanings), which make them conceivable as one entity (e.g. cooking). Because most social practices include some sort of consumption (materials, energy, air), we were able to develop a framework which links social practices to the life cycle inventory of LCA. The proposed framework provides a new perspective of quantitative environmental assessments by switching the focus from products or users to social practices. Accordingly, we see the opportunity in overcoming the reductionist view that people are just users of products, and instead we see them as practitioners in social practises. This change could enable new methods of interdisciplinary research on consumption, integrating intend-oriented social sciences and impact-oriented assessments. However, the framework requires further revision and, especially, empirical validation.
Roadmaps for India's energy future foresee that coal power will continue to play a considerable role until the middle of the 21st century. Among other options, carbon capture and storage (CCS) is being considered as a potential technology for decarbonising the power sector. Consequently, it is important to quantify the relative benefits and trade-offs of coal-CCS in comparison to its competing renewable power sources from multiple sustainability perspectives. In this paper, we assess coal-CCS pathways in India up to 2050 and compare coal-CCS with conventional coal, solar PV and wind power sources through an integrated assessment approach coupled with a nexus perspective (energy-cost-climate-water nexus). Our levelized costs assessment reveals that coal-CCS is expensive and significant cost reductions would be needed for CCS to compete in the Indian power market. In addition, although carbon pricing could make coal-CCS competitive in relation to conventional coal power plants, it cannot influence the lack of competitiveness of coal-CCS with respect to renewables. From a climate perspective, CCS can significantly reduce the life cycle GHG emissions of conventional coal power plants, but renewables are better positioned than coal-CCS if the goal is ambitious climate change mitigation. Our water footprint assessment reveals that coal-CCS consumes an enormous volume of water resources in comparison to conventional coal and, in particular, to renewables. To conclude, our findings highlight that coal-CCS not only suffers from typical new technology development related challenges - such as a lack of technical potential assessments and necessary support infrastructure, and high costs - but also from severe resource constraints (especially water) in an era of global warming and the competition from outperforming renewable power sources. Our study, therefore, adds a considerable level of techno-economic and environmental nexus specificity to the current debate about coal-based large-scale CCS and the low carbon energy transition in emerging and developing economies in the Global South.
The transdisciplinary research mode has gained prominence in the research on and for sustainability transformations. Yet, solution-oriented research addressing complex sustainability problems has become complex itself, with new transdisciplinary research formats being developed and tested for this purpose. Application of new formats offers learning potentials from experience. To this end, we accompanied fourteen research projects conceptualized as real-world labs (RwLs) from 2015 to 2018. RwLs were part of a funding program on "Science for Sustainability" in the German federal state of Baden-Württemberg. Here, we combine conceptual and empirical work to a structured collection of experiences and provide a comprehensive account of RwLs. First, we outline characteristics of RwLs as transformation oriented, transdisciplinary research approach, using experiments, enabling learning and having a long-term orientation. Second, we outline eleven success factors and concrete design notes we gained through a survey of the 14 RwLs: (1) find the right balance between scientific and societal aims, (2) address the practitioners needs and restrictions, (3) make use of the experimentation concept, (4) actively communicate, (5) develop a "collaboration culture", (6) be attached to concrete sites, (7) create lasting impact and transferability, (8) plan for sufficient time and financial means, (9) adaptability, (10) research-based learning, and (11) recognize dependency on external actors. Characteristics and success factors are combined to illustrate practical challenges in RwLs. Third, we show which methods could be used to cope with challenges in RwLs. We conclude discussing the state of debate on RwLs and outline future avenues of research.
Water availability plays an important role in the expansion planning of utility-scale solar power plants, especially in the arid regions of the Middle East and North Africa. Although these power plants usually account for only a small fraction of local water demand, competition for water resources between communities, farmers, companies, and power suppliers is already emerging and is likely to intensify in future. Despite this, to date there has been a lack of comprehensive studies analyzing interdependencies and potential conflicts between energy and water at local level. This study addresses this research gap and examines the linkages between water resources and energy technologies at local level based on a case study conducted in Ouarzazate, Morocco, where one of the largest solar power complexes in the world was recently completed. To better understand the challenges faced by the region in light of increased water demand and diminishing water supply, a mixed-method research design was applied to integrate the knowledge of local stakeholders through a series of workshops. In a first step, regional socio-economic water demand scenarios were developed and, in a second step, water saving measures to avoid critical development pathways were systematically evaluated using a participatory multi-criteria evaluation approach. The results are a set of water demand scenarios for the region and a preferential ranking of water saving measures that could be drawn upon to support decision-making relating to energy and water development in the region.
Expenditure-based indicators of energy poverty : an analysis of income and expenditure elasticities
(2021)
Energy poverty is high up on national and European Union policy agendas. A number of possible indicators to measure the issue have been identified in the literature, but comparable data with European coverage is scarce. The EU Commission thus proposes four independent indicators on the "EU Energy Poverty Observatory" based on self-reported items from the pan-European surveys on income and living conditions (SILC) and household budgets (HBS). It is of increasing public interest to analyse social impacts of energy policies, and quantify energy poverty indicators also from modelling. This paper first shortly outlines how the expenditure-based indicators using HBS micro data may be directly linked to existing macroeconomic models through their defining variables (energy expenditure and income). As endogenous modelling based on micro data is difficult, the link may be country-specific elasticities. The main contribution of the paper is a systematic in-depth sensitivity analysis of the two indicators to changes in income and energy expenditure following varying patterns in the underlying distributions of the micro data. The results may be used by future soft links to models. The results display sometimes counterintuitive effects. We find that whether these indicators increase/decrease after a change of income or energy expenditure largely depends on the specific country-wise income and energy expenditure distribution between households on a micro-level. Due to their definition, the examined indicators are especially sensitive, when income changes alter the indicator threshold values, which in these cases are the median values in underlying distributions. We discuss these findings and relate them to several indicator shortcomings and potential remedies through changes in indicator definition.
Flexible, system-oriented operating strategies are becoming increasingly important in terms of achieving a climate-neutral energy system transformation. Solid-oxide electrolysis (SOEC) can play an important role in the production of green synthesis gas from renewable energy in the future. Therefore, it is important to investigate the extent to which SOEC can be used flexibly and which feedback effects and constraints must be taken into account. In this study, we derived a specific load profile from an energy turnaround scenario that supports the energy system. SOEC short-stacks were operated and we investigated the impact that the load profile has on electrical stack performance and stack degradation as well as the product gas composition by means of Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy. The stacks could follow the grid-related requirement profiles of secondary control power and minute reserves very well with transition times of less than two minutes per 25% of relative power. Only short-term disturbances of the H2/CO ratio were observed during transitions due to the adjustment of feed gases. No elevated degradation effects resulting from flexible operation were apparent over 1300 h, although other causes of degradation were present.
The need for a transition towards a circular economy (CE) is evident, as the current economic model is based on the exploitation of far more resources than the planet can replenish sustainably. A significant part of this economic transition is the inception of new, CE-oriented startups and business activities. While business model frameworks (BMF), such as the Business Model Canvas (BMC), were at the center of discussions about structuring business ideas in the beginning of the millennium, the conversation must now shift towards circular BMFs (CBMF). This paper follows the Design Research Methodology (DRM) for an empirical approach to devising a novel CBMF, including expert interviews as well as a first application of the framework with a startup. Throughout this process, a new and innovative tool called Circular Business Framework (CBF) was created and tested based on CE principles.
Cities are becoming digital and are aiming to be sustainable. How they are combining the two is not always apparent from the outside. What we need is a look from inside. In recent years, cities have increasingly called themselves Smart City. This can mean different things, but generally includes a look towards new digital technologies and claim that a Smart City has various advantages for its citizens, roughly in line with the demands of sustainable development. A city can be seen as smart in a narrow sense, technology wise, sustainable or smart and sustainable. Current city rankings, which often evaluate and classify cities in terms of the target dimensions 2smart" and "sustainable", certify that some cities are both. In its most established academic definitions, the Smart City also serves both to improve the quality of life of its citizens and to promote sustainable development. Some cities have obviously managed to combine the two. The question that arises is as follows: What are the underlying processes towards a sustainable Smart City and are cities really using smart tools to make themselves sustainable in the sense of the 2015 United Nations Sustainability Goal 11? This question is to be answered by a method that has not yet been applied in research on cities and smart cities: the innovation biography. Based on evolutionary economics, the innovation biography approaches the process towards a Smart City as an innovation process. It will highlight which actors are involved, how knowledge is shared among them, what form citizen participation processes take and whether the use of digital and smart services within a Smart City leads to a more sustainable city. Such a process-oriented method should show, among other things, to what extent and when sustainability-relevant motives play a role and which actors and citizens are involved in the process at all.
The demand for metals from the entire periodic table is currently increasing due to the ongoing digitalization. However, their use within electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) poses problems as they cannot be recovered sufficiently in the end-of-life (EoL) phase. In this paper, we address the unleashed dissipation of metals caused by the design of EEE for which no globally established recycling technology exists. We describe the European Union's (EU) plan to strive for a circular economy (CE) as a political response to tackle this challenge. However, there is a lack of feedback from a design perspective. It is still unknown what the implications for products would be if politics were to take the path of a CE at the level of metals. To provide clarification in this respect, a case study for indium is presented and linked to its corresponding recycling-metallurgy of zinc and lead. As a result, a first material-specific rule on the design of so-called "anti-dissipative" products is derived, which actually supports designing EEE with recycling in mind and represents an already achieved CE on the material level. In addition, the design of electrotechnical standardization is being introduced. As a promising tool, it addresses the multi-dimensional problems of recovering metals from urban ores and assists in the challenge of enhancing recycling rates. Extending the focus to other recycling-metallurgy besides zinc and lead in further research would enable the scope for material-specific rules to be widened.
The earth's capacity to absorb greenhouse gases is ultimately a critical limiting factor in the handling of metals. The fact that the demand for metals far exceeds their secondary production is extremely problematic at this point. Nevertheless, metals are crucial for climate protection and energy system transformation. Examples are the rare earth metal neodymium used in high-performance permanent magnets in wind turbines, the alkali metal lithium as the most important component in batteries, or the metal tellurium used in thin-film solar cells to generate solar power. It is therefore essential to promote the aspects of resource efficiency and to strengthen the critical role of metals in national and European policy programs. Next to a global solution, a European solo effort with predominantly market-based instruments and the effects of committed behaviour by civil society in the European Union (EU), show that the EU can make a considerable contribution to sustainable development on its own. Thus, a comprehensive approach is needed for sustainable metal management in the sense of a circular economy on the European level fostering sustainable production and consumption pathways. But, this need and the special role of metals are not seen in the current debate about resources in society and politics. Due to the fact that in public perception, metallic raw materials are often discussed as less urgent than energy or polymer raw materials, this article aims to highlight the critical role of metals.
Further, the objective of this contribution is to show which prerequisites exist for the development and establishment of a holistic metal management and where political strategies have to start. Challenges needed to be overcome to achieve such a holistic metal strategy and management are highlighted. In particular, the role of the metal industry, circular product design and labelling and corresponding indicator systems is examined. In addition, the special role of digitalisation is being worked out. Finally, conclusions are drawn and shown which aspects have to be considered for a holistic metal strategy and management.
Sustainable consumption policies affect households differently, in particular when they are confronted with limitations on income, time or freedom of movement (e.g. driving to work). And although it is possible to assess either the average or individual material footprint (per capita or via surveys), we lack methods to describe different types of households, their lifestyles and footprints in a representative manner.
We explore possibilities to do so in this article. Our interest lies in finding an applicable method that allows us to describe the footprint of households regarding their socio-demographic characteristics but also find the causes consumption behaviour. This type of monitoring would enable us to tailor policies for sustainable consumption that respect people's needs and restrictions.
Water and energy are two pivotal areas for future sustainable development, with complex linkages existing between the two sectors. These linkages require special attention in the context of the energy transition. Against this background, this paper analyses the role of water availability in the development of solar thermal and photovoltaic power plants for the case of the Draa Valley in southern Morocco. Located in a semi-arid to arid mountainous area, the Drâa Valley faces high water stress - a situation expected to worsen due to climate change. At the same time, the region has one of the greatest potentials for solar energy in the world. To examine whether limited water availability could accelerate or delay the implementation of solar thermal and photovoltaic power plants, this paper compares regional water availability and demand in the Draa Valley for different scenarios, paying particular attention to potential socio-economic development pathways. The Water Evaluation and Planning System software is applied to allocate the water resources in the study region. The water supply is modelled under the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 climate scenario, while the water demand for the Drâa Valley is modelled for a combination of three socio-economic and two energy scenarios. The climate scenario describes a significant decrease in water availability by 2050, while the socio-economic and energy scenarios show an increase in water demand. The results demonstrate that during a sequence of dry years the reservoirs water availability is reduced and shortages in water supply can result in high levels of unmet demand. If this situation occurs, oasis farming, water for drinking and energy production could compete directly with each other for water resources. The energy scenarios indicate that the use of dry cooling technologies in concentrated solar power and photovoltaic hybrid systems could be one option for reducing competition for the scarce water resources in the region. However, given that energy generation accounts for only a small share of the regional water demand, the results also suggest that socio-economic demand reduction, especially in the agricultural sector, for example by reducing the cultivated area, will most likely become necessary.
In this paper, we aim to present a comprehensive analysis on the emerging phenomenon of distributed innovation in commons-based peer production (CBPP) platforms. Starting with the exploration of the widely held belief on value-creation confined to industrial settings, we raise several questions regarding the feasibility of, and a need for, an inclusive innovation process that can tap grassroots capacity into both traditional (industrial research and development) and emerging (peer-to-peer) innovation models to yield sustainable solutions. In particular, we explore the emergence and structuration of digital innovations in the maker movement, as it presents an alternative construct of innovation wherein access to and sharing of knowledge is predominantly distributed. With innovation outcomes often freely revealed, its very structuration could pose a principal challenge to our conceptualizations of value creation and competitive advantage in the current economic model. Drawing from responses received from 200 collaborative innovation platforms, six semi‐structured interviews focusing on socio-technical innovation cases, as well as four in-depth narrative interviews with maker turned entrepreneurs, we present a detailed analysis on the topology of network, typology of actors, as well as the underlying innovation ecosystem in CBPP networks in Germany. In doing so, we contribute to the conceptualization of peer-to-peer distributed innovations in collaborative platforms.
A clear understanding of socio-technical interdependencies and a structured vision are prerequisites for fostering and steering a transition to a fully renewables-based energy system. To facilitate such understanding, a phase model for the renewable energy (RE) transition in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries has been developed and applied to the country case of Lebanon. It is designed to support the strategy development and governance of the energy transition and to serve as a guide for decision makers.
Lebanon's energy transition towards REs stands at a very early stage of the first transformation phase. Although abundant solar and wind energy potential does exist, the pathway towards a 100% renewables energy seems very challenging for Lebanon, as a consequence of highly unstable political conditions. The most pressing concern for Lebanon's electricity sector is combating the country's fiscal imbalance, while providing secure and reliable electricity supply. At the operational level, Lebanon's grid network requires significant investments to rebuild, retrofit, and expand the overall capacity and energy efficiency improvements.
The need to strengthen the energy system after the political turmoil of the civil war is likely to offer several long-term opportunities, such as developing the economy, reducing environmental pollution, and increasing the energy security. In order to move forward into the first phase, Lebanon needs to improve the framework conditions for REs and implement its visions. It needs to support the market development in a realistic timeframe, where structural reforms represent the highest priority.
The results of the analysis along the transition phase model towards 100% renewables energy are intended to stimulate and support the discussion on Lebanon's future energy system by providing an overarching guiding vision for the energy transition and the development of appropriate policies.
Urban transitions and transformations research fosters a dialogue between sustainability transitions theory an inter- and transdisciplinary research on urban change. As a field, urban transitions and transformations research encompasses plural analytical and conceptual perspectives. In doing so, this field opens up sustainability transitions research to new communities of practice in urban environments, including mayors, transnational municipal networks, and international organizations.
In this thesis, the systematic, situation-oriented selection of approaches to sustainability assessment and effects of selection on assessment results are investigated. The central focus lies on the practice-oriented design of a framework to support selection decisions as well as the necessary criteria and scales for the systematic, quantifiable description of assessment approaches and assessment situations within such a framework. Sustainability assessments are important instruments for the derivation of goals, strategies and measures for shaping sustainable development in all domains. They provide decision-makers in science, industry, politics and society with vital answers to sustainability-related questions that arise in the most diverse contexts. Numerous different assessment approaches are available for carrying out sustainability assessments within such assessment situations. Because of the multitude and diversity of assessment situations and approaches, not every approach is fitting for every situation. In current practice, the fit between approaches and assessment situations is not, or only insufficiently, taken into account when selecting sustainability assessment approaches. Furthermore, no systematic studies have yet been conducted on the effects of approach selection on assessment results. The central result of this work is a concept for the situation-oriented selection support of sustainability assessment approaches based on a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making framework. With the framework, "fitness scores" are calculated, which are used to quantify and operationalize the fit between assessment approaches and assessment situations. With the developed concept, different assessment approaches are selected and exemplarily applied within a use case. Hereby, the effects of approach selection on assessment results are examined. On the basis of the knowledge gained with regard to approach selection, framework development and application, the potentials and limits of assessment approaches widely fitting for diverse assessment situations are finally derived.
With increasing world population and an unsettling resource scarcity in the back, sustainble consumption has moved to the foreground of political, economical and social discussions. One major school-of-thought is Circular Economy (CE), an approach summarizing various sustainable consumption activites under one roof. However, quantitative studies on the consumer are rare, yet crucial for a transfer from linear to circular consumption. This dissertation adds to literature by providing pioneer insights into consumer behavior in CE as an overarching concept, instead limiting research on singular subconcepts. Namely, four consumer activities are studied: recycling, upcycling, renting and sharing. In order to identify relevant insights for both academics and practitioners in CE, the research question ("what drives participation in CE?") is broken down into sub-hypotheses, which are addressed by three empirical studies. Using the SOR-Model (adaption Belk 1975) as overarching logic, the three studies deal with (1) the consumer (and their motivation) and situational stimuli (both (2) offline and (3) online). Respectively, three data sets are consulted to assess the sub-hypotheses and to identify overarching insights on how to accelerate consumer participation in CE, The research methodology employed ranges from a structured equation model (SEM), a random allocation field experiment during Fashion Week in Berlin to a discrete-choice model with best-worst scaling. The dissertation succeeds in revealing that (1) different activities in CE can be summarized in one latent variable, proving CE as a wholesome concept in consumer-related activities; that (2) Trust has a leveraging effect on participation in CE activities. Further, Trust can be enhanced offline via face-to-face interaction and online via third-party online attributes.; and that (3) experience in CE activities affects perception of online attributes, implying the need for adapted measures when dealing with CE-unexperienced consumers as compared to consumers with prior experience in CE activities.
Which of Pope Francis' countless appearances will posterity consider truly iconic? Probably neither his journey to the shipwrecked in Lampedusa nor his encounter with the indigenous peoples of the Amazon, although both are characteristic of the pontificate - rather, it will be his appearance in the deserted St. Peter's Square during the coronavirus pandemic. A single figure in white, alone, laboriously climbing the steps to St. Peter's Basilica, then offering the Urbi et Orbi blessing with the monstrance - that image will be in the history books. This view undoubtedly thrives on contrast: the image of the Pope standing alone in the rain at nightfall in contrast to the image familiar to television viewers from all over the world where the Pope appears in St Peter's Square amidst the cheering of tens or hundreds of thousands under Bernini's colonnades. And then, in March 2020, a formidable showing of vulnerability that touched even non-believers.
Urban development faces numerous challenges in the 21st century and a central task is the sustainable and liveable design of the city. Can the concept of a Smart City be a tool to making cities more liveable and sustainable? To find out, we chose a biographical method to analyse the steps towards a successful Smart City and to better understand the structures behind it. We combine the innovation biography method with a process model from sustainability governance research, namely Steurer's sustainability governance model and apply them to Vienna's Smart City, especially the preparation of the Vienna Smart City framework strategy (Steurer & Trattnigg, 2010). On the one hand, this article shows that a transfer of the innovation biography method to urban research can generate deeper insights on urban development processes in general. On the other hand, the approach chosen can show that Vienna integrates the sustainable urban design into the process of Smart City design. So the smart and sustainable city design, often called for in theoretical contributions, is practised in Vienna. Due to its reconstructive character, the biographical method has revealed that it is possible to govern sustainability by using Smart City as an umbrella strategy, as long as one manages it in an integrated and holistic way, recognises trends and is able to acquire and use research funds effectively and efficiently.
The knowledge gained from the new method for urban and Smart City research is twofold. Firstly, the transfer of the method previously developed in the human sciences and subsequently for organisations, institutions and products and services also works in urban research. Second, the innovation biography provides in-depth insights into the process towards the Smart City and the stakeholders involved. The use of the biographical method highlights the relevance of good governance in terms of interdisciplinary cooperation on the one hand and high political commitment on the other through the micro-level perspective and is also sensitive enough to highlight the importance of an appropriate narrative in and for the process towards the Smart City.
Especially in the arid areas of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), water availability plays an important role in the expansion planning of industrial-scale solar power plants. Although power plants may account for only a very small portion of local water demand, competition for water with other sectors is expected to increase when water resources are insufficient for meeting local needs. This can lead to conflicts between different users (such as communities, farmers, tourism, businesses and utilities). Despite the increasing attention on the water-energy nexus, comprehensive studies analysing the interdependencies and potential conflicts between energy and water at the local level are absent.
To examine the linkages between water resources and energy technologies at the local level, this case study was selected because Morocco is one of the countries most affected by water scarcity and, at the same time, it is also one of the most promising countries in North Africa for the development of renewable energies and offers excellent conditions for solar and wind power plants. Nevertheless, the country's electricity system is still largely based on conventional energy sources, and the country is more than 95% dependent on energy imports. To strengthen the country's energy security and reduce the financial burden associated with energy imports, Morocco is pursuing an ambitious renewable energy expansion strategy: by 2020, around 42% of the national electricity demand should be met by renewable energies. In view of Morocco's ambitious plans, it is particularly important to identify the potential conflicts and synergies resulting from the expansion of renewable energies in relation to the water sector.
The energy sector today accounts for about 10% to 15% of global freshwater withdrawal. Most water in the energy sector is used for generating electricity, especially for cooling processes in thermal power plants. At the same time the demand for electricity is expected to increase significantly due to population growth and economic development in emerging and developing economies. Growing demand is also driven by electrification strategies pursued by industrialized countries to decarbonize their economies. With the global demand for electricity expected to increase significantly in the coming decades also the water demand in the power sector is expected to rise. However, due to the on-going 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 cooling system. In light of these challenges the objective of this analysis is to provide more systematic and robust answers in terms of the impacts of different decarbonization strategies in the electricity sector on water demand at global and regional level. The focus is on operational water use for electricity generation.
Green hydrogen will play a key role in building a climate-neutral energy-intensive industry, as key technologies for defossilising the production of steel and basic chemicals depend on it. Thus, policy-making needs to support the creation of a market for green hydrogen and its use in industry. However, it is unclear how appropriate policies should be designed, and a number of challenges need to be addressed. Based on an analysis of the ongoing German debate on hydrogen policies, this paper analyses how policy-making for green hydrogen development may support industry defossilisation. For the assessment of policy instruments, a simplified multi-criteria analysis (MCA) is used with an innovative approach that derives criteria from specific challenges. Four challenges and seven relevant policy instruments are identified. The results of the MCA reveal the potential of each of the selected instruments to address the challenges. The paper furthermore outlines how instruments might be combined in a policy package that supports industry defossilisation, creates synergies and avoids trade-offs. The paper's impact may reach beyond the German case, as the challenges are not specific to the country. The results are relevant for policy-makers in other countries with energy-intensive industries aiming to set the course towards a hydrogen future.
Sustainable supply chains : global cooperative regional economies for prosperity and resilience
(2021)
Two thirds of today's world trade is based on global value chains and supply networks. Purely regional supply chains have become less important in recent decades. The effects of these globalised structures are manifold. On the one hand, they promote employment and generate prosperity. On the other hand, they are beset by extreme social, ecological and economic imbalances.
The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the fragility of existing supply chain systems. The lockdown continues to disrupt complex supply chains and many problems of existing production and consumption continue to worsen. COVID-19 is one example of the crises that can shake globally networked supply chains in the short term. Other crises, such as climate change, develop more insidiously and are less immediately recognisable. Different as they are, such crises have one thing in common: they highlight the vulnerability of global social and economic structures and illustrate the impact of global trade on the regions and people of the world.
This is precisely where global sustainability strategy comes in - it aims to fundamentally reduce differences and inequalities in opportunities and quality of life. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the entire world into upheaval, creating an opportunity to make sustainability a central political resilience strategy.
In the wake of the Corona pandemic, the discussion about resilient communities has flared up. In order to guarantee supply in the face of such crises, these should be more strongly regional and circular in their economic approach and global and sustainable in their perspective. The aim should be sustainable, transparent, non-exploitative supply chains that guarantee the security of supply to cover basic needs and public services despite sudden changes and crises.
This discussion paper draws a future scenario of globally cooperative, circular regional economies that fundamentally reduce global inequalities in opportunities and quality of life, while at the same time permanently preserving the natural foundations of life.
Ambition coefficients : aligning baselines for international carbon markets with net zero pathways
(2021)
A clear understanding of socio-technical interdependencies and a structured vision are prerequisites for fostering and steering a transition to a fully renewables-based energy system. To facilitate such understanding, a phase model for the renewable energy transition in MENA countries has been developed and applied to the country case of Iraq. It is designed to support the strategy development and governance of the energy transition and to serve as a guide for decision makers.
The transition towards renewable energies is still at a very early stage in Iraq. Despite the drop in renewable technology costs over the last decade and the increasing deployment of renewables in the MENA region, the pathway towards renewable energies seems to be challenging for Iraq. This is attributable to the country's political instability and the dominant economic role played by the fossil fuel sector. The most pressing concern for Iraq's electricity sector is the need to secure a constant electricity supply. At operational level, Iraq's electricity infrastructure requires significant investment to rebuilt, retro-fit and expand its overall capacity and to improve efficiencies.
Yet, the need to rebuild the energy system after the war and the subsequent violent conflicts could offer an opportunity for a transition towards renewables that would benefit Iraq in the short term and also provide a long-term economic development perspective. To take advantage of this opportunity, Iraq needs to improve the framework conditions for renewable energies and raise awareness about the benefits it offers. Renewable energy regulations need to be introduced, market development supported, a realistic timeframe for the transition process established and an appropriate and reliable legal framework developed. The results of the analysis along the transition phase model towards 100% renewables are intended to stimulate and support the discussion about Iraq's future energy system by providing an overarching guiding vision for the energy transition and the development of appropriate policy strategies.
A clear understanding of socio-technical interdependencies and a structured vision are prerequisites for fostering and steering a transition to a fully renewables-based energy system. To facilitate such understanding, a phase model for the renewable energy transition in MENA countries has been developed and applied to the country case of Egypt. It is designed to support the strategy development and governance of the energy transition and to serve as a guide for decision makers.
Egypt, with its abundant solar and wind energy potential, has excellent preconditions to embark on the pathway towards a 100% renewable energy system. The country has successfully taken its first steps in this direction by attracting international finance and implementing several large-scale solar and wind projects. Yet, while Egypt has made significant progress, increased efforts are still required if the country aims to proceed towards a fully renewables-based system. The stronger system integration of renewable energies requires, for example, an alignment of regulations for the electricity, mobility and heat sectors. In this context, Egypt would be well advised to develop and implement an overall strategy for the energy transition that includes not only electricity generation but all sectors.
By placing a stronger focus on renewable energy, also to decarbonise the industrial sector, Egypt, as Africa's second most industrialised country, could seize the opportunity for economic development within a decarbonising global economy. The results of the analysis along the transition phase model towards 100% renewable energy are intended to stimulate and support the discussion on Egypt's future energy system by providing an overarching guiding vision for the energy transition and the development of appropriate policies.
To limit global warming, the use of carbon capture and storage technologies (CCS) is considered to be of major importance. In addition to the technical-economic, ecological and political aspects, the question of social acceptance is a decisive factor for the implementation of such low-carbon technologies. This study is the first literature review addressing the acceptance of industrial CCS (iCCS). In contrast to electricity generation, the technical options for large-scale reduction of CO2 emissions in the energy-intensive industry sector are not sufficient to achieve the targeted GHG neutrality in the industrial sector without the use of CCS. Therefore, it will be crucial to determine which factors influence the acceptance of iCCS and how these findings can be used for policy and industry decision-making processes. The results show that there has been limited research on the acceptance of iCCS. In addition, the study highlights some important differences between the acceptance of iCCS and CCS. Due to the technical diversity of future iCCS applications, future acceptance research must be able to better address the complexity of the research subject.
The Glasgow climate conference marked a symbolic juncture, lying half-way between the adoption of the UNFCCC in 1992 and the year 2050 in which according to the IPCC special report on the 1.5°C limit net zero CO2 emissions need to be reached, globally, in order to maintain a good chance of achieving the 1.5°C limit. This article undertakes an assessment of what the UNFCCC and in particular the Paris Agreement and its implementation process have actually achieved so far up to and including the results of the Glasgow conference. The article discusses efforts at ambition raising both within and outside the formal diplomatic process, the finalization of the implementation rules of the Paris Agreement, as well as progress on gender responsiveness, climate finance, adaptation and loss and damage. In summary, the Paris Agreement and its implementation can be considered a success as it is having a discernible impact on the behavior of parties as well as on non-party actors. However, significant further efforts will be required to actually achieve the objectives of the Agreement.
This report was prepared by the Wuppertal Institute in cooperation with the German Economic Institute as part of the SCI4climate.NRW project. The report aims to shed light on the possible phenomenon that the availability and costs of "green" energy sources may become a relevant location factor for basic materials produced in a climate-neutral manner in the future.
For this purpose, we introduce the term "Renewables Pull". We define Renewables Pull as the initially hypothetical phenomenon of a shift of industrial production from one region to another as a result of different marginal costs of renewable energies (or of secondary energy sources or feedstocks based on renewable energies).
Shifts in industrial production in the sense of Renewables Pull can in principle be caused by differences in the stringency of climate policies in different countries, as in the case of Carbon Leakage. Unlike Carbon Leakage, however, Renewables Pull can also occur if similarly ambitious climate policies are implemented in different countries. This is because Renewables Pull is primarily determined by differences in the costs and availability of renewable energies. In addition, Renewables Pull can also be triggered by cost reductions of renewable energies and by changing preferences on the demand side towards climate-friendly products. Another important difference to Carbon Leakage is that the Renewables Pull effect does not necessarily counteract climate policy.
Similar to Carbon Leakage, it is to be expected that Renewables Pull could become relevant primarily for very energy-intensive products in basic materials industries. In these sectors (e.g. in the steel or chemical industry), there is also the possibility that relocations of specific energy-intensive parts of the production process could trigger domino effects. As a result, large parts of the value chains previously existing in a country or region could also be subjected to an (indirect) Renewables Pull effect.
For the federal state of NRW, in which the basic materials industry plays an important role, the possible emergence of Renewables Pull is associated with significant challenges as climate policy in Germany, the EU and also worldwide is expected to become more ambitious in the future.
This report aims to enable and initiate a deeper analysis of the potential future developments and challenges associated with the Renewables Pull effect. Thus, in the final chapter of the report, several research questions are formulated that can be answered in the further course of the SCI4climate.NRW project as well as in other research projects.
This paper presents an approach for assessing lifestyle carbon footprints and lifestyle change options aimed at achieving the 1.5 °C climate goal and facilitating the transition to decarbonized lifestyles through stakeholder participatory research. Using data on Finland and Japan it shows potential impacts of reducing carbon footprints through changes in lifestyles for around 30 options covering food, housing, and mobility domains, in comparison with the 2030 and 2050 per-capita targets (2.5-3.2 tCO2e by 2030; 0.7-1.4 tCO2e by 2050). It discusses research opportunities for expanding the footprint-based quantitative analysis to incorporate subnational analysis, living lab, and scenario development aiming at advancing sustainability science on the transition to decarbonized lifestyles.
The target of zero emissions sets a new standard for industry and industrial policy. Industrial policy in the twenty-first century must aim to achieve zero emissions in the energy and emissions intensive industries. Sectors such as steel, cement, and chemicals have so far largely been sheltered from the effects of climate policy. A major shift is needed, from contemporary industrial policy that mainly protects industry to policy strategies that transform the industry. For this purpose, we draw on a wide range of literatures including engineering, economics, policy, governance, and innovation studies to propose a comprehensive industrial policy framework. The policy framework relies on six pillars: directionality, knowledge creation and innovation, creating and reshaping markets, building capacity for governance and change, international coherence, and sensitivity to socio-economic implications of phase-outs. Complementary solutions relying on technological, organizational, and behavioural change must be pursued in parallel and throughout whole value chains. Current policy is limited to supporting mainly some options, e.g. energy efficiency and recycling, with some regions also adopting carbon pricing, although most often exempting the energy and emissions intensive industries. An extended range of options, such as demand management, materials efficiency, and electrification, must also be pursued to reach zero emissions. New policy research and evaluation approaches are needed to support and assess progress as these industries have hitherto largely been overlooked in domestic climate policy as well as international negotiations.
Agriculture is an economic sector with massive impact on biodiversity and agrobiodiversity. Sustainable diets represent a critical policy leverage and a realistic opportunity to reduce the environmental impact of the agro-food sector while improving human health at the same time. Eating out is an increasingly common habit for many consumers and, by offering sustainable dishes, catering companies can play a central role. To do this, they need to understand and correctly assess the sustainability of their food portfolio, but assessment tools are not well established yet. The NAHGAST project, of which this study was part, developed and tested a sustainability assessment tool for catering companies based on concrete targets defined per meal. This study addresses the lack of methods to evaluate the impact of food on biodiversity, with a particular focus on agrobiodiversity. The work illustrates a context-specific application of an enhanced DPSIR model to structure information and select indicators, and proposes a transdisciplinary use of existing metrics. Further research is needed in order to define scientifically sound target values or sustainability ranges for each indicator per meal, in order to calculate them. Strengths and limits of the study are discussed.
Managing energy use by municipalities should be an important part of local energy and climate policy. The ISO 50001 standard constitutes an internationally recognized catalogue of requirements for systematic energy management. Currently, this standard is mostly implemented by companies. Our study presents an approach where consultants supported 28 European municipalities in establishing energy management systems. A majority (71%) of these municipalities had achieved ISO 50001 certification by the end of our study. We also conducted two surveys to learn more about motivations and challenges when it comes to establishing municipal energy management systems. We found that organizational challenges and resource constraints were the most important topics in this regard. Based on the experiences in our study we present lessons learned regarding supporting municipalities in establishing energy management systems.
This paper examines the Global Climate Action Agenda (GCAA) and discusses options to improve sub- and non-state involvement in post-2020 climate governance. A framework that stimulates sub- and non-state action is a necessary complement to national governmental action, as the latter falls short of achieving low-carbon and climate-resilient development as envisaged in the Paris Agreement. Applying design principles for an ideal-type orchestration framework, we review literature and gather expert judgements to assess whether the GCAA has been collaborative, comprehensive, evaluative and catalytic. Results show that there has been greater coordination among orchestrators, for instance in the organization of events. However, mobilization efforts remain event-driven and too little effort is invested in understanding the progress of sub- and non-state action. Data collection has improved, although more sophisticated indicators are needed to evaluate climate and sustainable development impacts. Finally, the GCAA has recorded more action, but relatively little by actors in developing countries. As the world seeks to recover from the COVID-19 crisis and enters a new decade of climate action, the GCAA could make a vital contribution in challenging times by helping governments keep and enhance climate commitments; strengthening capacity for sub- and non-state action; enabling accountability; and realizing sustainable development.
To which extent do happiness correlates contribute to the stability of life satisfaction? Which method is appropriate to provide a conclusive answer to this question? Based on life satisfaction data of the German SOEP, we show that by Negative Binomial quasi-maximum likelihood estimation statements can be made as to how far correlates of happiness contribute to the stabilisation of life satisfaction. The results show that happiness correlates which are generally associated with a positive change in life satisfaction, also stabilise life satisfaction and destabilise dissatisfaction with life. In such as they lower the probability of leaving positive states of life satisfaction and increase the probability of leaving dissatisfied states. This in particular applies to regular exercise, volunteering and living in a marriage. We further conclude that both patterns in response behaviour and the quality of the measurement instrument, the life satisfaction scale, have a significant effect on the variation and stability of reported life satisfaction.
A sectoral perspective on international climate governance : key findings and research priorities
(2021)
This concluding article derives six major findings from the contributions to this special issue. First, the barriers and challenges to decarbonisation vary significantly across sectoral systems. Second, and similarly, the need and potential for the five functions of international governance institutions to contribute to effective climate protection also vary widely. Third, while the pattern is uneven, there is a general undersupply of international climate governance. Fourth, the sectoral analyses confirm that the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement play an important overarching role but remain limited in advancing effective sectoral governance. Fifth, while non-environmental institutions may present important barriers to decarbonisation, more synergistic effects are possible. Sixth, our sectoral approach provides a sound basis on which to identify sector-specific policy options. The paper then offers reflections on the merits and limitations of the sectoral approach, before identifying avenues for future research to further advance the agenda.
Artificial intelligence in the sorting of municipal waste as an enabler of the circular economy
(2021)
The recently finalized research project "ZRR for municipal waste" aimed at testing and evaluating the automation of municipal waste sorting plants by supplementing or replacing manual sorting, with sorting by a robot with artificial intelligence (ZRR). The objectives were to increase the current recycling rates and the purity of the recovered materials; to collect additional materials from the current rejected flows; and to improve the working conditions of the workers, who could then concentrate on, among other things, the maintenance of the robots. Based on the empirical results of the project, this paper presents the main results of the training and operation of the robotic sorting system based on artificial intelligence, which, to our knowledge, is the first attempt at an application for the separation of bulky municipal solid waste (MSW) and an installation in a full-scale waste treatment plant. The key questions for the research project included (a) the design of test protocols to assess the quality of the sorting process and (b) the evaluation of the performance quality in the first six months of the training of the underlying artificial intelligence and its database.
Supply risks and environmental concerns drive the interest in critical raw material recycling in the European Union. Globally, waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is projected to increase by almost 40% until 2030. This waste stream can be a source of secondary raw materials. The determination of the economic feasibility of recycling and recovering specific materials is a data-intensive, time-consuming, and case-specific task. This study introduced a two-part evaluation scheme consisting of upper continental crust concentrations and raw material prices as a simple tool to indicate the potential and limitations of critical raw material recycling. It was applied to the case of light-emitting diodes (LED) lamps in the EU. A material flow analysis was conducted, and the projected waste amounts were analyzed using the new scheme. Indium, gallium, and the rare earth elements appeared in low concentrations and low absolute masses and showed only a small revenue potential. Precious metals represented the largest revenue share. Future research should confirm the validity and usefulness of the evaluation scheme.
The Digital Product Passport (DPP) is a concept of a policy instrument particularly pushed by policy circles to contribute to a circular economy. The preliminary design of the DPP is supposed to have product-related information compiled mainly by manufactures and, thus, to provide the basis for more circular products. Given the lack of scientific debate on the DPP, this study seeks to work out design options of the DPP and how these options might benefit stakeholders in a product's value chain. In so doing, we introduce the concept of the DPP and, then, describe the existing regime of regulated and voluntary product information tools focusing on the role of stakeholders. These initial results are reflected in an actor-centered analysis on potential advantages gained through the DPP. Data is generated through desk research and a stakeholder workshop. In particular, by having explored the role the DPP for different actors, we find substantial demand for further research on a variety of issues, for instance, on how to reduce red tape and increase incentives for manufacturers to deliver certain information and on how or through what data collection tool (e.g., database) relevant data can be compiled and how such data is provided to which stakeholder group. We call upon other researchers to close the research gaps explored in this paper also to provide better policy direction on the DPP.
This article develops a sectoral approach to the analysis of global climate governance. This approach advances the assessment of global climate governance by focusing on complexes of intergovernmental and transnational institutions co-governing key socio-technical sectoral systems. The actual and potential contribution of these sectoral institutional complexes to advancing decarbonization can be assessed according to five key governance functions: (1) providing guidance and signal to actors, (2) setting rules to facilitate collective action, (3) enhancing transparency and accountability, (4) offering support (finance, technology, capacity-building), and (5) promoting knowledge and learning. On this basis, we can assess the potential of international cooperation to address the challenges specific sectoral systems face in the climate transition as well as the extent to which existing sectoral institutional complexes deliver on this potential. This provides a solid starting point for developing options for filling identified gaps and enhancing the effectiveness of global climate governance.
Nowadays, high expectations are set for a digitally enabled circular economy (CE), to enhance resource efficiency. Tracing, tracking, and storing information is most important for this. In this paper, the application of Internet of Things (IoT) and Distributed Ledger Technology (Blockchain) are hence discussed by presenting the case of professional Electrical and Electronic Equipment (EEE) in Italy. Within the context of CE, prevention of electronic waste (WEEE) is extremely relevant as it is a fast-growing waste stream, and the products contain environmentally damaging substances as well as valuable and rare materials. The use of a proper combination of IoT and blockchain can help the producers to keep control on products until EEE end-of-life, while promoting CE strategies and supporting decision-making. Based on the outcomes of five interviews conducted in 2019 to companies of the EEE sector, potential improvements in the EEE end-of-use management are discussed. After providing the definition of requirements for both the technical solution and its testing are provided, three solution variations and the related business models are created and presented, as well as considerations on their environmental and economic impacts. The study shows how digital technologies can support the appropriate and circular management of EEE products and WEEE.
Consumption by private households in various areas of demand - housing, mobility, nutrition, services and products - contributes to around 10 % of total emissions in Germany. Of this, higher-income households are responsible for a disproportionate share. At the same time, many households often lack the knowledge, time, or motivation to deal with their own energy-relevant and climate-impacting behaviours. In this context, energy advice services play an important role for raising awareness, activating consumers and imparting knowledge about available options for action. However, conventional energy advice services are mostly limited to the topics of building and appliance energy efficiency - especially for middle- and high-income households - without considering private consumption behaviour and the related social practices as a whole. In practice, there has been little differentiation to date in addressing target groups in a way that takes into account different lifestyles and realities and the underlying values and motivations in a pluralistic society. The present paper presents a methodological approach to develop targeted energy advice approaches in urban environments that are oriented towards the motivations of different types of households with medium and high incomes. It proposes a three-step approach consisting of 1) a microdata-based population analysis to identify and categorize target subgroups, 2) an inventory of existing advice offers with regard to their coverage and approach and 3) a gap analysis based on the results of the preceding steps. Applied to a large city in Germany, the analysis finds that gaps are rarely found with regard to communicated facts but rather the way in which information is conveyed. Accordingly, recommendations relate to more effectively use windows of opportunity and framing of measures to match target group motivations.
On the pathway to climate neutrality, EU member states are obliged to submit national energy and climate plans (NECPs) with planned policies and measures for decarbonization until 2030 and long-term strategies (LTSs) for further decarbonization until 2050. We analysed the 27 NECPs and 15 LTSs submitted by October 2020 using an interrater method. This paper focuses on energy sufficiency policies and measures in the transport sector.
We found a total of 236 sufficiency policy measures with more than half of them (53 %) in the transport/mobility sector. Additionally, we found 41 measures that address two or more sectors (cross-sectoral measures). From the explicit sufficiency measures within the transport sector, 82 % aim at modal shift. A reduction of transport volumes is much less addressed. Countries plan to use mainly fiscal and economic instruments. Those are in many cases investments in infrastructure of low-carbon transport modes and taxation instruments. Plans on decarbonisation measures are also frequently mentioned. The majority of cross-sectoral measures are carbon taxes or tax reforms, also economic instruments.
On the one hand it is encouraging that Member States strongly emphasize the transport sector in their NECPs and LTSs - at least quantitatively and concerning sufficiency measures - because this sector has been the worst-performing in climate mitigation so far. On the other hand, the measures described seem not sufficient to reach ambitious climate targets, and we doubt that the presented set of policy instruments will get the transport sector on track to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in the necessary extent.
The unprecedented challenge of reaching carbon neutrality before mid-century and a large share of it within 2030 in order to keep under the 1.5 or 2 °C carbon budgets, requires broad and deep changes in production and consumption patterns which, together with a shift to renewables and reinforced efficiency, need to be addressed through energy sufficiency. However, inadequate representations and obstacles to characterising and identifying sufficiency potentials often lead to an underrepresentation of sufficiency in models, scenarios and policies.
One way to tackle this issue is to work on the development of sufficiency assumptions at a concrete level where various implications such as social consequences, environmental co-benefits, conditions for implementation can be discussed. This approach has been developed as the backbone of a collaborative project, gathering partners in 20 European countries at present, aiming for the integration of harmonised national scenarios into an ambitious net-zero European vision.
The approach combines a qualitative discussion on the role of energy sufficiency in a "systemic" merit order for global sustainability, and a quantitative discussion of the level of sufficiency to be set to contribute to meeting 100 % renewables supply and net-zero emissions goals by 2050 at the latest. The latter is based on the use of a dashboard, which serves as a common descriptive framework for all national scenario trajectories and their comparison, with a view to harmonising and strengthening them through an iterative process.
A set of key sufficiency-related indicators have been selected to be included in the dashboard, while various interrelated infrastructural, economic, environmental, social or legal factors or drivers have been identified and mapped. This paves the way for strengthening assumptions through the elaboration of "sufficiency corridors" defining a convergent, acceptable and sustainable level of energy services in Europe. The process will eventually inform the potential for sufficiency policies through a better identification of leverages, impacts and co-benefits.
In Germany, the consumer sector "food" is responsible for around 15% of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Due to the high demand for food outside the home, changes in this area have the potential to significantly boost climate-efficient nutrition, and this includes changes in school kitchens. Currently, about 264 kg of GHG emissions per year are attributable to the food served to each school child who has school lunch year-round.
Therefore, the project "Climate and Energy Efficient Cooking in Schools" ("Klima- und Energieeffiziente Küche in Schulen” or KEEKS for short) sought to determine the status quo in the kitchens of 22 all-day schools serving a total of 5,000 lunches per day. This was done by taking energy measurements and analyzing the equipment, technology and processes used in the kitchens, and by interviewing kitchen managers using guided interviews. Greenhouse gas emissions arising from menus and kitchen processes were calculated, potential savings were identified, and recommendations for action were developed and tested. The most effective measures - the reduction and substitution of meat and meat products and the establishment of efficient waste management systems - save around 10% of a school kitchen’s greenhouse gas emissions. The recommendations that have been developed can support kitchen staff in designing a climate-friendly, child-friendly, healthy and affordable menu in the school kitchen.
Practices and research on measuring traditionally urban sustainability abound, therefore the challenge now is related to how the urban carbon issues are included into current measuring methods, thus there is a need to develop methods for measuring urban low-carbon sustainability. In this paper, a simple method, which is based on low-carbon sustainability index, is developed. The overall urban low-carbon sustainability index is the weighted sum of 11 single indices, and each single index is defined as the indicator assessing the development level against the baseline. The baseline is often the criteria or the minimum requirement of low-carbon sustainability. Case studies in four Chinese cities have put this method into practice, and the results show that all four selected cities fail to pass the testing of sensible low-carbon sustainability rule and they are all in weakly low-carbon sustainable development. Although the four cities have made great progress in their capacity building on pollution control and their capacities on wastewater treatment, main pollutants' removal and household and hazardous wastes treatment are enough to meet the needs of local development, they are all facing the great challenges on using of sustainable energy, offsetting of CO2 emissions and adoptions of nature-based solutions. The method developed by this research is a useful tool for decision makers identifying whether the local development is not on a low-carbon sustainable path.
Nutrition is one of the most important areas for the great transformation. So how can a shift towards a sustainable food system be achieved? This paper addresses this question - based on more than ten years of research on sustainable nutrition at the Wuppertal Institute. It focuses on public catering, because even small changes - for example in the choice of ingredients - have a huge impact here. With appropriate policy frameworks, public catering can serve as an easily accessible place for consumers to experience sustainable food and at the same time be a reliable buyer of biodiversity and climate-friendly food from farmers. However, other actors are also needed for a transformation of the food system: The "Zukunftsimpuls" addresses politics, (agricultural) industry, science and every individual - because the transformation of the food system is a task for the entire society.
The transition from today's "take, make, waste" economic paradigm to a circular economy requires a joint effort from actors on all levels: governments, business, and civil society. While companies are among the drivers of the circular transformation, they find it hard to achieve a circular economy on their own. Hence, cross-industry collaboration is one of the imperatives for scaling a circular economy. Against this background, econsense, together with Accenture and the Wuppertal Institute, launched its study "Germany's Transition to a Circular Economy - How to Unlock the Potential of Cross-Industry Collaboration".
Based on a survey and expert interviews within the econsense community, the study finds that companies are yet to unlock the full potential of cross-industry collaboration. While two thirds of analysed industry collaborations have a high potential for scaling the circular economy, only 43 per cent of those already show a high degree of interaction. The study provides concrete guidance for companies to get started with circularity and identify the right partners for cross-industry collaboration. Specifically, the report recommends companies: 1) Understand what circularity is about and map it on their own operations and processes. 2) Understand the different circular business models and identify the ones relevant to each business. 3) Discover areas where collaboration can help to create the needed foundation and to execute circular actions.
On the one hand, a large number of companies have committed to achieve net zero emissions and many of them foresee to offset some remaining emissions with carbon credits, suggesting a surge of future demand. Yet, the supply side of the voluntary carbon market is struggling to align its business model with the new legal architecture of the Paris Agreement. This article juxtaposes these two perspectives. It provides an overview of the plans of 482 major companies with some form of neutrality/net zero pledge and traces the struggle on the supply side of the voluntary carbon market to come up with a viable business model that ensures environmental integrity and contributes to achieving the objectives of the Paris Agreement. Our analysis finds that if carbon credits are used to offset remaining emissions against neutrality objectives, these credits need to be accounted against the host countries' Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to ensure environmental integrity. Yet, operationalizing this approach is challenging and will require innovative solutions and political support.
Key policy insights:
There is a growing mismatch between the faith placed in carbon credits by private sector companies and the continued quest for a common position of the main suppliers of the voluntary carbon market.
The voluntary carbon market has not yet found a way to align itself with the new legal architecture of the Paris Agreement in a credible and legitimate way.
Public policy support at the national and international level will be needed to operationalize a robust approach for the market’s future activities.
Making school-based GHG-emissions tangible by student-led carbon footprint assessment program
(2021)
Schools play an important role in achieving climate protection goals, because they lay the foundation of knowledge for a responsible next generation. Therefore, schools as institutions have a special role model function. Enabling schools to become aware of their own carbon footprint (CF) is an important prerequisite for being able to tap the substantial CO2 reduction potential. Aiming at the direct involvement of students in the assessment process, a new assessment tool was developed within the Schools4Future project that gives students the opportunity to determine their own school's CF. With this instrument the CO2 emissions caused by mobility, heating and electricity consumption as well as for food in the school canteen and for consumables (paper) can be recorded. It also takes into account existing renewable energy sources. Through the development of the tool, not only a monitoring instrument was established but also a concrete starting point from which students could take actions to reduce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. This paper presents the tool and its methods used to calculate the CF and compares it with existing approaches. A comparative case study of four pilot schools in Germany demonstrates the practicability of the tool and reveals fundamental differences between the GHG emissions.
2020 was meant to be the year of climate ambition. Then the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the Glasgow conference was postponed to November 2021, and climate policy generally appeared to have been put on the backburner. But towards the end of the year prospects seemed to brighten with a series of zero-emission pledges and the election of Joe Biden as US President. This article analyses what the year of the pandemic achieved in terms of combating climate change. This article first summarizes the virtual events that were organised to substitute for the physical UNFCCC conferences and what progress was or was not made on the outstanding items of the "Paris rulebook", implementation of the Gender Action Plan, and other items. Subsequently, the article surveys the status of NDC updates and to what extent recovery programmes have been used to advance climate action. Finally, the article takes a closer look at the current dynamics among non-Party actors. In summary, while formal negotiations essentially stopped in the year of the pandemic, the conservation did not. However, implementation is still lagging far behind the ambitious targets that have been set. While implementation is mostly the domain of national policy, the international process has a number of options at its disposal to foster climate action.
The widely recognised Energiewende, ("energy transition") in Germany has lost its original momentum. We therefore address the question of how the transition process to a new energy system can be reignited. To do so, we developed the "5Ds approach", which lays the groundwork for a process analysis and the identification of important catalysts and barriers. Focusing on the five major fields required for the energy transition, we analyse the effects of: (1) Decarbonisation: How can efficiency and renewable energies be expanded successfully? (2) Digitalisation: Which digital solutions facilitate this conversion and would be suitable as sustainable business models? (3) Decentralisation: How can potential decentralised energy and efficiency opportunities be developed? (4) Democratisation: How can participation be strengthened in order to foster acceptance (and prevent "yellow vest" protests, etc.)? (5) Diversification of service: Which services can make significant contributions in the context of flexible power generation, demand-side management, storage and grids? Our paper comes to the conclusion that German policy efforts in the "5D" fields have been implemented very differently. Particularly with regard to democratisation, the opportunities for genuine participation among the different social actors must be further strengthened to get the Energiewende back on track. New market models are needed to meet the challenges of the energy transition and to increase the performance of "5D" through economic incentives.
Local implementation projects for sector coupling play an important role in the transformation to a more sustainable energy system. Despite various technical possibilities, there are various barriers to the realisation of local projects. Against this backdrop, we introduce an inter- and transdisciplinary approach to identifying and evaluating different power-to-X paths as well as setting up robust local implementation projects, which account for existing drivers and potential hurdles early on. After developing the approach conceptually, we exemplify our elaborations by applying them to a use case in the German city of Wuppertal. It can be shown that a mix of several interlinked interdisciplinary methods as well as several participatory elements is suitable for triggering a collective, local innovation process. However, the timing and extent of end-user integration remain a balancing act. The paper does not focus on a detailed description of power-to-X (PtX) as a central pillar of the sustainable transformation of the energy system. Rather, it focuses on the innovative methodological approach used to select a suitable use path and design a corresponding business model. The research approach was successfully implemented in the specific case study. However, it also becomes clear that the local-specific consideration entails limitations with regard to the transferability of the research design to other spatial contexts.
Practices of urban experimentation are currently seen as a promising approach to making planning processes more collaborative and adaptive. The practices develop not only in the context of ideal-type concepts of urban experiments and urban labs but also organically in specific governance contexts. We present such an organic case in the city of Wuppertal, Germany, centred around a so-called change-maker initiative, "Utopiastadt." This initiative joined forces with the city administration and collaborated with a private property owner and the local economic development agency in an unusual planning process for the development of a central brownfield site. Ultimately, the consortium jointly published a framework concept that picked up the vision of the "Utopiastadt Campus" as an open-ended catalyst area for pilot projects and experiments on sustainability and city development. The concept was adopted by the city council and Utopiastadt purchased more than 50% of the land. In order to analyse the wider governance context and power struggles, we apply the social-constructivist theory of Strategic Action Fields (SAFs). We focused on the phases of contention and settlement, the shift in interaction forms, the role of an area development board as an internal governance unit and the influences of proximate fields, strategic action, and state facilitation on the development. We aim to demonstrate the potential of the theory of SAFs to understand a long-term urban development process and how an episode of experimentation evolved within this process. We discuss the theory's shortcomings and reflect critically on whether the process contributed to strengthening collaborative and experimental approaches in the governance of city development.
To what extent can designers direct their professional practices towards serving the common good? Design constitutes itself anew with every project. Each project is both conditioned and made possible through a unique constellation of actors, timeframes, objectives, skills, etc. which arise from both social values and political agendas. We discuss the different approaches of two selected design projects by the authors, and the respective strategies and methods. While the designers' ambition in both projects was certainly to change an existing situation into a preferred one - the first by the means of interactive user engagement, the second through the idea of semi-finished product semantics - we emphasize on the challenges and ambiguities arising from the evolutionary process of design, aiming at the common good. Eventually we conclude that design processes can serve as a tool to debate rather than create the common good.
Reuse is still seen as a "niche phenomenon" and consumers seem to waste economic opportunities linked to buying and selling second-hand products. For this reason, this paper focuses on incentives and barriers to sell and buy second-hand products, as indicated in the literature, and applies a theoretical framework of transaction costs to explain the existing consumption patterns. For this paper, a representative online survey was conducted in which 1023 consumers in Germany participated, age 16 and older. The data were analyzed for statistically significant deviations between different groups of economic actors selling or buying second-hand products. Results show that valuable unused products exist in households, but barriers such as uncertainties about the reliability of the buyer or the quality of the product hinder the transition into sustainable consumption. Different forms of transaction costs are important explanatory variables to explain why consumers nevertheless predominantly buy new products, although they are aware that second-hand would save money and make an individual contribution to climate protection.
The basic materials industries are a cornerstone of Europe's economic prosperity, increasing gross value added and providing around 2 million high-quality jobs. But they are also a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Despite efficiency improvements, emissions from these industries were mostly constant for several years prior to the Covid-19 crisis and today account for 20 per cent of the EU's total greenhouse gas emissions.
A central question is therefore: How can the basic material industries in the EU become climate-neutral by 2050 while maintaining a strong position in a highly competitive global market? And how can these industries help the EU reach the higher 2030 climate target - a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions of at least 55 per cent relative to 1990 levels?
In the EU policy debate on the European Green Deal, many suppose that the basic materials industries can do little to achieve deep cuts in emissions by 2030. Beyond improvements to the efficiency of existing technologies, they assume that no further innovations will be feasible within that period. This study takes a different view. It shows that a more ambitious approach involving the early implementation of key low-carbon technologies and a Clean Industry Package is not just possible, but in fact necessary to safeguard global competitiveness.
The Paris Agreement combines collective goals with individual countries' contributions. This hybrid approach does not guarantee that the individual contributions add up to what is required to meet the collective goals. The Paris Agreement therefore established the Global Stocktake. Its task is to "assess collective progress" towards achieving the long-term goals of the agreement as of 2023 and every five years thereafter. Corresponding to this role, this report addresses three questions: What should an effective Global Stocktake look like? What information and data are needed? Is it possible to execute an effective Global Stocktake within the mandate of the Paris Agreement?
Fully decarbonising global power supply is essential to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement. A wide range of inter- and transnational governance institutions exist that work towards the transformation of the power sector. But are these governance efforts sufficient to address the challenges? To address this question the article first identifies governance needs on the basis of systemic sector-specific transformation challenges and discusses the potential for international governance to address them. Second, the paper surveys existing inter- and transnational institutions and assess to what extent they exploit the potential of international governance. The analysis shows that many of the governance needs are already being satisfied to some extent, particularly with respect to the deployment of renewable energy. It also shows that a significant blind spot remains: the phase-out of fossil fuels for electricity generation. The detailed analysis enables us to identify options for enhancing the governance landscape.
The ultimate goal of German Resource Efficiency Programme (ProgRess) is to make the extraction and use of natural resources more sustainable and reduce associated environmental pollution as much as possible. By doing this - also with responsibility towards future generations - the programme should create a prerequisite for securing a long-term high quality of life. To bring the policy approaches formulated in ProgRess to reality, efforts to implement resource efficiency measures have to be increased at all levels - from international to regional to local.
The chapter intends to provide an impetus for the current debate on ProgRess policy development. The chapter identifies, analyses and describes deficits and possibilities of vertical integration of the German programme in particular and derives recommendations for action which may also serve as indications for other strategies. The following sections are based on results of the advisory report "Vertical integration of the national resource efficiency programme ProgRess (VertRess)", conducted by the German Institute of Urban Affairs (Difu) and the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy on behalf of the German Environmental Agency (UBA) and the Federal Ministry of the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU).
Cross-country evidence on the adoption of energy-efficient retrofit measures (EERMs) in residential buildings is critical to supporting the development of national and pan-European policies aimed at fostering the energy performance upgrade of the building stock. In this light, the aim of this paper is to advance in the understanding of the probability of certain EERMs taking place in eight EU countries, according to a set of parameters, such as building typology, project types, and motivation behind the project. Using these parameters collected via a multi-country online survey, a set of discrete-choice (conditional logit) models are estimated on the probability of selecting a choice of any combination of 33 EERMs across the sampled countries. Results show that actions related to the building envelope are the most often-addressed across countries and single building elements or technology measures have a higher probability of being implemented. The modelling framework developed in this study contributes to the scientific community in three ways: (1) establishing an empirical relationship among EERMs and project (i.e., retrofit and deep retrofit), (2) identifying commonalities and differences across the selected countries, and (3) quantifying the probabilities and market shares of various EERMs.
This chapter turns to the measurement of performance in delivering corporate and ecosystem purposes. The metrics are designed to capture the pain points in the ecosystem that need to be addressed and the success of the intervention in addressing them. This requires measures of non-financial as well as financial performance. The chapter provides an overview of measurements of non-financial forms of capital: natural, human, and social. In examining natural capital, it contrasts input measures that record the amount of natural resources that are used in the production process and output measures that examine the impact of the inputs on products, emissions, waste, etc. It notes that measuring inputs is in general more straightforward than outputs and it therefore argues that natural capital metrics should be constructed around inputs rather than outputs.
Cities and urban consumers play a central role in the transition to a decarbonized society. Building on existing studies that identify the significant contributions of lifestyle changes, this study proposes a practical methodology for modeling and exploring city-specific carbon footprint reduction pathways through lifestyle changes to decarbonization. It uses an input-output approach with mixed-unit consumption data and the concept of adoption rates, which is applicable to multiple cities with widely available subnational household consumption data. This paper illustrates the use of this methodology by exploring the consumption-based mitigation pathways of 52 Japanese cities with 65 lifestyle change options covering mobility, housing, food, consumer goods, and leisure domains. The results revealed that city-specific impacts of a variety of lifestyle change options can differ by as much as a factor of five among cities, even in the urban context within the same country. Due to this city-level heterogeneity, the priority options of decarbonized lifestyles, such as among shared mobility, low-carbon diets, and longevity of consumer goods, have shifted between cities. The analysis suggests that ambitious urban lifestyle changes can potentially reduce their carbon footprints to meet the 1.5 ℃ target. However, due to the overlaps of mitigation potentials between multiple lifestyle change options, the necessary levels of adoption and coverage are extensive (i.e., adoption rates of 0.6-0.9). Importantly, adopting lifestyle changes with an efficiency strategy (e.g., the introduction of end-use technologies) or sufficiency strategy (e.g., behavioral changes in consumption amounts and modes) alone is not enough; the only way to succeed is through the combination of both strategies. This paper calls for a target-based exploration and identification of city-specific priorities of lifestyle change options to facilitate consumption-oriented mitigation policies and stakeholder actions to address the climate impacts of urban consumption.
The article introduces and exemplifies the approach of evidence-based narratives (EBN). The methodology is a product of co-design between policy-making and science, generating robust intelligence for evidence-based policy-making in the Directorate General for Research and Innovation of the European Commission (DG RTD) under the condition of high uncertainty and fragmented evidence. The EBN transdisciplinary approach tackles practical problems of future-oriented policy-making, in this case in the area of programming for research and innovation addressing the Grand Societal Challenge related to climate change and natural resources. Between 2013 and 2018, the EU-funded RECREATE project developed 20 EBNs in a co-development process between scientists and policy-makers. All EBNs are supported with evidence about the underlying innovation system applying the technological innovation systems (TIS) framework. Each TIS analysis features the innovation, its current state of market diffusion and a description of the innovation investment case. Indicators include potential future market sizes, effects on employment and environmental and social benefits. Based on the innovation and TIS function analyses, the EBNs offer policy recommendations. The article ends with a critical discussion of the EBN approach.
Transport is a key economic sector in Europe, it influences the opportunities of production and consumption. By improving access to markets, goods and services, employment, housing, health care, and education, transportation projects can increase economic productivity and development. The ability to be mobile is also a prerequisite for inclusion. At the same time, transport induces a range of negative effects, most notably the emission of greenhouse gases. At the urban level, motorised transport significantly contributes to air pollution.
Since 2013, the European Commission has increased EU funding for projects: The "Urban Mobility Package" provided EUR 13 billion for investments into sustainable urban mobility between 2014 and 2020. This has allowed cities across Europe to put in place a range of initiatives. European funding programmes and financing institutions such as the European Investment Bank increasingly insist on a contribution to more sustainable mobility systems in their financing commitments.
The impact, however, is mixed. The European Court of Auditors warned that EU cities must shift more traffic to sustainable transport modes. They found that EU-funded projects were not always based on sound urban mobility strategies and were not as effective as intended.
In many EU member states, the transfer of EU funds to cities is contingent on the existence of a SUMP. A statistical analysis of the modal split of 396 cities in the European Union revealed that the implementation of Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans positively correlates with a reduction of the share of the private car in the cities. Such plans include strategies and activities to pursue sustainable mobility.
This report analyses transport and mobility in Bratislava with a view to providing a clear picture about its current sustainability state. It points to both good practice and areas of improvement. In so doing, it provides recommendations how mobility in the city can be developed increasingly sustainable. Bratislava is the capital and largest city of Slovakia. In 2016, the population of the city was 426,000 inhabitants, the Bratislava region was home to 642,000 inhabitants.
Citizen science is a transdisciplinary approach that responds to the current science policy agenda: in terms of supporting open science, and by using a range of science communication instruments. In particular, it opens up scientific research processes by involving citizens at different phases; this also creates a range of opportunities for science communication to happen This article explores methodological and practical characteristics of citizen science as a form of science communication by examining three case studies that took different approaches to citizens' participation in science. Through these, it becomes clear that communication in citizen science is "always" science communication and an essential part of "doing science".
The data centre industry (DCI) has grown from zero in the 1980s, to enabling 60% of the global population to be connected in 2021 via 7.2 million data centres. The DCI is based on a linear economy and there is an urgent need to transform to a Circular Economy to establish a secure supply chain and ensure an economically stable and uninterrupted service, which is particularly difficult in an industry that is comprised of ten insular subsectors. This paper describes the CEDaCI project which was established to address the challenge in this unique sector; this ground-breaking project employs a whole systems approach, Design Thinking and the Double Diamond methods, which rely on people/stakeholder engagement throughout. The paper reviews and assesses the impact of these methods and project to date, using quantitative and qualitative research, via an online sectoral survey and interviews with nine data centre and IT industry experts. The results show that the project is creating positive impact and initiating change across the sector and that the innovative output (designs, business models, and a digital tool) will ensure that sectoral transformation continues; the project methods and structure will also serve as an exemplar for other sectors.
More than 150 municipal utilities (so-called Stadtwerke) were established in Germany from the beginning of the millennium, bringing the total number of Stadtwerke currently established within the country to approximately 900. With responsibility for more than half of the supply of electricity, gas and heat in Germany, these Stadtwerke play a central role in the transformation of the energy sector, or Energiewende. In addition, due to their local and regional ties, Stadtwerke have a particular role to play in energy politics, the economy and across society. This article focuses on the motives behind, and grounds for, the current wave of newly established Stadtwerke. Further, it discusses the factors that were critical to the successful formation of new Stadtwerke in recent years. The results of our survey indicate that the establishment of municipal Stadtwerke is a suitable measure to implement the energy transition at the local level, whereby the concept of public value has a high level of importance for the local decision-makers. Collaboration and cooperation, as well as a resilience-oriented strategy, are important success factors for new Stadtwerke.
In order to calculate the financial return of energy efficiency measures, a cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is a proven tool for investors. Generally, however, most CBAs for investors have a narrow focus, which is - simply speaking - on investment costs compared with energy cost savings over the life span of the investment. This only provides part of the full picture. Ideally, a comprehensive or extended CBA would take additional benefits as well as additional costs into account. The objective of this paper is to reflect upon integrating into a CBA two important cost components: transaction costs and energy efficiency services - and how they interact. Even though this concept has not been carried out to the knowledge of the authors, we even go a step further to try to apply this idea. In so doing, we carried out a meta-analysis on relevant literature and existing data and interviewed a limited number of energy experts with comprehensive experience in carrying out energy services. Even though data is hardly available, we succeeded in constructing three real-world cases and applied an extended CBA making use of information gathered on transaction costs and energy services costs. We were able to show that, despite these additional cost components, the energy efficiency measures are economically viable. Quantitative data was not available on how energy services reduce transaction costs; more information on this aspect could render our results even more positive. Even though empirical and conceptual research must intensify efforts to design an even more comprehensive CBA, these first-of-its-kind findings can counterargue those that believe energy efficiency is not worth it (in monetary terms) due to transaction costs or energy services costs. In fact, this is good news for energy efficiency and for those that seek to make use of our findings to argue in favor of taking up energy efficiency investments in businesses.
The number of input-output assessments focused on energy has grown considerably in the last years. Many of these assessments combine data from multi-regional input-output (MRIO) databases with energy extensions that completely or partially depict the different stages through which energy products are supplied or used in the economy.
The improper use of some energy extensions can lead to double accounting of some energy flows, but the frequency with which this happens and the potential impact on the results are unknown. Based on a literature review, we estimate that around a quarter of the MRIO-based energy assessments reviewed incurred into double accounting. Using the EXIOBASE MRIO database, we also analyse the effects of double accounting in the absolute values and rankings of different countries' and products' energy footprints.
Building on the insights provided by our analysis, we offer a set of key recommendations to MRIO users to avoid the double accounting problem in the future. Likewise, we conclude that the harmonisation of the energy data across MRIO databases led by experts could simplify the choices of the data users until the provision of official energy extensions by statistical offices becomes a widespread practice.
This article aims to analyse the potential for international climate governance to promote the decarbonisation of land transport. It first summarises challenges and barriers that impede the transformation of the sector. On this basis, the article discusses how international governance could potentially assist with overcoming these barriers and mobilising potentials. Subsequently, the article analyses to what extent existing international governance institutions deliver on the potential identified. The analysis finds that while there is a large number of international institutions trying to promote the decarbonisation of land transport, none of them emerge saliently as hubs or core institutions. There is a substantial amount of activity to generate and disseminate knowledge and learning, but the potential for providing guidance and signal, setting rules, providing transparency/accountability and means of implementation could be further exploited. The article concludes with suggestions on how international governance may be strengthened.
Since the middle of the 20th century, human society experiences a "Great Acceleration" manifesting in historically remarkable growth rates that create severe sustainability problems. The globally exploding potentials of information and knowledge exchange have been and are vital drivers for this acceleration. Society has now come to the point that it requires a "Great Transformation" towards sustainability to ensure the viability of the planet for a vital society. The energy transition plays a central role for this transformation. In this context, human society has developed a comparably good understanding of the necessary infrastructural changes of this transition. For transforming the patterns of energy production and use in an energy transition as part of the "Great Transformation", this process of change now needs to strengthen its focus on information, communication, and knowledge systems. Human society needs to establish a knowledge system that has the potential to create usable knowledge for sustainability solutions. This requires organizing a communication system that is sufficiently complex, interconnected, and, at the same time, efficient for integrating reflexive, open-ended, inter- and transdisciplinary learning, evaluation, and knowledge co-production processes across multiple levels. This challenge opens a wide field of research.
This cumulative dissertation contributes to research in this direction by applying a systemic sustainability perspective on the content and organization of communication in the field of research on sustainable energy and the operational level of municipal climate action as part of the energy transition. Regarding sustainability, this thesis uses strong sustainability and its principles as a frame for evaluating the content of communication. Regarding the systemic perspective, the thesis particularly relies on the following theories: (i) the human-environment system model by R. Scholz as an overarching framework regarding interactions between humans and nature, (ii) social systems theory by N. Luhmann to reflect the complexity of society, (iii) knowledge management to consider the human character of knowledge and a practice-oriented perspective, and (iv) management cybernetics, in particular, the Viable System Model by S. Beer as a framework to analyze and assess organizational structures. Furthermore, the thesis leverages the potential of text mining as a method to identify and visualize patterns in texts that reflect prevalent paradigms in communication.
The thesis applies the above conceptual and methodological basis in three case studies. Case Study 1 investigates the measures proposed in 16 municipal climate action plans of regional centers in Lower Saxony, Germany. It uses a text mining approach in the form of an Summary interpretation network analysis. It analyzes how different societal subsystems are connected at the semantic level and to what extent sustainability principles can be recognized. Case Study 2 analyzes and reflects paradigms and discursive network structures in international scientific publications on sustainable energy. The study investigates 26533 abstracts published from 1990 to 2016 using a text mining approach, in particular topic modeling via latent Dirichlet allocation. Case Study 3 turns again to the cases of municipal climate action in Lower Saxony examined in Case Study 1. It examines the involvement of climate action managers of these cities in multilevel knowledge processes. Using design principles for knowledge systems, it evaluates to what extent knowledge is managed in this field across levels for supporting the energy transition and to what extent local innovation potential is leveraged or supported.
The three case studies show that international research on sustainable energy and municipal climate action in Germany provide promising contributions to achieve a transformation towards sustainability but do not fully reflect the complexity of society and still support a growth paradigm, in contrast to a holistic sustainability paradigm. Further, the case studies show that research and local action are actively engaging with the diversity of energy technologies but are lagging in dealing with the socio-epistemic (communication) system, especially with regard to achieving cohesion. Using the example of German municipalities, Case Studies 1 and 3 highlight the challenges of achieving coherent local action for sustainability and bottom-up organizational learning due to incomplete or uncoordinated multilevel knowledge exchange. At the same time, the studies also point out opportunities for supporting the required coherent multilevel learning processes based on local knowledge. This can be achieved, for instance, by strengthening the coordinating role of intermediary organizational units or establishing closer interactions between the local operational units and the national level.
The thesis interprets and synthesizes the results of the three case studies from its systemic sustainability perspective. On this basis, it provides several generalized recommendations that should be followed for establishing viable communication systems, especially but not exclusively in policy-making:
Systemic holism: Consider matter, energy, and information flows as an integrated triplet in the context of scales, structures, and time in the various subsystems. Knowledge society: Focus on the socio-epistemic (communication) system, e.g., using the perspective of knowledge systems and associated design principles considering, for instance, working environments across horizontal and vertical levels, knowledge forms and types, and knowledge processes. Sufficiency communication: Emphasize sufficiency approaches, make it attractive, and find differentiated ways for communicating them. Multilevel cohesion and innovation: Achieve cohesion between the local and higher levels and leverage local innovations while avoiding isolated local action. Organizational interface design: Define the role of organizational units by the interactions they create at the interfaces with and between societal subsystems. Local transdisciplinarity: Support local transdisciplinary approaches integrating various subsystems, especially industry, while coordinating these approaches from a higher level for leveraging local innovation. Digital public system: Exploit existing digital technologies or infrastructures in the public system and recognize the value of data in the public sphere for achieving cohesion. Beyond the above recommendations, this thesis suggests that potential for further research lies in: Advancing nature-inspired systemic frameworks. Understanding the structure and creation of human knowledge. Developing text mining methodologies towards solution-oriented approaches.
The expansion of photovoltaics in German cities has so far fallen short of expectations. The concept of "tenant electricity" ("Mieterstrom" in German), in which tenants of a building are supplied with solar power produced on site, offers great potential here. A study on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy estimated the number of tenant households with good conditions for solar tenant electricity at 3.8 million. At the same time, the federal tenant electricity promotion scheme has been in place since 2017, but only about 1% of the annual budget has been claimed. The aim of this study is to identify the barriers for and drivers of diffusion of the tenant electricity model. To this end, a qualitative document analysis and a range of semi-structured expert interviews have been conducted. The theoretical framework used to guide the analysis is the multi-level perspective. The main barrier found for tenant electricity diffusion is the legal framework on the regime level, which also leads to high transaction costs of implementing tenant electricity. A social barrier is the inertia of some residents to actively concern themselves with their electricity supply and switch to a tenant electricity contract. Among its drivers are long-term trends such as the increasing electricity demand in urban areas, technical developments like blockchain technology and the increasing deployment of smart meters, and the EU Renewable Energy Directive. As long as the restrictive legal framework prevails, the further diffusion of tenant electricity will remain limited.
Electronics containing growing quantities of high value and critical metals are increasingly used in automobiles. The conventional treatment practice for end-of-life vehicles (ELV) is shredding after de-pollution and partial separation of spare parts. Despite opportunities for resource recovery, the selective separation of components containing relevant amounts of critical metals for the purpose of material recycling is not commonly implemented. This article is aimed to contribute to recycling strategies for future critical metal quantities and the role of extended material recovery from ELVs. The study examines the economic feasibility of dismantling electronic components from ELVs for high value metal recycling. The results illustrate the effects of factors as dismantling time, labour costs and logistics on the economic potential of resource recovery from ELVs. Manual dismantling is profitable for only a few components at the higher labour costs in western/northern parts of Europe and applicable material prices, including the inverter for hybrid vehicles, oxygen sensor, side assistant sensor, distance and near distance sensors. Depending on the vehicle model, labour costs and current material prices, manual dismantling can also be cost-efficient for also some other such as the heating blower, generator, starter, engine and transmission control, start/stop motor, drive control, infotainment and chassis control.
Despite Germany's Paris Agreement pledge and coal exit legislation, the political debate around carbon-intensive coal remains heated. Coal power and mining have played an important, yet changing role in the history of German politics. In this paper, we analyze the entire parliamentary debate on coal in the German parliament (Bundestag) from its inception in 1949 to 2019. For this purpose we extract the more than 870,000 parliamentary speeches from all protocols in the history of the Bundestag. We identify the 9167 speeches mentioning coal and apply dynamic topic modeling – an unsupervised machine learning technique that reveals the changing thematic structure of large document collections over time - to analyze changes in parliamentary debates on coal over the past 70 years. The trends in topics and their varying internal structure reflect how energy policy was discussed and legitimized over time: Initially, coal was framed as a driver of economic prosperity and guarantee of energy security. In recent years, the debate evolved towards energy transition, coal phase-out and renewable energy expansion. Germany’s smaller and younger parties, the Greens and the Left Party, debate coal more often in the context of the energy transition and climate protection than other parties. Our results reflect trends in other countries and other fields of energy policy. Methodologically, our study illustrates the potential of and need for computational methods to analyze vast corpora of text and to complement traditional social science methods.
The ongoing warming of the Earth's atmosphere is projected to cause a northward shift of species' distributions, as they track their climatic optimum. In the rapidly warming Arctic, this has already led to an increase of shrubs in tundra ecosystems. While this northern expansion of woody biomass has been studied relatively extensively over the last decade, little research has been devoted to shrub growth responses at the southern margins of Northern Hemisphere shrubs. Here, we studied shoot length growth, its responses to climate over the period 2010-2017, and differences in leaf C and N content of the evergreen dwarf shrub Empetrum nigrum, as well as the vegetation composition and soil parameters at four sites located along a gradient of increasing dune age on the island Spiekeroog, northern Germany. The sites are located in the tri-national UNESCO world heritage site, the Wadden Sea. E. nigrum has a predominantly circum-arctic-boreal distribution and its southern distribution margin in European lowlands runs through northern Germany, where it is retreating northwards. We found a negative response to autumn (surface) temperatures and previous summer surface temperatures and/or a positive response to summer precipitation of E. nigrum growth, except at the oldest dune with the strongest E. nigrum dominance. Growth rates and plant species diversity declined with dune age. Our results suggest that E. nigrum growth is drought sensitive at its European southern range margin. We hypothesize that this sensitivity may form the basis for its northward retreat, which is supported by recent observations of E. nigrum dieback in Germany after the extreme drought in 2018 and model projections.
Electric mobility is beginning to enter East African cities. This paper aims to investigate what policy-level solutions and stakeholder constellations are established in the context of electric mobility (e-mobility) in Dar es Salaam, Kigali, Kisumu and Nairobi and in which ways they attempt to tackle the implementation of electric mobility solutions. The study employs two key methods including content analysis of policy and programmatic documents and interviews based on a purposive sampling approach with stakeholders involved in mobility transitions. The study findings point out that in spite of the growing number of policies (specifically in Rwanda and Kenya) and on-the-ground developments, a set of financial and technical barriers persists. These include high upfront investment costs in vehicles and infrastructure, as well as perceived lack of competitiveness with fossil fuel vehicles that constrain the uptake of e-mobility initiatives. The study further indicates that transport operators and their representative associations are less recognized as major players in the transition, far behind new e-mobility players (start-ups) and public authorities. This study concludes by identifying current gaps that need to be tackled by policymakers and stakeholders in order to implement inclusive electric mobility in East African cities, considering modalities that include transport providers and address their financial constraints.
In the Paris Accord to the UN Climate Change Conference COP21 in 2015, the international community agreed to "make every effort" to reach a significant reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and to limit global average temperature rise to preferably 1.5°C by 2100 (UNFCC 2018). A transition to a climate-friendly energy supply, however, would come largely at the expense of coal - a fossil fuel with large global reserves that are also widely dispersed regionally. Therefore, especially since the turn of the millennium, the question has been raised as to how coal could be used in a climate-friendly way in the future. So far, the only way to do this is to apply CCS technology or CCU. CCS involves the capture of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants or industrial sources and its storage underground, such as in deep saline aquifers or in depleted oil and natural gas fields, or their use for enhanced oil or gas recovery (EOR/EGR). When carbon capture and utilisation (CCU) is applied, the CO2 is further used, for example as feedstock for the production of durable plastics. Due to the relatively low potential of CCU compared to CCS (IPCC 2005), only CCS is considered in this thesis.
The majority of studies and roadmaps have discussed CCS as a technology option that could make a significant contribution to achieving the objective of decreasing GHG emissions for many years (IPCC 2014a, 2018). Particularly in the power sector, however, these expectations have not yet been met. As of November 2019, worldwide only two small base-load power plants, capturing a total of 2.4 Mt CO2/year and mainly using it for EOR, are in operation, together with a few pilots in industrial applications and, in particular, natural gas processing (in total 30 Mt CO2/year) (Global CCS Institute 2019).
Early on, it became clear that the predicted high deployment targets and their underlying studies should be critically questioned for various reasons. Particularly due to the lack of a systems-analytical evaluation of this technology (which was relatively new at the time), no reliable answers could be given about the ecological, economic, social and structural effects of its large-scale application. Such analyses are, however, a pre-condition for comprehensively classifying the contribution of a new technology as a promising option for a sustainable energy supply system and assessing it in comparison to other technologies.
To address these challenges, several studies, most of which initiated by the author, were conducted on this topic between 2004 and 2018. The resulting papers became the basis for this thesis.
Climate change is a transformation challenge. It requires the transformation of a patchwork of independent socio-technical systems. These complex systems have their own specific challenges and path dependencies. Lukas Hermwille introduces a perspective on socio-technical complexity to the study of global climate governance and asks what governance arrangements on the international level, in particular the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Paris Agreement, can offer to facilitate and foster the required transformational change. His work shows the importance of the discursive power of global climate governance, shifting the expectations and visions of the future of key actors and, as a corollary, changing their investment decisions of today towards a more sustainable future.
We conduct a systematic, interdisciplinary review of empirical literature assessing evidence on induced innovation in energy and related technologies. We explore links between demand-drivers (both market-wide and targeted); indicators of innovation (principally, patents); and outcomes (cost reduction, efficiency, and multi-sector/macro consequences). We build on existing reviews in different fields and assess over 200 papers containing original data analysis. Papers linking drivers to patents, and indicators of cumulative capacity to cost reductions (experience curves), dominate the literature. The former does not directly link patents to outcomes; the latter does not directly test for the causal impact of on cost reductions). Diverse other literatures provide additional evidence concerning the links between deployment, innovation activities, and outcomes. We derive three main conclusions. (1) Demand-pull forces enhance patenting; econometric studies find positive impacts in industry, electricity and transport sectors in all but a few specific cases. This applies to all drivers - general energy prices, carbon prices, and targeted interventions that build markets. (2) Technology costs decline with cumulative investment for almost every technology studied across all time periods, when controlled for other factors. Numerous lines of evidence point to dominant causality from at-scale deployment (prior to self-sustaining diffusion) to cost reduction in this relationship. (3) Overall Innovation is cumulative, multi-faceted, and self-reinforcing in its direction (path-dependent). We conclude with brief observations on implications for modeling and policy. In interpreting these results, we suggest distinguishing the economics of active deployment, from more passive diffusion processes, and draw the following implications. There is a role for policy diversity and experimentation, with evaluation of potential gains from innovation in the broadest sense. Consequently, endogenising innovation in large-scale models is important for deriving policy-relevant conclusions. Finally, seeking to relate quantitative economic evaluation to the qualitative socio-technical transitions literatures could be a fruitful area for future research.
For achieving a transition towards sustainable development, central importance is attached to science and education, and especially higher education. Suitable formats are needed for empowering students to perform transformative research. On the basis of transdisciplinary and transformative real-world laboratory research and futures studies, we develop encompassing learning and teaching module: the Transformative Innovation Lab (til). The lab builds on insights into five key competencies and three types of knowledge needed for developing socially robust sustainability innovations. In this paper, the main features of this experiential and reflexive format are presented and linked to a handbook for facilitating the lab. Central learnings for implementing the format in existing study programmes from two test runs at two German universities are shared and discussed.
Energy sufficiency is one of the three energy sustainability strategies, next to energy efficiency and renewable energies. We analyse to what extent European governments follow this strategy, by conducting a systematic document analysis of all available European National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs) and Long-Term Strategies (LTSs). We collect and categorise a total of 230 sufficiency-related policy measures, finding large differences between countries. We find most sufficiency policies in the transport sector, when classifying also modal shift policies to change the service quality of transport as sufficiency policies. Types of sufficiency policy instruments vary considerably from sector to sector, for instance the focus on financial incentives and fiscal instruments in the mobility sector, information in the building sector, and financial incentive/tax instruments in cross-sectoral application. Regulatory instruments currently play a minor role for sufficiency policy in the national energy and climate plans of EU member states. Similar to energy efficiency in recent decades, sufficiency still largely referred to as micro-level individual behaviour change or necessary exogenous trends that will need to take place. It is not treated yet as a genuine field of policy action to provide the necessary framework for enabling societal change.
The aim of this study is to contribute to a learning process about innovative and successful approaches to overcoming problems and challenges of urban environmental protection. To this end, a detailed overview of the importance of environmental challenges, political priorities and successful solutions in selected countries and cities is given. Based on this, the study analyzes specific success factors and discusses the extent to which these can be transferred and replicated to other cities. Finally, recommendations are made for cities, countries and the international community on how environmental protection at the urban level can be further strengthened. The role of German cities and institutions will also be discussed. The case studies analyzed include Belo Horizonte in Brazil, Moscow in Russia, Kochi in India, Beijing in China, Cape Town in South Africa and Jakarta in Indonesia. These cities were selected because they have already implemented successful policies, measures and other initiatives in the past. For each city, the study analyzes relevant policy documents in order to present the respective challenges and political priorities. The analysis aims to understand the effectiveness of the plans and instruments taking into account the national political environment. Despite the cross-sectoral approach, the analysis of each case study focuses on specific sectors in order to produce well-founded results. The success factors that are worked out based on this sectoral analysis are placed in a holistic context in order to be able to make generalizable statements about success factors.
The transport sector accounts for 20 per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions in Germany and it is therefore key to success for German climate policy. At present, however, there is no other sector with a wider gap in missing the trajectory to climate neutrality. The present study, conducted on behalf of Huawei within the project "Shaping the Digital Transformation - Digital Solution Systems for the Sustainability Transition", points out new pathways towards a sustainable and climate friendly transition of the transport sector. The report specifies concrete options to follow up on the ambitious goals of the new coalition agreement to foster clean and digital mobility solutions.
The authors refined eight theses on how digitalisation can foster sustainable mobility solutions and how to shape a supporting policy framework, which is aligning the financial and regulatory guardrails for ramping up a sustainable mobility system while gradually phasing down the usage of private cars.
Many cities all over the world highlight the need to transform their urban mobility systems into more sustainable ones, to confront pressing issues such as air and noise pollution, and to deliver on climate change mitigation action. While the support of innovations is high on the agenda of both national and local authorities, consciously phasing-out unsustainable technologies and practices is often neglected. However, this other side of the policy coin, "exnovation", is a crucial element for the mobility transition. We developed a framework to facilitate a more comprehensive assessment of urban mobility transition policies, systematically integrating exnovation policies. It links exnovation functions as identified in transition studies with insights from urban mobility studies and empirical findings from eight city case studies around the world. The findings suggest that most cities use some kinds of exnovation policies to address selective urban mobility issues, e.g., phasing-out diesel buses, restricting the use of polluting motor vehicles in some parts of the city, etc. Still, we found no evidence for a systematic exnovation approach alongside the innovation policies. Our framework specifies exnovation functions for the urban mobility transition by lining out policy levers and concrete measure examples. We hope that the framework inspires future in-depth research, but also political action to advance the urban mobility transition.
The development of digital technologies is accelerating, enabling increasingly profound changes in increasingly short time periods. The changes affect almost all areas of the economy as well as society. The energy sector has already seen some effects of digitalization, but more drastic changes are expected in the next decades. Besides the very positive impacts on costs, system stability, and environmental effects, potential obstacles and risks need to be addressed to ensure that advantages can be exploited while adverse effects are avoided. A good understanding of available and future digital applications from different stakeholders' perspectives is necessary. This study proposes a framework for the holistic evaluation of digital applications in the energy sector. The framework consists of a combination of well-established methods, namely the multi-criteria analysis (MCA), the life cycle assessment (LCA), and expert interviews. The objective is to create transparency on benefits, obstacles, and risks as a basis for societal and political discussions and to supply the necessary information for the sustainable development and implementation of digital applications. The novelty of the proposed framework is the specific combination of the three methods and its setup to enable sound applicability to the wide variety of digital applications in the energy sector. The framework is tested subsequently on the example of the German smart meter roll-out. The results reveal that, on the one hand, the smart meter roll-out clearly offers the potential to increase the system stability and decrease the carbon emission intensity of the energy system. Therefore, the overall evaluation from an environmental perspective is positive. However, on the other hand, close attention needs to be paid to the required implementation and operational effort, the IT (information technology) and data security, the added value for the user, the social acceptance, and the realization of energy savings. Therefore, the energy utility perspective in particular results in an overall negative evaluation. Several areas with a need for action are identified. Overall, the proposed framework proves to be suitable for the holistic evaluation of this digital application.
A clear understanding of socio-technical interdependencies and a structured vision are prerequisites for fostering and steering a transition to a fully renewables-based energy system. To facilitate such understanding, a phase model for the renewable energy transition in MENA countries has been developed and applied to the country case of Algeria. It is designed to support the strategy development and governance of the energy transition and to serve as a guide for decision makers.
The analysis shows that Algeria has already taken first steps towards a renewable energy transition. According to the MENA phase model, Algeria can be classified as entering the "Take-Off Renewables" phase. Nevertheless, fossil fuels still play a dominant role in the Algerian energy sector and in the economy as a whole. To support the renewables take-off, strong support is therefore needed at all levels. Only then can the necessary framework conditions be created to encourage participation and to attract investment from the private sector. To this end, a long-term energy strategy should to be developed that takes into account the renewable energy potential to support an efficient transformation of the Algerian energy supply and enables a smooth transition.
This paper argues that, although Japan's and Germany's energy transition paths differ in detail, a trend towards decentralisation is clearly evident in both countries. Based on comprehensive screening, own stocktaking and the results of a stakeholder dialogue, this paper highlights the motivation for different local actors to enter the energy market in both countries. Although there are challenges to success in a market dominated by large energy companies, this paper argues that the benefits to local communities outweigh the efforts. Overall, it is shown that democratisation and the decentralisation of the energy system are suitable to facilitate a successful transformation process in both countries.
More and more companies are announcing their intention to become climate-neutral and numerous companies already offer climate-neutral products or services: From climate-neutral parcel delivery to air travel. But what exactly do the companies' net-zero targets mean? Is the target set ambitious? And what role does offsetting play, i.e., purchasing carbon credits that are accounted against the company's own climate target? The approaches behind the proclaimed targets are often difficult to understand. Against this background, this Zukunftsimpuls provides ten recommendations for the definition and implementation of neutrality targets. Among other things, the authors advocate the use of a robust database as the basis for net-zero targets, emphasize the importance of transparent communication, and highlight the role that offsetting should play. Purchased carbon credits should make as limited a contribution as possible for meeting climate targets and should only be used to offset emissions that cannot be reduced or avoided. More generally, net-zero targets should not be made the sole criterion for ambitious climate strategies. Rather, they are a building block of a much more comprehensive strategy of corporate climate action.
The first step of complete transformation will be utilizing digital technologies and applications to improve current procedures, processes, and structures (Improve). Next, complete digitalisation will pave the way for new business models and framework conditions (Convert). Finally, comprehensive transformation of the economy and value creation will ensure the effective reorientation of society and lifestyles towards sustainability (Transform). This last step is critical for a successful ecological transformation, or a "green transformation", must be placed front and centre during international debate.
Through this report, we aim to highlight and discuss the opportunities that digitalisation can bring to Germany. In particular, we will discuss three exemplary areas of ecological transformation where action is necessary: 1) A digital and circular economy that uses data to increase resource efficiency. 2) Intelligent, sustainable mobility that connects us in eco-friendly ways. 3) Transparent transitions towards sustainable food chains and agriculture.
This report represents the first phase of the Shaping Digital Transformation project. In this report, we will outline the framework of our project to create a starting point for further debates.
The rising popularity and strong increase in the number of electric bicycles make it necessary to consider the built-in resources as well as possible treatments after the use phase. The time lag between the purchase and the occurrence of relevant defects suggests significant increases in defective components. Especially the great dynamics of the market due to regular innovations, product renewals, and the lack of spare parts availability for older models make the long-term use by customers much more difficult than for conventional bicycles. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze circular business models for the electric bicycle market. In this way, the required structures for a sustainable electric bicycle industry can be created so that valuable materials do not go into disposal but undergo a new use phase. Based on the results of "AddRE-Mo-Value Preservation Scenarios for Urban Electromobility of Persons and Loads through Additive Manufacturing and Remanufacturing," a research project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, this paper addresses four circular business models, two sales models, and two service models. The guiding research interest of this paper is the combination of remanufacturing and additive manufacturing from a business model perspective, analyzing the extent to which additive remanufacturing can be considered a solution for electric bicycles' circularity. After describing the approach and methods used to develop these four circular business models the business models are described and analyzed using the Business Model Canvas. Based on this analysis, it is shown that the combination of remanufacturing and additive manufacturing can be applied to the electric bicycle market and be integrated into both sales and service models. The description of these business models will help managers design viable business models in the context of sustainable electric bicycles. It also shows that the individual partners within the value chain must collaborate more closely. In the electric bicycle industry, a single company will probably not be able to close the product cycle completely. Further research is needed to develop concepts of the business models and examine their practical feasibility in technical and organizational operations to achieve a circular economy.
Resilient, sustainable and ready for the future : guidelines for urban development of tomorrow
(2021)
Cities and municipalities have had to endure a great deal in recent years, including a global coronavirus pandemic, fire disasters in the US and devastating floods like those in Germany. These are also consequences of anthropogenic climate change, and cities have to be better prepared for such events in future. In particular, the cata-strophic flooding Germany experienced in July 2021 demonstrated how ill-equipped municipalities are for this type of incident. In this paper, we look at how cities can become more resilient, sustainable and ready for the future.
An important instrument to enhance the market uptake of energy-efficient new buildings and the energy-efficient renovation of existing buildings in the European Union (EU) are the Energy Performance Certificates (EPC). However, their implementation and use has varied between EU Member States. The European Commission has therefore provided funding to a number of Horizon2020 projects to develop next-generation EPC schemes.
One of these is the QualDeEPC project, aiming to both improve quality and cross-EU convergence of EPC schemes, and particularly the link between EPCs and deep renovation. The objective of the project is to improve the practical implementation of the assessment, issuance, design, and use of EPCs as well as their renovation recommendations, in the participating countries and beyond.
This paper presents the policy proposals and concepts for tools that the QualDeEPC project has developed as priorities for enhanced EPC schemes:
- Improving the recommendations for renovation, which are provided on the EPCs, towards deep energy renovation
- An online tool for comparing EPC recommendations to deep energy renovation recommendations
- Creating Deep Renovation Network Platforms (One-stop Shops plus networking and joint communication of supply-side actors)
- Regular mandatory EPC assessor training (on assessment and renovation recommendations) required for certification/accreditation and registry
- Achieving a high user-friendliness of the EPC
- Voluntary/mandatory advertising guidelines for EPCs
- Improving compliance with the mandatory use of EPCs in real estate advertisements
The paper will focus on the aspects related to improving the impact of EPCs for stimulating deep renovation. It will also present lessons learnt from the discussion with stakeholders at national and European workshops and from the testing of the proposals and tools in around 100 buildings, as well as from the first steps of their country-specific adaptation.
A clear understanding of socio-technical interdependencies and a structured vision are prerequisites for fostering and steering a transition to a fully renewables-based energy system. To facilitate such understanding, a phase model for the renewable energy (RE) transition in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries has been developed and applied to the country case of Tunisia. It is designed to support the strategy development and governance of the energy transition and to serve as a guide for decision makers.
The analysis shows that Tunisia has already taken important steps towards a RE transition. According to the MENA phase model, Tunisia can be classified as being in the "Take-Off Renewables" phase. Nevertheless, natural gas still plays the dominant role in Tunisia's highly subsidised electricity generation. In addition to the elevated political uncertainty, there are numerous structural, political, social, and economic challenges within the energy sector that hinder progress in the transition to REs.
Strong support at all levels is needed to promote the breakthrough of RE. This includes more detailed long-term planning and improving the regulatory framework, as well as reducing offtaker risks to improve the bankability of RE projects in order to attract private investment. Furthermore, institutional buy-in needs to be increased and the engagement of key non-state stakeholders must be strengthened.
In light of the growing domestic energy demand and with the on-going global decarbonisation efforts in favour of sustainable fuels, Tunisia would be well advised to embark on a sustainable energy path sooner rather than later to seize economic opportunities that can arise from RE development.
A main goal of this study - which also functions as deliverable 210078-D07 of the Circular Economy Beacons (CEB) project - is to evaluate currently available frameworks that measure and operationalise Circular Economy (CE), with a particular focus on the urban context. The regional focus lies on the Western Balkan region, which is at the centre of the project. Such "Urban Circularity Hotspot Frameworks" (UCHF) aim at providing decision support for policy makers, companies, citizens etc. regarding the transition to CE within cities. Based on the analysis of different frameworks, suggestions are derived regarding UCHF suitable for the specific characteristics of Western Balkan municipalities, i.e. a Circular Economy Beacons Urban Circularity Hotspot Framework (CEB-UCHF) ready for short-term implementation.
By applying a phase model for the renewables-based energy transition in the MENA countries to Israel, the study provides a guiding vision to support the strategy development and steering of the energy transition process.
The transition towards a renewable-based energy system can reduce import dependencies and increase the energy security in Israel.
Key issues that need to be tackled in order to advance the energy transition in Israel are the expansion of flexibility options, discussion on the long-term role of natural gas, increasing participation and awareness, and exploring the future role of power-to-X in the energy system.
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected human mobility via lockdowns, social distancing rules, home quarantines, and the full or partial suspension of transportation. Evidence-based policy recommendations are urgently needed to ensure that transport systems have resilience to future pandemic outbreaks, particularly within Global South megacities where demand for public transport is high and reduced access can exacerbate socio-economic inequalities. This study focuses on Metro Manila - a characteristic megacity that experienced one of the most stringent lockdowns worldwide. It analyzes aggregated cell phone and GPS data from Google and Apple that provide a comprehensive representation of mobility behavior before and during the lockdown. While significant decreases are observed for all transport modes, public transport experienced the largest drop (-74.5 %, on average). The study demonstrates that: (i) those most reliant on public transport were disproportionately affected by lockdowns; (ii) public transport was unable to fulfil its role as public service; and, (iii) this drove a paradigm shift towards active mobility. Moving forwards, in the short-term policymakers must promote active mobility and prioritize public transport to reduce unequal access to transport. Longer-term, policymakers must leverage the increased active transport to encourage modal shift via infrastructure investment, and better utilize big data to support decision-making.
Dominant agricultural and food systems lead to continuous resource depletion and unacceptable environmental and social impacts. While current calls for changing agrifood systems are increasingly framed in the context of sustainability transitions, they rarely make an explicit link to transition studies to address these systemic challenges, nor do transition scholars sufficiently address agri-food systems, despite their global pertinence. From this viewpoint, we illustrate several gaps in the agri-food systems debate that sustainability transition studies could engage in. We propose four avenues for research in the next decade of transition research on agri-food systems: 1) Crossscale dynamics between coupled systems; 2) Social justice, equity and inclusion; 3) Sustainability transitions in low- and middle-income countries; 4) Cross-sectoral governance and system integration. We call for a decade of new transition research that moves beyond single-scale and sector perspectives toward more inclusive and integrated analyses of food system dynamics.
The transition to a greener and more circular economy has been a European policy priority for several years. The Circular Economy Action Plan of 2020 underlines the ambition. The following EEA initiatives are meant to support the transition process:
- Bellagio Process on circular economy monitoring principles (EPA network);
- Enhancement of EEA indicators on circular economy (ETC/WMGE);
- Explorative work on novel data streams (FWC);
- Co-creation work - knowledge sharing of monitoring experience (ETC/Eionet).
The scope of the present task was to report on the co-creation process that was undertaken at the end of 2020. The co-creation process was organised to identify:
(i) best practices on monitoring strategies, data sources and target setting; and
(ii) areas of circularity measuring and monitoring that remain challenging and require additional investment.
The co-creation process partially built on the work done during the Bellagio Process/Initiative which was run in parallel. This ETC report presents and documents the evidence gathered throughout the co- creation process as well as providing a retrospective analysis of the links to the Bellagio Principles.
A clear understanding of socio-technical interdependencies and a structured vision are prerequisites for fostering and steering a transition to a fully renewables-based energy system. To facilitate such understanding, a phase model for the renewable energy (RE) transition in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries has been developed and applied to the country case of Jordan. It is designed to support the strategy development and to serve as a guide for decision-makers.
The analysis shows that Jordan has taken essential steps towards a RE transition. According to the MENA energy transition phase model, Jordan can be classified as being in a transitional stage between the first phase, "Take-Off Renewables", and the second phase, "System Integration". However, fossil fuels continue to play a dominant role in the Jordanian energy sector, and the fluctuating world market prices for fossil fuels impact the economy.
The expansion of domestically produced RE could significantly contribute to reducing Jordan's high imports of fossil fuels. This simultaneously increases energy security and reduces the trade deficit. To move towards a sustainable energy system, Jordan needs to embrace comprehensive flexibility measures. These include developing storage options, improving load management, upgrading the existing grid infrastructure, enhancing energy efficiency, exploring the electrification of end use sectors, and creating strong cooperation between stakeholders.
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.
CICERONE aims to bring national, regional and local governments together to jointly tackle the circular economy transition needed to reach net-zero carbon emissions and meet the targets set in the Paris Agreement and EU Green Deal. This document represents one of the key outcomes of the project: a Strategic Research & Innovation Agenda (SRIA) for Europe, to support owners and funders of circular economy programmes in aligning priorities and approaching the circular economy transition in a systemic way.
For some time, 3D printing has been a major buzzword of innovation in industrial production. It was considered a game changer concerning the way industrial goods are produced. There were early expectations that it might reduce the material, energy and transport intensity of value chains. However for quite a while, the main real world applications of additive manufacturing (AM) have been some rapid prototyping and the home-based production of toys made from plastics. On this limited basis, any hypotheses regarding likely impacts on industrial energy efficiency appeared to be premature. Notwithstanding the stark contrast between early hype and practical use, the diffusion of AM has evolved to an extent that at least for some applications allows for a preliminary assessment of its likely implications for energy efficiency.
Unlike many cross-cutting energy efficiency technologies, energy use of AM may vary substantially depending on industry considered and material used for processing. Moreover, AM may have much greater repercussions on other stages of value chains than conventional cross-cutting energy efficiency technologies. In case of AM with metals the following potential determinants of energy efficiency come to mind:
- A reduction of material required per unit of product and used during processing;
- Changes in the total number and spatial allocation of certain stages of the value chain; and
- End-use energy efficiency of final products.
At the same time, these various streams of impact on energy efficiency may be important drivers for the diffusion of AM with metals. This contribution takes stock of AM with metals concerning applications and processes used as well as early evidence on impacts on energy efficiency and combine this into a systematic overview. It builds on relevant literature and a case study on Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing performed within the REINVENT project.
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.
This SUITS policy brief aims to highlight how the transformational process of the nine local authorities involved in SUITS into learning organizations made these cities far better prepared to cope with the challenges due to the pandemic than they would otherwise have been. Due to the higher levels of organizational resilience and the awareness of individuals' importance during such external crises, the nine local authorities were not just trying to react to the unforeseen challenges, but were able to act with a clear pathway and to use their experiences to facilitate their learning from recent years. Of course, the pandemic could not have been foreseen, but as SUITS local authorities are becoming learning organizations, they are enhancing their organizational capacity. In so doing, they have been learning a required resilience to reduce the "complexity and confusion - of what to do best" in the beginning of the crisis and to cope with the challenges. This advantage was of enormous relevance for the local authorities.
Given that over 50% of Myanmar's urban inhabitants and nearly 75% of the rural population lack access to adequate electricity, the country's development agenda includes electrification as a key policy goal. The government's National Electrification Project (NEP) aims to reach 100% household electrification by 2030. To achieve this ambitious target, the government of Myanmar has established a set of strategic electrification priorities. The primary focus is to electrify the country through extension of the national grid and construction of large power plants based on fossil fuels and renewable energy.
For decades, decentralised energy solutions have played a niche role in Myanmar's electrification journey. Local developers have constructed thousands of nominal "mini-grids", powered by a range of sources, including water, diesel, and solar. With the support of local communities, these initiatives provide positive stimuli for the social and economic development of villages across the country. To achieve its electrification goals, the NEP includes a segment to promote the development of new mini-grids through a set of subsidies and private sector cooperation initiatives. These target remote regions, which are difficult to electrify through extension of the main grid.
This report takes an in-depth look at decentralised electrification through community-based mini-grids with a focus on renewable energy. The aim is to provide insights into the potential role of sustainable electrification and to identify both enabling and limiting factors related to the institutional and policy landscape (macro), as well as the local conditions (micro). It also aims to explore whether the cooperative model is a suitable organisational framework for the operation of mini-grids in Myanmar. The results of the study will help to inform policymakers and supporters of decentralised electrification about the potential role for cooperatives and provide ways to improve the operating environment for sustainable, community-based mini-grids.
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.
The paper describes quantitative scenarios on a possible evolution of the EU petrochemical industry towards climate neutrality. This industry will be one of the remaining sectors in a climate neutral economy still handling hydrocarbon material to manufacture polymers. Concepts of a climate neutral chemical industry stress the need to consider the potential end-of-life emissions of polymers produced from fossil feedstock and draft the vision of using renewable electricity to produce hydrogen and to use renewable (hydro)carbon feedstock. The latter could be biomass, CO2 from the air or recycled feedstock from plastic waste streams.
The cost-optimization model used to develop the scenarios describes at which sites investments of industry in the production stock could take place in the future. Around 50 types of products, the related production processes and the respective sites have been collected in a database. The processes included cover the production chain from platform chemicals via intermediates to polymers. Pipelines allowing for efficient exchange of feedstock and platform chemicals between sites are taken into account as well. The model draws on this data to simulate capacity change at individual plants as well as plant utilization. Thus, a future European production network for petrochemicals with flows between the different sites and steps of the value chain can be sketched.
The scenarios described in this paper reveal how an electrification strategy could be implemented by European industry over time with minimized societal costs. Today's existing assets as well as geographical variance of energy supply and the development of demand for different plastic sorts are the major model drivers.
Finally, implications for the chemical industry, the energy system and national or regional governments are discussed.
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.
Financial institutions play a crucial role in achieving the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. They can manage capital flows for financing the required transformation towards a decarbonized industry. Currently established policy programs and regulations at European and national level increasingly address financial institutions to make their climate warming impact measurable and transparent. However, required science-based assessment methods have not been sufficiently developed so far.
This paper discusses methodological opportunities and challenges for measuring carbon footprints of financial institutions. Based on a scientific case study undertaken with the German GLS Bank, the authors introduce an innovative method for quantifying greenhouse gas emissions from a bank's asset with a focus on loans. The authors apply an input/output database to calculate greenhouse gas (GHG) intensities and allocate them with bank's loans and investments.
Moreover, the paper provides insights of calculating avoided GHG emissions initiated by a bank's investment and loans. In conclusion, a high degree of consistent and standardized assessment methods and guidelines need to be developed and applied to promote comparability and transparency.
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.
The reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by energyintensive industries to a net zero level is a very ambitious and complex but still feasible challenge, as recent studies show for the EU level. "Industrial Transformation 2050" by Material Economics (2019) is of particular relevance, as it shows how GHG-neutrality can be achieved in Europe for the sectors chemicals (plastics and ammonia), steel and cement, based on three main decarbonisation strategies. The study determines the resulting total demands for renewable electricity, hydrogen and for the capture and storage of CO2 (CCS). However, it analyses neither the regional demand patterns that are essential for the required infrastructure nor the needed infrastructure itself.
Against this background the present paper determines the regional distribution of the resulting additional demands for electricity, hydrogen and CCS in Europe in the case that the two most energy and CCS intensive decarbonisation strategies of the study above will be realised for the existing industry structure. It explores the future infrastructure needs and identifies and qualitatively assesses different infrastructure solutions for the largest industrial cluster in Europe, i.e. the triangle between Antwerp, Rotterdam and Rhine-Ruhr. In addition, the two industrial regions of Southern France and Poland are also roughly examined.
The paper shows that the increase in demand resulting from a green transformation of industry will require substantial adaptation and expansion of existing infrastructures. These have not yet been the subject of infrastructure planning. In particular, the strong regional concentration of additional industrial demand in clusters (hot spots) must be taken into account. Due to their distance from the high-yield but remote renewable power generation potentials (sweet spots), these clusters further increase the infrastructural challenges. This is also true for the more dispersed cement production sites in relation to the remote CO2 storage facilities. The existing infrastructure plans should therefore be immediately expanded to include decarbonisation strategies of the industrial sector.
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.
The study sheds light on the background of the prevention of plastic waste from packaging and disposable products by explaining the need for action, the environmental impacts and risks to human health. Experiences of the members of the PREVENT Waste Alliance and their partners in the prevention of plastic waste by multi-actor partnerships are presented by means of 17 best practice examples. Finally, the study gives recommendations for the reduction of plastic waste and the further work of the PREVENT Waste Alliance. These include success factors for waste prevention, necessary next steps and conclusions regarding the necessary political framework conditions.
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.
The energy system of Jordan is facing a rise in energy demand while at the same time having quite limited own conventional energy resources. Especially because of their high import dependency, Jordan is starting to change its energy system and puts a higher focus on renewable energy (like wind and solar) and energy efficiency.
In this short paper the authors discuss the transformation of energy companies in Germany and highlight the possibilities of energy efficiency services. Furthermore, they examinate the transferability to Jordan, based on the results of a questionnaire among Jordan energy experts. Due to the low level of research knowledge in the specific field, this is an exploratory research approach. The role, challenges and opportunities of Jordan's state-owned National Electric Power Company NEPCO have been highlighted.
While the Paris Agreement (PA) has enshrined ambitious long-term objectives, the current actions of the Parties to the Agreement fall far short of these goals. The Global Stocktake (GST), established in Art. 14 of the PA, may help narrow this gap between ambition and action: its purpose is to review the implementation of the PA and to assess the collective progress of the international community towards Paris goals. While some general modalities on how to conduct the GST have been adopted, the details are still to be determined.
The objective of this report is to analyze existing international regimes as regards their review processes, the contribution of these review processes to various governance functions and, finally, to derive lessons for the GST. Processes analyzed include:
the design of the upcoming Global Stocktake itself,
the Talanoa Dialogue (TD) which is the direct precursor of the GST,
the Agenda 2030 High-Level Political Forum (HLPF), which features a regular stocktaking process focused on progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),
the review processes of the UN human rights system (UNHRS) and
the review processes and assessment panels of the Montreal Protocol (MP).
The analysis of each review process is organised in four section: (1) political background and context, (2) technical and organisational details of the processes, (3) interface between the political and technical processes, and (4) how the review processes contribute to achieving the objectives of the respective regime, particularly governance functions of the regime (guidance and signal, transparency and accountability, and knowledge and learning).
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.
This paper analyses and compares industry sector transformation strategies as envisioned in recent German, European and global deep decarbonisation scenarios.
The first part of the paper identifies and categorises ten key strategies for deep emission reductions in the industry sector. These ten key strategies are energy efficiency, direct electrification, use of climateneutral hydrogen and/or synthetic fuels, use of biomass, use of CCS, use of CCU, increases in material efficiency, circular economy, material substitution and end-use demand reductions. The second part of the paper presents a meta-analysis of selected scenarios, focusing on the question of which scenario relies to what extent on the respective mitigation strategies.
The key findings of the meta-analysis are discussed, with an emphasis on identifying those strategies that are commonly pursued in all or the vast majority of the scenarios and those strategies that are only pursued in a limited number of the scenarios. Possible reasons for differences in the choice of strategies are investigated.
The paper concludes by deriving key insights from the analysis, including identifying the main uncertainties that are still apparent with regard to the future steps necessary to achieve deep emission reductions in the industry sector and how future research can address these uncertainties.
Technological innovations in energy-intensive industries (EIIs) have traditionally emerged within the boundaries of a specific sector. Now that these industries are facing the challenges of deep decarbonisation and a significant reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is expected to be achieved across sectors, cross-industry collaboration is becoming increasingly relevant for low-carbon innovation.
Accessing knowledge and other resources from other industrial sectors as well as co-developing innovative concepts around industrial symbiosis can be mutually beneficial in the search for fossil-free feedstocks and emissions reductions. In order to harness the potential of this type of innovation, it is important to understand not only the technical innovations themselves, but in particular the non-technical influencing factors that can drive the successful implementation of cross-industry collaborative innovation projects.
The scientific state of the art does not provide much insight into this particular area of research. Therefore, this paper builds on three separate strands of innovation theory (cross-industry innovation, low-carbon innovation and innovation in EIIs) and takes an explorative case-study approach to identify key influencing factors for cross-industry collaboration for low-carbon innovation in EIIs.
For this purpose, a broad empirical database built within the European joint research project REINVENT is analysed. The results from this project provide deep insights into the dynamics of low-carbon innovation projects of selected EIIs. Furthermore, the paper draws on insights from the research project SCI4Climate.NRW. This project serves as the scientific competence centre for IN4Climate.NRW, a unique initiative formed by politicians, industry and science to promote, among other activities, cross-industry collaboration for the implementation of a climate-neutral industry in the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). Based on the results of the case study analysis, five key influencing factors are identified that drive the implementation of cross-industry collaboration for low-carbon innovation in EIIs: Cross-industry innovation projects benefit from institutionalised cross-industry exchange and professional project management and coordination. Identifying opportunities for regional integration as well as the mitigation of financial risk can also foster collaboration. Lastly, clear political framework conditions across industrial sectors are a key driver.
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.
Effectiveness and efficiency of food-waste prevention policies, circular economy, and food industry
(2020)
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.
Despite a strong connection between the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, climate change mitigation actions and sustainable development objectives are oftentimes not aligned efficiently, causing conflicts between the objectives.
This thesis creates a systematic overview of conflicts of three renewable energy technologies with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by a literature review in Web of Science. The technologies solar energy, wind energy and hydropower function as examples for climate change mitigation actions. Out of 530 screened articles, 63 demonstrated conflicts. The systematic overview reveals that conflicts are different for each technology, but conflicts in regard to biodiversity loss and the degradation of natural habitats (SDG 15) and inequalities (SDG 10) were frequently identified for all technologies.
The results of the systematic overview suggest that the site selection and the decision-making process on the construction of renewable energy projects are crucial stages to avoid conflicts with the SDGs.
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
The European Union (EU) has established that the goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2050 as a key driver of innovation and growth for industry and the economy in the EU. In addition to offering great opportunities, this also poses considerable challenges for the European economy and, for the most part, for basic industries, which are particularly emission-intensive and face strong international competition.
An integrated climate and industry strategy is of central importance to protecting the climate, since the production of steel, cement, basic chemicals, glass, paper, and other materials in the EU and worldwide accounts for roughly one fifth of total greenhouse gas emissions. Even in a greenhouse gas-neutral future, we will not be able to fully eliminate our need for these materials. At the same time, it is particularly challenging to produce these materials without creating emissions given the state of technology and the necessary infrastructures. This applies above all to the question of how large amounts of green energy, including electricity and hydrogen, can be produced at competitive prices. Analyses show that despite the considerable costs involved in process changeover, the costs of transforming the raw materials industry are acceptable to society as a whole, given that the additional costs usually only increase the price of the end products by a few percentage points. However, in the case of crude steel or cement, the price would increase by between one third and 100 per cent. Since almost all raw materials manufacturers face strong global market competition, in most cases they are not able to bankroll the investments in climate-neutral production and the required energy infrastructure without outside support.
This paper outlines an integrated climate industrial policy package that allows the EU to utilise its existing technological leadership in many of these industries to build a greenhouse gas-neutral raw materials industry.
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.
Digitalisation is taking place at a fast pace in all European countries and it is transforming the economies, societies, communication, jobs and the necessary skills for the workplace and everyday life. The Covid-19 pandemic is also accelerating digitalisation at many levels.
To address the great challenges resulting from this, the European Commission has launched the Green Deal, a long-term transformation strategy towards an innovative and sustainable society. Three important initiatives under the Green Deal are the New Circular Economy Action Plan, the Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 and the Zero Pollution Action Plan. The various strategies and action plans draw up a large portfolio of measures, instruments and milestones that are always linked to digital technologies. Ideally, these are eco-innovative and sustainable and contribute to improving living conditions in Europe.
The EIO Biennial Report 2020, which looks at a different topic every two years, considers digitalisation a major opportunity to accelerate the transition to a circular Europe. In the current report, the authors provide an overview of eco-innovation trends, illustrated by digital technology and policy practices that can further drive the circular economy.
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.
Since urban processes need models of possible futures (referred to as travelling concepts) to drive their development, this study investigates whether planned-from-scratch smart city Kashiwa-no-ha International Campus Town Initiative can produce such an image with its smart governance approach, that is combined with an urban living lab. Using geographical governance research in relation to urban development processes as a framework, this master's thesis derives its own definition of the fuzzy concept of smart governance within the smart city vision based on a socio-geographical understanding of space, here referred to as Smart Urban Governance. Additionally, a set of indicators for the operationalisation of Smart Urban Governance is designed and applied to the case study. Methodologically, the thesis pursues a qualitative approach and, in this context, carries out a descriptive and normative governance analysis of Kashiwa-no-ha on the basis of the existing literature and empirical surveys conducted by the author.
In summary, the strong role of academia in the urban planning context of community-building in Kashiwa-no-ha is exemplary and has led to a collaborative code of conduct between the traditional actors, mediated by a public-private-academic partnership, as well as to co-innovation between the city, developers, and citizens in form of a public-private-people partnership. Although the flagship project successfully addresses a large number of the Smart Urban Governance indicators defined in this context, there is potential for improvement, for example, in terms of participation, transparency, inclusion, and public spaces. Since Kashiwa-no-ha Smart City is still in an implementation phase until 2030, the thesis concludes with a forecast and a recommendation for action based on a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats analysis.
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.
Automakers close factories, the stock exchange crashes, empty streets and cafés everywhere and suddenly working from home is recommended or even required for a large part of the working population in Germany. The Corona pandemic is defining our current everyday life and hitting Germany, Europe and the world at a time when there are a multitude of huge challenges to be solved already. Economic aid is indispensable during and in the aftermath of such a crisis, but the primary focus is to prevent the spread of the pandemic and limiting the health implications. Economic stimulus packages and structural aid are an effective means of overcoming the long-term economic consequences of such disruptive developments. However, they must not be distributed according to the "watering can principle"; financial support must be provided in a future-oriented manner for urgently needed investments. The aim must be to promote the necessary sustainable transformation processes within our economy and society, such as climate protection. According to the authors, the preparations must be made now. This discussion paper shows which criteria and measures are needed.
Wolfgang Sachs wrote a seminal series of essays for the New Internationalist in 1992 called "Development: a guide to the ruins". The concept of development lives on - and takes on new shapes as it is reframed by the UN, reinterpreted by the Vatican or hijacked by authoritarian populists to serve their own nationalist agenda. But, he argues now, we need to move beyond its misguided assumptions into a new post-development era based on eco-solidarity.
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.
Design options for the new international market mechanism under article 6.4 of the Paris agreement
(2020)
In this project commissioned by the German Environment Agency, important aspects of the mechanism under Article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement were examined in more detail. This mechanism is to succeed the CDM under the Kyoto Protocol from 2021 onwards, but it will contain decisive improvements, especially with regard to a robust accounting of emission reductions and better integration into the national climate policy of the host country. The report is addressed to the international experts, in particular to the delegates to the climate conference and observers, and is therefore written in English. A German summary is included. The following topics are covered:
How does the mechanism achieve an overall reduction of global emissions?
Are there opportunities to use benchmarks to establish baselines?
Can contributions to increasing ambition be made by using Art. 6.4?
What contribution can the voluntary market make to increasing ambition in the future?
Introduction of incentives for the participation of private companies under Art. 6.4 of the PA.
The role of the Art. 6.4 mechanism on the way to a net zero emission world.
The project provides a contribution to the general discussion in the EU as well as to the Article 6 - Negotiations under the UNFCCC. It is a contribution that presents backgrounds and interrelationships for individual questions concerning the design of the new market mechanisms under Article 6 and can thus contribute to a more informed decision-making process.Since there are, however, several different ways of designing a mechanism that can avoid double counting and provide incentives for increasing ambition, this project is only one of several current contributions to the international discussion.
The waste prevention program (WPP) from 2013 must be evaluated every 6 years and updated if necessary. The review and evaluation of the implementation of the WPP took place within the scope of the project. Based on the analysis results for the implementation of the WPP at federal, state and municipal level and an assessment of existing prevention potentials, concrete proposals for a possible further development and updating of the program on prioritized waste streams and corresponding priority prevention approaches were developed. In addition, structural adjustment and change needs of the WPP were worked out and further research was shown.
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
Germany's eco-innovation performance has declined compared to previous reports and scores 123 against 100 of the EU average. It is still quite high with respect to the input side of eco-innovation and relatively good, i.e. above EU average concerning socio-economic and eco- innovative outputs. However, the revised eco-innovation index shows weaknesses in eco-innovation activities and environmental outcomes. All in all, Germany ranks 6 this year.
Science and education are central fields and a lever for sustainable development. With the newly developed student teaching and learning format "Transformative Innovation Lab" - TIL for short - students are to be enabled to conduct independent transformative research. To this end, the researchers, under the direction of the Wuppertal Institute, developed and tested the new learning concept in the project "Development, testing and dissemination of new qualification offers for 'change agents' for transformative learning using the real-world laboratory approach" (EEVA). The detailed results and numerous implementation tips have been published in a practical handbook aimed at academic teaching staff and other multipliers.
In current German debates on sustainable urbanisation and urbanism, new urban actors reviving buildings, brownfields or whole neighbourhoods are discussed as potential drivers of urban transformation towards sustainability as well as potential co-producers for conventional actors in urban development and planning. These actor's projects can be understood as spatially confined niches for experimentation with (built) urban space itself. Building upon the concepts of niche entrepreneurship (Pesch et al., 2017) and the framework of strategic action field theory (Fligstein & McAdam, 2011; 2015), we ask how these actors secure support for their projects and how these projects in turn are altered in this process. Based upon a case study from Wuppertal, Germany, we show that in struggling for support of powerful actors, these actors often have to significantly compromise, and that these compromises can be understood as contextualisation in the project's spatial and institutional environment.
The German-Japanese Energy Transition Council (GJETC) was established in 2016 by experts from research institutions, energy policy think tanks, and practitioners in Germany and Japan.
The objectives and main activities of the Council and the supporting secretariats are to identify and analyze current and future issues regarding policy frameworks, markets, infrastructure, and technological developments in the energy transition, and to hold Council meetings to exchange ideas and propose better policies and strategies. In its second project phase (2018-2020), the GJETC had six members from academia on the Japanese side, and eight members on the German side, with one Co-Chair from each country.
From October 2018 to March 2020, the GJETC worked on and debated six topics:
1) Digitalization and the energy transition. 2) Hydrogen society. 3) Review of German and Japanese long-term energy scenarios and their evaluation mechanism. 4) Buildings, energy efficiency, heating/cooling. 5) Integration costs of renewable energies. 6) Transport and sector coupling.
The outputs and the recommendations of the second phase of the GJETC are summarized in this report.
D2.1 report on local EPC situation and cross-country comparison matrix : QualDeEPC H2020 project
(2020)
Considering that 40% of the European Union's energy consumption can be traced back to its buildings, it is essential to improve their energy efficiency in order to achieve the EU's energy efficiency targets. Both the rate of energy renovation and its depth, i.e. the amount of energy savings during a renovation, need to be improved. Energy Performance Certificates (EPC), regulated by the EU's Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), are an important instrument to enhance the market uptake of energy-efficient new buildings and the energy-efficient renovation of existing buildings.
Against this background, the Horizon2020 funded project QualDeEPC will work on EU-wide convergence of the building assessment and the issuance, design, and use of quality-enhanced EPCs as well as their recommendations for building renovation. The aim is to make these recommendations coherent with deep energy renovation towards a nearly-zero energy building stock by 2050.
The first part of the QualDeEPC project (work package 2) aims to identify the priorities for elements of EPC schemes that show a need to be improved, and for which the project will investigate further and propose how the elements can be improved. The first step in identifying these priorities is taking stock of the existing EPC schemes. Based on the input from all national consortium partners and other sources, the Wuppertal Institute prepared this detailed overview of the country-specific EPC assessment and certification procedures and their links to other policies and programmes, existing initiatives, and projects. The analysis was based on a list of almost 50 potential options for enhancing the existing EPC schemes.
The aim of this deliverable is to present this stock-taking by a detailed analysis on which of the potential enhanced EPC elements are already implemented in which form in which country, covering all 28 countries that were EU member states until 31 January 2020. All partners conducted bilateral interviews with the major actors in the EPC procedures, including executive bodies on EPC at regional and/or national level. For countries not represented in the Consortium, Wuppertal Institut and EAP conducted specific literature research, e.g. from the Concerted Action EPBD, and aimed to obtain contributions from other member states. The information collected allows a detailed presentation on the elements implemented as well as a cross-country comparison matrix (see Annex I) in this report, which outlines the current EPC practices across the EU regarding the elements of a good practice scheme or innovative improvement options, their comparability, compliance with EU legislation, and to which extent they differ or converge.
The results show, once more, the high diversity in EPC schemes across the EU. They also provide useful information in at least two directions: 1) which improvement options are not yet implemented at all or in sufficient quality in most QualDeEPC partner countries as well as other EU member states, and could therefore be interesting candidates for the further work of the QualDeEPC project in development, testing, discussion, and possibly implementation of elements for enhanced and converging EPC schemes; and 2) which countries, within or beyond the QualDeEPC project, offer good practice examples for the implementation of these options that could serve to guide the development and implementation in other countries. This deliverable will thus serve as a basis for the upcoming tasks to develop priorities and actual proposals for improvement of EPC schemes.
Environment
(2019)
One world
(2019)
Energy sufficiency has recently gained increasing attention as a way to limit and reduce total energy consumption of households and overall. This paper presents both the partly new methods and the results of a comprehensive analysis of a micro- and meso-level energy sufficiency policy package to make electricity use in the home more sufficient and reduce at least the growth in per-capita dwelling size. The objective is to find out how policy can support households and their members, as individuals or as caregivers, but also manufacturers and local authorities in practicing energy sufficiency. This analysis needed an adapted and partly new set of methods we developed. Energy sufficiency does not only face barriers like energy efficiency, but also potential restrictions for certain household members or characteristics, and sometimes, preconditions have to be met to make more energy-sufficient routines and practices possible. All of this was analysed in detail to derive recommendations for which policy instruments need to be combined to an effective policy package for energy sufficiency. Energy efficiency and energy sufficiency should not be seen as opposed to each other but work in the same direction - saving energy. Therefore, some energy sufficiency policy instruments may be the same as for energy efficiency, such as energy pricing policies. Some may simply adapt technology-specific energy efficiency policy instruments. Examples include progressive appliance efficiency standards, standards based on absolute consumption, or providing energy advice. However, sufficiency may also require new policy approaches. They may range from promotion of completely different services for food and clothes cleaning, to instruments for limiting average dwelling floor area per person, or to a cap-and-trade system for the total electricity sales of a supplier to its customers, instead of an energy efficiency obligation.
Ahead of the Conference of Parties (COP) 24 where countries will first take stock of climate action post Paris, this paper assesses India's progress on its nationally determined contribution (NDC) targets and future energy plans. We find that, although India is well on track to meet its NDC pledges, these targets were extremely modest given previous context. Furthermore, there is considerable uncertainty around India's energy policy post 2030 and if current plans for energy futures materialise, the Paris Agreement's 2 degrees goal will be almost certainly unachievable. India's role in international climate politics has shifted from obstructionism to leadership particularly following the announcement of withdrawal by the United States from the Paris Agreement, but analysis reveals that India's "hard" actions on the domestic front are inconsistent with its "soft" actions in the international climate policy arena. Going forward, India is likely to face increasing calls for stronger mitigation action and we suggest that this gap can be bridged by strengthening the links between India's foreign policy ambitions, international climate commitments, and domestic energy realities.
Digital platforms may yield a host of advantages in putting circular economy into effect. This paper analyses the related chances and discusses requirements of digital platforms for the realization of a circular economy. It specifically points to potential solutions offered by digital platforms for existing barriers. From there it identifies issues that need specific attendance to create economically and ecologically functional platforms. Three economically relevant perspectives are discussed for this: a management perspective, a legislative perspective and a social/systems perspective.
India's present development trajectory is at a crucial juncture with a requirement to meet the demands of a population of over 1.2 billion while ensuring environmental sustainability. The resulting economic growth over the past two decades has over-exploited finite natural resources and led to tremendous environmental degradation. Therefore, decoupling economic growth from resource consumption is crucial in the transformation towards a green economy. Building construction is one of the most resource-intensive sectors, as well as creating a high impact on the environment. This study analyzes existing mechanisms in India's building construction sector that attempt to decouple economic growth from resource use and environmental impacts. The key contributors for decoupling are analyzed. Recommendations for regulations, market incentives, transparency, data monitoring and capacity-building are provided for an array of policy initiatives targeted at political and financial decision-makers at the national, state and local levels for different buildings.
The potential of mixed-mode office buildings with varying design and control parameters is examined by using an uncertainty analysis in the three climate zones of India. The analysis is in terms of cooling energy consumption, thermal comfort conditions, and natural ventilation hours. Furthermore, influential parameters are identified using sensitivity analysis. In this study, opening the windows enables natural ventilation. Night-time ventilation through the windows is not enabled because these are mostly closed at night. A maximum natural ventilation of 10% of the total building occupancy hours are observed in warm and humid, and hot and dry climates; however, they are slightly higher in the composite climate. A further increase in the number of natural ventilation hours leads to an increase in the occupancy hours outside the Indian Model for Adaptive Comfort model for mixed-mode buildings with at least 90% of occupants are satisfied. There are no occupancy hours outside of 80% of occupants are satisfied. The choice of thermal comfort band is crucial for determining the potential of mixed-mode buildings. The cooling setpoint temperature, building size, window solar heat gain coefficient, and surface properties of exterior surfaces are identified as the more influential parameters than the thermophysical properties of building envelope constructions. Although the building envelope which is in compliance with the Energy Efficient Building Code of India increases energy efficiency during air-conditioning periods, whether it reduces natural ventilation hours, because of overheating during such period remains to be determined.
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.
With the introduction of the Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe (2011) and the more recent commitment of The Action Plan towards the Circular Economy (2015), the European Commission (EC) has expressed its fundamental interest to substantially improve the resource efficiency of the European economy and enable the transition towards the Circular Economy (CE). This policy push has meanwhile been complemented by some quite ambitious national programmes for RE and CE and institutional advances but it is not yet bound to targets or mandatory reporting.
Against this background, the objective of this paper is to give a comprehensive overview of the current policy frameworks at EU and a selection of MSs and provide insights into the elements shaping policy processes. The analytical framework relies on three essential interconnected components: the policy framework, the economic incentive system and economic side policies which are relevant in the context of RE and CE and actor constellations. The paper does this looking at the interface between EU-MSs. The analysis is based on different empirical surveys in which the policy development is observed and discussed (EEA 2011, 2016a, 2016b, EIO 2013, 2014, 2016) and a comprehensive review of legislative and policy frameworks at the EU and selected MSs, undertaken as part of the project POLFREE (Policy option for a Resource-Efficient Economy) (Domenech et al., 2014, Bahn-Walkowiak et al., 2014). The analysis reveals that policy frameworks for RE/CE are complex and fragmented as competing goals and visions reduce effectiveness of measures. The paper makes recommendations as to how EU and MS policies could improve RE in a coordinated way, but recognizes that achieving such coordination will be challenging in the current political context.
Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement stand as milestone diplomatic achievements. However, immense discrepancies between political commitments and governmental action remain. Combined national climate commitments fall far short of the Paris Agreement's 1.5/2°C targets. Similar political ambition gaps persist across various areas of sustainable development. Many therefore argue that actions by nonstate actors, such as businesses and investors, cities and regions, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), are crucial. These voices have resonated across the United Nations (UN) system, leading to growing recognition, promotion, and mobilization of such actions in ever greater numbers. This article investigates optimistic arguments about nonstate engagement, namely: (a) "the more the better"; (b) "everybody wins"; (c) "everyone does their part"; and (d) "more brings more." However, these optimistic arguments may not be matched in practice due to governance risks. The current emphasis on quantifiable impacts may lead to the under-appreciation of variegated social, economic, and environmental impacts. Claims that everybody stands to benefit may easily be contradicted by outcomes that are not in line with priorities and needs in developing countries. Despite the seeming depoliticization of the role of nonstate actors in implementation, actions may still lead to politically contentious outcomes. Finally, nonstate climate and sustainability actions may not be self-reinforcing but may heavily depend on supporting mechanisms. The article concludes with governance risk-reduction strategies that can be combined to maximize nonstate potential in sustainable and climate-resilient transformations.
Estimating the sufficiency potential in buildings : the space between underdimensioned and oversized
(2019)
The emission reduction potential of energy efficiency and energy supply in buildings is estimated in various energy and climate action plans, scenarios, and potential analyses. But the third pillar of sustainability - sufficiency - is neglected in most studies.The increasing demand of space per person in the residential sector is a trend in most European countries. Its implication on energy use, demand for resources like land, building material, equipment, and waste production is enormous. Next to the ecological impact, the distribution of space has social and societal effects. Thus, sufficiency policies in the building sector complementing efficiency and energy policy are needed for a sustainable development of the European building stock.
But how can a sufficiency potential in the building sector be estimated? How much space and equipment is needed for a decent living and how much is too much? The paper proposes four areas of sufficiency in buildings: space, design and construction, equipment, and use. It presents a set of indicators, a quantitative estimate of energy savings from reduced per capita floor area, and visualises the sufficiency potential in European countries in an experimental approach. The final discussion focuses on the question: What does this mean for policy making?
Addressing food waste prevention is one target of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and a major task for the UN Environmental Programme and the European Commission. It is promising in terms of its environmental saving potential. However, it also leads to consumers being able to save money, which they then are likely to spend, thus again causing a negative environmental impact. This dimension of the so-called indirect rebound effect, which prevents the desired ecological benefits from being achieved, is investigated in this paper. By using a single-region environmentally extended input-output model from a production perspective, the indirect rebound effects from food waste prevention in Germany are analysed. Any political action needs to consider not only a differentiation in income class, but also alternative concepts such as the principles of sufficiency in order to achieve all ecological benefits and specifically the third target of SDG 12.
Europe needs a new vision of progress. An energy transition has this potential. It can give the "European idea" a future-oriented content. The goal for 2050 is clear: a Europe without fossil and nuclear energy! This is not a utopia. Studies, resolutions of the EU and some member states prove that this vision is feasible and has many advantages: more jobs, more security of supply, fewer premature deaths due to air pollution, reduction of resource conflicts, falling energy costs. New green lead markets for renewable energies and resource efficiency are emerging. A European energy transition requires an alliance, ideally fuelled by neighbours France and Germany. Many are hoping for Germany as a driver of nuclear and coal phase-out. But deciding on "revolutionary goals" is not enough: finally implementing them is what Germany and Europe are waiting for. This report shows which concrete steps can advance this vision of progress.
In spite of differences in energy policies and supply, Japan and Germany have to master similar challenges: To reorganize the energy supply system towards - in the long term - being reliable, affordable, low in risks and resource use, and climate-neutral. At the same time, the ecological modernization should maintain or even strengthen international competitiveness. To better address these challenges, a bi-national expert council has been established between the two high-tech countries in 2016 - the GJETC.
The aim of the GJETC is to show that despite different starting points, a national energy transition can be more successful, if both countries learn from their strengths and also weaknesses, to avoid the latter. If the implementation of an energy transition in the two countries is socially and economically sound and advances technology innovation and deployment, it may not only double success, but can also serve as blue prints for other countries, especially due to learning from similarities and differences. For example: Why is per capita energy consumption higher in transport in Germany, but energy intensity higher in Japan's building sector? How can variable renewable energies be integrated in an efficient energy system at lowest costs?
The Council meets twice a year, holds stakeholder dialogues and outreach events, and prepares policy papers on strategic topics of mutual interest. Four comprehensive studies, each in cooperation of a German and a Japanese research institute, have been the basis for 15 joint key recommendations during the 1st phase. The 2nd phase to 2020 will study the role of hydrogen and digitalisation for the energy transition, as well as other topics. The paper presents the findings and recommendations of the GJETC of the first phase 2016-18 as well as first results of the second phase. It also reviews the setup of the GJETC and the way it works, to assess if and how it can serve as a role model of bilateral cooperation on the energy transition.
What role do transaction costs play in energy efficiency improvements and how can they be reduced?
(2019)
Ex-ante policy evaluation requires a detailed understanding of how the subjects addressed by the policy react to its implementation. In the context of energy efficiency, policy measures typically aim at influencing investment decisions towards more efficient options.
As has been discussed widely in the context of the "energy efficiency gap", investments in energy efficiency improvements are frequently not conducted even though they seem cost-effective from a simple cost-benefit perspective, where transaction costs have been identified as one important barrier.
While transaction costs have been discussed widely from a conceptional perspective, empirical studies quantifying transaction costs and measures to reduce them are rare. This paper presents approaches, results and insights from a recently completed research project funded by the German Federal Energy Efficiency Center (BfEE), addressing transaction costs in various energy efficiency measures and the role of energy efficiency services to overcome the barrier.
We analyse a set of 11 energy efficiency investments covering private households, public institutions and the industry sector. We gather data on direct investment costs and energy cost savings and provide a detailed analysis of the various barriers and transaction costs associated with the implementation. We then analyse the costs of existing energy efficiency services using data provided by the BfEE. We compare the different cost elements and analyze the potential of energy efficiency services to reduce transaction costs.
We find that the role of transaction costs differs substantially between households, public institutions and companies and that the impact of energy efficiency services on transaction costs needs to be evaluated using different methodological approaches. We conclude that while data availability on disaggregated transaction costs is a major challenge, energy services can reduce transaction costs considerably.
Improvements in energy efficiency have numerous impacts additional to energy and greenhouse gas savings. This paper presents key findings and policy recommendations of the COMBI project ("Calculating and Operationalising the Multiple Benefits of Energy Efficiency in Europe").
This project aimed at quantifying the energy and non-energy impacts that a realisation of the EU energy efficiency potential would have in 2030. It covered the most relevant technical energy efficiency improvement actions in buildings, transport and industry.
Quantified impacts include reduced air pollution (and its effects on human health, eco-systems), improved social welfare (health, productivity), saved biotic and abiotic resources, effects on the energy system and energy security, and the economy (employment, GDP, public budgets and energy/EU-ETS prices). The paper shows that a more ambitious energy efficiency policy in Europe would lead to substantial impacts: overall, in 2030 alone, monetized multiple impacts (MI) would amount to 61 bn Euros per year in 2030, i.e. corresponding to approx. 50% of energy cost savings (131 bn Euros).
Consequently, the conservative CBA approach of COMBI yields that including MI quantifications to energy efficiency impact assessments would increase the benefit side by at least 50-70%. As this analysis excludes numerous impacts that could either not be quantified or monetized or where any double-counting potential exists, actual benefits may be much larger.
Based on these findings, the paper formulates several recommendations for EU policy making:
(1) the inclusion of MI into the assessment of policy instruments and scenarios,
(2) the need of reliable MI quantifications for policy design and target setting,
(3) the use of MI for encouraging inter-departmental and cross-sectoral cooperation in policy making to pursue common goals, and
(4) the importance of MI evaluations for their communication and promotion to decision-makers, stakeholders, investors and the general public.
This report on urban mobility performance measurement is aimed at enabling stake- holders of the city of Bucharest and the public to understand their current urban mobility situation through a point-based results framework. It shall provide the city of Bucharest with a yardstick to measure its performance and benchmark the progress against some of its counterparts. It measures the urban mobility and compares it with 13 other European cities: Berlin, London, Vienna, Brussels, Moscow, Rome, Zurich, Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Oslo, Budapest and Madrid.
Similar to many other European cities, Bucharest employs a Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) in order to continuously improve urban transport and mobility and to make it more sustainable. In this respect, the report should also be regarded as a document which supports the stakeholders in Bucharest in their efforts to develop transport and mobility in the city more sustainable.
Sustainable Urban Mobility Pathways examines how sustainable urban mobility solutions contribute to achieving worldwide sustainable development and global climate change targets, while also identifying barriers to implementation and strategies to overcome them. Building on city-to-city cooperation experiences in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America, the book examines key challenges in the context of the Paris Agreement, UN Sustainable Development Goals and the New Urban Agenda, including policies needed to achieve a sustainable, low-carbon pathway for transport and how an integrated policy strategy is designed to provide a basis for political coalitions.
The book explores which institutional framework creates sufficient political stability and continuity to foster the take-up of and long-term support for sustainable transport strategies. The linkages of climate change and wider sustainable development objectives are covered, including success stories, best practices, and quantitative analysis for key emerging economies in public transport, walking, cycling, freight and logistics, vehicle technology and fuels, urban planning and integration, and national framework policies.
This assessment report identifies six key areas of sustainable consumption. Transforming those areas is associated with a significant, positive impact on sustainable development. In this way, those key areas lay the foundation to set clear priorities and formulate concrete policy measures and recommendations. The report describes recent developments and relevant actors in those six fields, outlines drivers and barriers to reach a shift towards more sustainability in those specific areas, and explores international good-practice examples. On top of this, overarching topics in the scientific discourse concerning sustainable consumption (e.g. collaborative economy, behavioural economics and nudging) are revealed by using innovative text-mining techniques. Subsequently, the report outlines the contributions of these research approaches to transforming the key areas of sustainable consumption. Finally, the report derives policy recommendations to improve the German Sustainable Development Strategy (DNS) in order to achieve a stronger stimulus effect for sustainable consumption.
Enhancing cross-functional integration in new product development becomes increasingly important for industrial players to keep up with shorter product life cycles in technological innovation dynamics. Abundant research reflects the topic's significance, yet ambiguity in empirical results persists and industrial adoption of existing methods remains incremental. This thesis employs a qualitative approach to build a case study at the design-manufacturing interface of new product development of electrified cars. Cross-functional coopetition, as the joint occurrence of cooperation and competition, is adopted to generate an in-depth understanding of integration dynamics. Socio-organizational and contextual aspects are found to shape integration in a new product development context substantially. A model of interface dynamics is developed which provides for analysis and prediction of these aspects' impact on effective integration. A grounded theory approach to enhance integration is explored that introduces constraints as stimuli to consider manufacturability aspects in the design process. Constraint introduction is found to positively impact both cross-functional integration and creativity, with eight characteristics of constraint quality identified as moderating factors. A theoretical model is contributed which outlines cause-effect relationships of constraints' impact on antecedents of new product development success. It substantiates constraints' role in innovation contexts and encourages application for design-manufacturing integration as well as for other interfaces or purposes.
The earth as we know it can only continue to exist if humanity finds a way to switch to a sustainable use of energy and resources. This work contributes to the research carried out to achieve this goal by improving the coating of adsorptive materials. These are used in heat transformation and drying processes that allow for efficient temperature and humidity control in buildings. A central component of these adsorptive coatings is the binder that acts as "glue" in the manufacturing of the coating. In this work the methods to evaluate binder performance regarding their thermal stability under the process conditions, their mechanical stability and their influence on the adsorptive properties of the coating were established. The coatings have to meet special requirements due to the thermal stresses and low pressure atmosphere they experience in these applications. A selection of silicone binders was then characterized with the established tests according to these requirements. Additionally a selection of inorganic binders was investigated because they allow for the use of high desorption temperatures and thus a high energy efficiency of the process. Out of these binders Silres® MP50E emerged as the most promising one due to very good adsorptive properties of the coating, its good temperature stability and ease of use. While some of the inorganic binders showed very good adsorptive properties and temperature stability the mechanical stability of all inorganic binders was not sufficient for their use in adsorption heat transformation technology. This is the first time that a broad selection of binders was evaluated with regards to adsorptive coatings and the results published in literature. With a suitable binder identified, the next step was to optimize the coating of the heat exchangers in order to work out how to manufacture the most efficient and powerful heat exchangers. Samples with different coating thicknesses were manufactured in small scale and full scale and their adsorption behavior was characterized. It could be shown for the first time that it is possible to increase energy efficiency by improving the mass ration of adsorber to coating and increase the delivered power at the same time. This was shown for small and full scale samples. It was shown that under the corresponding conditions the heat transfer from the coating layer to the adsorber metal substrate is the limiting step in the process. These results can now be used for the planning and construction of adsorbers. With knowledge of a suitable binder and how to coat efficient, powerful adsorbers, the coating process itself was improved to allow for industrial scale manufacturing. A central point here is the ability to control slurry rheology. Out of many rheology additives those that are suited for the application in adsorption heat transformation were identified and their influence on the slurry rheology thoroughly characterized. Additionally the process of slurry preparation could be simplified for several different adsorbents. Here it was shown that the supersonic deagglomeration step is not necessary to prepare a slurry. Extending the possible coating techniques and in addition to the dip coating process used so far, the spray coating of adsorptive coatings was established for the first time in literature. This process is widely used in the industry and allows for easier plugin into existing coating processes. For the coating of high resolution patterns a proof of concept of the screen printing process was carried out.
Much of the current literature on climate clubs sees mitigation costs creating free rider incentives as the main problem of climate policy. Climate clubs are supposed to solve this problem by creating additional incentives for mitigation. Looking more in detail, one sees that the situation differs from sector to sector. Some industry sectors indeed have substantial cost and competitiveness issues. In others such as electricity and transport, there are costs at micro level but balance for economy and society as a whole is rather positive. International climate policy in general and clubs in particular should therefore be tailored to sectoral specifics.
Article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement explicitly acknowledges the need to incentivize and facilitate the participation of private entities in the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. Under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), private sector actors had already the opportunity to participate in a new and fast-growing market. However, they faced numerous challenging investment barriers. The study provides an overview on key factors and barriers determining private sector participation in Article 6 mechanisms. It distinguishes between the three topics demand side factors, rules and standards for market mechanisms, and supply side factors and provides for each of them options to mitigate or overcome barriers.
In a short analysis, it further explores three of the identified options:
- Improving the design and support of national systems and capacities is an important pre-requisite for the private sector to be able to generate and sell ITMOs
- The up-scaling of mitigation activities e. g. through (sub-) sector level crediting, and policy crediting helps private sector actors to benefit from economies of scale
- Exploring the potential of digitization of measuring, reporting and verification (MRV), e. g. the use of sensors, internet of things, artificial intelligence and blockchain to make the project cycle more efficient and reduce transaction costs.
Overall, the report stresses the importance of host country readiness to provide the private sector with a robust and trusted environment that allows for the adoption of Article 6 mechanisms.
The new mechanism defined under Article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement is supposed to allow for international cooperation with regard to climate change mitigation and thereby enable an increase in overall mitigation. Nevertheless, the design of the mechanism under Article 6.4 should also make sure that it is not be in conflict with the long-term goal of net-zero GHG emissions but even better foster national pathways leading to this objective. Building this into the mechanism requires to shift the focus from short- and mid-term considerations to the long-term perspective in one way or another.
This discussion paper explores three different approaches that may help to foster the long-term objective of net-zero GHG emissions in the operationalization of Article 6.4, namely positive and negative lists, additionality with regard to a baseline consistent with both, NDCs and long-term targets, as well as adaptation of existing instruments and criteria from climate finance. The detailed discussion of the ap-proaches shows that the approaches should not be seen as mutually exclusive but rather as comple-mentary to each other. From the analyses, two storylines emerge how to combine aspects of the differ-ent approaches in a reasonable way to foster the long-term objective of net-zero GHG emissions under Article 6.4.
Creating statistics for China's building energy consumption using an adapted energy balance sheet
(2019)
China's regular energy statistics does not include the building sector, and data on building energy demand is included in other types of energy consumption in the Energy Balance Sheet (EBS). Therefore data on building energy demand is not collected based on statistics, but rather calculated or estimated by various approaches in China. This study aims at developing and testing China's building energy statistics by applying an adapted EBS. The advantage of the adapted EBS is that statistical data is from the regular statistical system and no additional statistical efforts are needed. The research result shows that the adapted EBS can be included in China regular energy statistical system and can be standardized in a transparent way. Testing of the adapted EBS shows that China's building energy demand has shown an annual increase of 7.6% since 2001, and a lower contribution to the total energy demand as compared to the developed world. There is also a close link to lifestyle and living standard while industrial energy demand is mainly driven by economy and decoupling of building energy demand with increasing of building floor area, this is due to a considerable improvement of building energy efficiency. The adapted EBS creates a method for China conducting statistics of building energy consumption at the sector level in a uniform way and serves as the basis for any sound building energy efficiency policy decisions.
This Topic Guide aims to provide answers to the question: "How can transport products, services and works be delivered sustainably?". Public procurement accounts for about 19% of the European Union's GDP and thus is a powerful lever to support the transition of urban mobility. The purchasing power of municipalities and regions can create a critical demand for innovative and green goods, services and business models such as low emission vehicles or shared mobility solutions. Public procurement can increase their competitiveness and availability, and thus trigger the market penetration of innovative products and services. The Guide discusses the general concept of sustainable public procurement, the legislative environment in the EU and leads through the different stages of a procurement process for SUMP (Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning) measures in a stepwise approach. It also discusses different inherent principles of sustainable public procurement in the field of urban mobility such as life cycle costing and how these can be applied. In so doing, it points to relevant further guidance discussing specific issues and concepts.
The concept of sufficiency - reducing energy uses beyond technical efficiency - is far-reaching and requires a reflection on human needs, energy services, urban structures, social norms, and the role of policies to support the shift towards lower-energy societies. In recent years, a growing body of literature has been published on energy sufficiency in various disciplines. However, there has been limited exchanges and cooperation among researchers so far, hindering the visibility and impact of this research. This paper presents an assessment of where sufficiency research stands, especially in the perspective of policy-making. It is the first overview paper issued in the context of the newly-founded ENOUGH network - International network for sufficiency research & policy, established in 2017. In the first part, we provide a condensed literature review on energy sufficiency, based on dozens of recent references collected through the network. Through four main themes (the nature of sufficiency, the challenges of modelling it, the barriers to its diffusion, and the approaches to foster it), we summarise the key issues and approaches. We then present what the scholars themselves see as the priorities for future research, promising sufficiency policy options, and key barriers that research should help overcome. We collected their views through a questionnaire completed by more than 40 knowledgeable authors and experts from various disciplines. We finally build on the previous parts to draw some recommendations on how sufficiency research could increase its impact, notably in relation to policy-making.
Germany and Japan have both gained substantial experience with hydrogen production and applications, albeit with focus on different sectors. They also share similar drivers for hydrogen development and, of course, similar technical and economic opportunities and challenges. However, there also are relevant differences in the policy priorities and approaches.
Notwithstanding differing emphases and patterns, the two countries share three main drivers for hydrogen development and deployment: climate mitigation and other environmental goals, energy supply diversification, and technological leadership. In this context, hydrogen has been identified by the German and the Japanese governments during the Energy Policy Dialogue as having potential for closer cooperation.
The authors of this study provide an overview of demand-side deployment by sector (residential, transport, industry, power generation and power-to-x) for both countries, as well as of their hydrogen policy debates, key institutions, R&D programs and demonstration projects. They also present a short survey on relevant international platforms and initiatives in which Japan and Germany participate.
On the basis of a meta-analysis of the role of hydrogen in 18 long-term energy system scenarios for Germany and 12 scenarios for Japan, this study draws conclusions on the possible role of hydrogen in the long term energy policy debates of both countries. Subsequently, the authors discuss sustainability criteria and certification schemes for clean hydrogen, compare the greenhouse gas intensity of different hydrogen supply chains and provide a data-based analysis to identify countries which could become important suppliers of clean hydrogen.
The transformation of cities towards sustainable and inclusive development is a key objective of the New Urban Agenda (United Nations 2017). Transport infrastructure is a critical factor in shaping cities, determining the energy intensity of mobility and providing access to essential social and economic opportunities. The sector also plays an important role in global climate change mitigation strategies, as it currently accounts for about 23% of global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions (IPCC 2014).
There is substantial potential to improve urban access, air quality, safety and the quality of life in cities along with reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions if an integrated policy approach is applied that combines all intervention areas for transport policy and involves all levels of government. A package that achieves low-carbon transport and fosters sustainable developed includes avoided journeys through compact urban design and shifts to more efficient modes of transport, uptake of improved vehicle and engine performance technologies, low-carbon fuels, investments in related infrastructure, and changes in the built environment. From a governance perspective, all relevant political institutions at the local and national level need to be involved in the coalition building along with key societal actors, such as unions, industry and civil society organisations. Bringing the policy objectives of these actors together with an integrated policy package is a vital step towards a low-carbon, sustainable mobility system.
Policy design and governance are critically interlinked as the ability of institutions to find a political consensus and to maintain policy stability heavily influences the success of measures to shape the transformation pathway towards sustainable mobility. This thesis aims to analyse these linkages and highlight the role of different policy and governance approaches. This analysis builds on transport and urban development research, but takes a transdisciplinary research perspective, building on the Multi-Level-Perspective on sustainability transitions (Geels 2002) and aims to highlight the potential for a consensus oriented policy approach (Lijphard 1999) that builds on co-benefits among key policy objectives and coalitions among key political actors, which leads to the main question for this thesis and the focus areas for the analysis.
Green Information Systems in general, and footprint calculators in particular, are promising feedback tools to assist people in adopting sustainable behaviour. Therefore, a Material Footprint model for use in an online footprint calculator was developed by identifying the most important predictors of the Material Footprint of the calculator's users. By means of statistical learning, the analysis revealed that 22 of the 95 predictors identified accounted for 74% of the variance in Material Footprints. Ten predictors out of the 95, mainly from the mobility domain, were capable of showing a prediction accuracy of 61%. The authors conclude that 22 predictors from the areas of mobility, housing and nutrition, as well as sociodemographic information, accurately predict a person's Material Footprint. The short and concise Material Footprint model may help developers and researchers to enhance their information systems with additional items while ensuring the data quality of such applications.
How can existing national climate policy instruments contribute to ETS development? : Final report
(2019)
Before introducing an emissions trading system, jurisdictions have to consider the ex-isting energy and climate policy framework. This report seeks to analyse and evaluate non-ETS climate policy instruments, such as carbon taxes or green certificate trading schemes, regarding their suitability to serve as a basis for establishing emission trading systems. There is a general assessment of prototypical policy instruments. Besides, the report contains insights from case studies in India and Mexico. The report is meant to inform ETS development by showing how existing policy instruments could contribute to this process and by illustrating how non-ETS policy instruments could coexist with an emissions trading system, allowing for an effective policy mix.
Footprint calculators are efficient tools to monitor the environmental impact of private consumption. We present the results of an analysis of data entered into an online Material Footprint calculator undertaken to identify the socioeconomic drivers of the Material Footprint in different areas of consumption, from housing to holidaymaking. We developed regression models to reveal (1) the impact of socioeconomic characteristics on Material Footprints of private households and (2) correlations between the components of Material Footprints for different arrays of consumption. Our results show that an increasing Material Footprint in one array of consumption comes with an increasing Material Footprint in all other arrays, with the exception of housing and holidaymaking. The socioeconomic characteristics of users have a significant impact on their Material Footprints. However, this impact varies by the array of consumption. Households only exhibit generally bigger Material Footprints as a result of higher incomes and larger dwellings. We conclude that indicators which strive to monitor resource efficiency should survey disaggregated data in order to classify the resource use to different population groups and arrays of consumption.
Because prevention is closely linked to complex consumption patterns, even cultural changes, such as increasing environmental awareness, changes in the average size of households or changes in the industrial structure of an economy, are relevant factors for the interpretation of changes in the generation of waste - it is more or less impossible to isolate the effect of specific waste prevention measures in this complex system. This must be considered, in particular, in international comparisons of policies and their potential transferability. The guidelines of the European Commission on waste prevention also point to the particular problem of data availability in the area of prevention: as waste statistics focus mainly on the treatment and fate of wastes, they are often of limited value for prevention of waste because they don't give sufficient information about their origins or reasons for their generation.
Against this background, this report has the following objectives:
Chapter 2 discusses strengths and weaknesses of typical waste-based prevention indicators; Chapter 3 analyses possible indicators that consider an upstream perspective and take into account the ecological rucksacks of products and components that have become waste; Chapter 4 focuses on specific product groups that could be targeted by waste prevention indicators.
In general, the report describes the complexity of measuring waste prevention and outlines pros and cons of possible approaches. The final chapter aims to draw rather pragmatic conclusions on possibly most preferable options for future policy-making.
Reflecting trends in the academic landscape of sustainable energy using probabilistic topic modeling
(2019)
Background: Facing planetary boundaries, we need a sustainable energy system providing its life support function for society in the long-term within environmental limits. Since science plays an important role in decision-making, this study examines the thematic landscape of research on sustainable energy, which may contribute to a sustainability transformation. Understanding the structure of the research field allows for critical reflections and the identification of blind spots for advancing this field.
Methods: The study applies a text mining approach on 26533 Scopus-indexed abstracts published from 1990 to 2016 based on a latent Dirichlet allocation topic model. Models with up 1100 topics were created. Based on coherence scores and manual inspection, the model with 300 topics was selected. These statistical methods served for highlighting timely topic trends, differing thematic fields, and emerging communities in the topic network. The study critically reflects the quantitative results from a sustainability perspective.
Results: The study identifies a focus on establishing and optimizing the energy infrastructure towards 100% renewable energies through key modern technology areas: materials science, (biological) process engineering, and (digital) monitoring and control systems. Energy storage, photonic materials, nanomaterials, or biofuels belong to the topics with the strongest trends. The study identifies decreasing trends for general aspects regarding sustainable development and related economic, environmental, and political issues.
Conclusions: The discourse is latently adopting a technology-oriented paradigm focusing on renewable energy generation and is moving away from the multi-faceted concept of sustainability. The field has the potential to contribute to climate change mitigation by optimizing renewable energy systems. However, given the complexity of these systems, horizontal integration of the various valuable vertical research strands is required. Furthermore, the holistic ecological perspective considering the global scale that has originally motivated research on sustainable energy might be re-strengthened, e.g., by an integrated energy and materials perspective. Beyond considering the physical dimensions of energy systems, existing links from the currently technology-oriented discourse to the social sciences might be strengthened. For establishing sustainable energy systems, future research will not only have to target the technical energy infrastructure but put a stronger focus on issues perceivable from a holistic second-order perspective.
This doctoral research is located in the branch of sustainability sciences that has the realisation of sustainable development as its core subject of research. The most broadly accepted notion of sustainable development is that which evolves along the resolutions, declarations, and reports from international processes in the framework of the United Nations (UN). The consensual outputs from such processes feature global-generalised and context-free perspectives. However, implementation requires action at diverse and context-rich local levels as well. Moreover, while in such UN processes national states are the only contractual parties, it is increasingly recognised that other ("nonstate") actors are crucial to sustainability. The research presented here places the attention on bottom-up initiatives that are advancing innovative ways to tackle universal access to clean energy and to strengthen small-scale family farmers. This means, the focus is on bottom-up initiatives advancing local implementation of global sustainability targets, more precisely, targets that make part of the Sustainable Development Goals two and seven (SDG 2 and SDG7). The research asks how such bottom-up initiatives can contribute to the diffusion of sustainability innovations, thereby also contributing to social change.
Digitalisation is in full swing and it is changing and influencing the world of the 21st century as no other dynamics of change has done before. Dealing with its impacts and at the same time shaping digitalisation itself is therefore a core task for achieving a globally sustainable transformation (German Advisory Council on Global Change - WGBU, 2019). But which direction should digitalisation take to ensure that it makes e ective contributions to globally sustainable development? And what is the specific approach needed to steer digitalisation in the right direction?
The current global momentum for carbon pricing has lately produced innovative hybrids: carbon taxes allowing the use of offsets from emission sources not targeted by the carbon tax for compliance with the tax load. This study aims at filling the knowledge gap in existing literature by exploring the potential impacts of domestic offset components in carbon taxes on mitigation of national emissions, including the country examples Colombia, Mexico and South Africa.
The findings indicate that the use of offsets in carbon taxes may significantly influence mitigation of national emissions both positively and negatively. On the one hand, this model may result in real emission reductions from offset projects and positive spillover effects of efforts to reduce emissions from emission sources covered by the carbon tax to other emission sources. Furthermore, the offsetting component can be used as a bargaining chip in political negotiations facilitating the introduction of mitigation policies and measures and/or strengthening their ambition level. On the other hand, it also entails serious risks: Offsetting could compromise the environmental integrity of the carbon tax through low-quality offsets. Furthermore, offsets reduce incentives to curb emissions in the emission sources covered by the carbon tax, potentially leading to carbon lock-in effects. Moreover, an offsetting component could provoke opposition to further climate policies and measures for emission sources generating offsets, as replacing the offsetting component with mandatory emission reduction policies would eliminate revenues from offset credits. General opposition of stakeholder groups to the introduction of offsets may even hinder the introduction of carbon pricing instruments and offsetting altogether.
The study identifies options that could be employed to increase potential positive effects of introducing an offset component to a carbon tax and mitigate related risks, pointing to the country examples included, where appropriate.
This study focuses on smart grids and integration of renewable energy sources in Japan. It first elaborates on the current status of the Japanese power market, its electricity grid, and the trends taking place which result in the need for smart grids. It proceeds with strategic and legislative framework setting relevant for smart grids and renewables, and with current status of smart grids and renewables. Further, it focuses on relevant stakeholders, new business models, and public acceptance relevant for smart grids and renewables. It then puts the Japanese developments in international context and, where possible, compares it to Germany. Lastly, it derives recommendations and identifies where Japanese and German policymakers, regulators and private sector stakeholders might profit from closer collaboration.
Theoretical advances suggest that international governance in general and the Paris Agreement in particular provide a strong signal guiding sociotechnical systems toward decarbonization. We assess this signal and its effects empirically, by examining the struggle of competing narratives as present in the communications of leading US fossil fuel industry associations and companies. The results are then discussed in the context of the national and international climate and energy policy debates in a study period from late 2014 until the announcement of withdrawal from the Paris Agreement in June 2017. We find that the Paris Agreement has institutionalized a narrative paradigm that is surprisingly resilient. While the election of Donald Trump and his climate and energy policy led to a narrative shift in the coal industry, the oil and gas industry remained conspicuously silent in its immediate response and maintained its narrative strategies despite its alignment with the Paris Agreement.
In 2016, the European Commission presented the Clean Energy for all Europeans Package , comprising legislative proposals to facilitate the clean energy transition within the EU, such as the revised EPBD 2010/31/EU and EED 2012/27/EU.Besides putting energy efficiency first and achieving global leadership in renewable energy, a third goal of the package was to provide a "fair deal to consumers" with "no one left behind"., While in some Member States the issue of energy poverty already was on the political agenda, enabling affordable access to basic energy services for all households and thus reducing energy poverty is now an explicit policy target of the revised EU Directives.
In order to assess and monitor the extent of the issue across the EU and address it by suitable measures, the concept of energy poverty needs to be defined, operationalised and measured. The paper aims to investigate the role of energy poverty indicators for policy making. To do so, it provides an overview on existing measurement approaches.Furthermore, the paper presents the development and current state of energy poverty across the EU using a set of four complementary indicators used by the EU Energy Poverty Observatory. These consensual and expenditure-based indicators are calculated using data from the EU Survey on Income and Living Conditions and the Household Budget Survey.
In addition, the paper highlights peculiarities of results on the different indicators, describes persisting issues with regard to their calculation and interpretation against the background of the underlying data base.
Based on the results of this analysis, further necessities of data collection and research are pointed out.
Many countries are increasingly investing in renewable energy technologies to meet growing energy demands and increase the security of their energy supply. This development is also evident in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, where renewable energy targets and policies have evolved rapidly in recent years. There is a steady increase in both the number of planned and implemented solar photovoltaic (PV) but also of solar thermal projects in form of Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) plants. Many of these installations are designed as large utility-scale systems. Despite the fact that these types of large-scale projects can have significant effects on local communities and their livelihoods, the existing research into the social impacts of such large-scale renewable energy infrastructures at local level is limited. However, assessing and managing these impacts is becoming increasingly important to reduce risks to both the affected communities and to the project and businesses activities. In order to provide more robust evidence on the local effects, this research study reviews the social impacts of large-scale renewable energy infrastructure in the MENA region based on a case study of the NOORo I CSP plant in Ouarzazate, Morocco. Data collected during two empirical field studies, in combination with expert interviews and secondary data analysis, provides detailed evidence on the type and significance of livelihood impacts of the NOORo I CSP plant. The analysis results in a consolidated list of 30 impacts and their significance levels for different stakeholder groups including farmers, young people, women, community representatives and owners of small and medium enterprises. The results show that, overall, the infrastructure development was received positively. The review also indicates that factors identified as having effects on the sustainability of local livelihoods are mainly related to information management and benefit distribution, rather than physical or material aspects.
The implementation of energy efficiency improvement actions not only yields energy and greenhouse gas emission savings, but also leads to other multiple impacts such as air pollution reductions and subsequent health and eco-system effects, resource impacts, economic effects on labour markets, aggregate demand and energy prices or on energy security. While many of these impacts have been studied in previous research, this work quantifies them in one consistent framework based on a common underlying bottom-up funded energy efficiency scenario across the EU. These scenario data are used to quantify multiple impacts by energy efficiency improvement action and for all EU28 member states using existing approaches and partially further developing methodologies. Where possible, impacts are integrated into cost-benefit analyses. We find that with a conservative estimate, multiple impacts sum up to a size of at least 50% of energy cost savings, with substantial impacts coming from e.g., air pollution, energy poverty reduction and economic impacts.
The Wuppertal Institute conducted an impact analysis of the NRW sustainability bond #5 of 2019 on behalf of the State government of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). The most recent bond has a volume of EUR 2.25 bn, a term of 15 years and consists of 52 eligible projects from the State's 2018 general budget (sustainable value-added was confirmed in a second party opinion by ISS-oekom). This report analyses the contribution of the bond to climate mitigation, sustainable land use and social impacts. It also includes information on the impacts of the previous four bonds (NRW sustainability bond #1 to #4).
The Wuppertal Institute conducted an impact analysis of the NRW Sustainability Bond #4 of 2018 on behalf of the State Government of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). The most recent bond has a volume of EUR 2.025bn, a term of 10 years and consists of 52 eligible projects from the State's 2017 general budget (sustainable value-added was confirmed in a second party opinion by oekom research1). This report analyses the contribution of the bond to climate mitigation, sustainable land use and social impacts. It also includes information on the impacts of the previous three bonds (NRW Sustainability Bond #1 to #3).
Addressing the prevailing mode of high-carbon lifestyles is crucial for the transition towards a net-zero carbon society. Existing studies fail to fully investigate the underlining factors of unsustainable lifestyles beyond individual determinants nor consider the gaps between current footprints and reduction targets. This study examines latent lifestyle factors related to carbon footprints and analyzes gaps between decarbonization targets and current lifestyles of major consumer segments through exploratory factor analysis and cluster analysis. As a case study on Japanese households, it estimates carbon footprints of over 47,000 households using expenditure survey microdata, and identifies high-carbon lifestyle factors and consumer segments by multivariate regression analysis, factor analysis, and cluster analysis. Income, savings, family composition, house size and type, ownership of durables and automobiles, and work style were confirmed as determinants of high-footprint Japanese households, with eight lifestyles factors, including long-distance leisure, materialistic consumption, and meat-rich diets, identified as the main contributory factors. The study revealed a five-fold difference between lowest and highest footprint segments, with all segments overshooting the 2030 and 2050 decarbonization targets. The findings imply the urgent need for policies tailored to diverse consumer segments and to address the underlying causes of high-carbon lifestyles especially of high-carbon segments.
While the Paris Agreement (PA) has enshrined ambitious long-term objectives, the current level of action of the Parties to the Agreement falls far short of this ambition, as is recognised in the very COP decision adopting the Agreement. The Global Stocktake (GST) established in Art. 14 of the PA is a key element to address this problem. Its purpose is to review the implementation of the PA and to assess the progress made towards the collectively agreed goals.
The aim of this report is to develop recommendations on how to maximise the potential impact of the GST. The report starts from a perspective of what the GST could ideally do, irrespective of decisions already taken under the UNFCCC and other political constraints. In the second step, the report takes these limitations into account and suggests ways for how to nonetheless work towards the desired outcome.
In the context of the German-Korean Energy Policy Dialogue, integration of renewable power sources and smart grids have been identified as topics with high relevance. This study aims to support mutual learning and exploration of new fields for collaboration by identifying similarities and differences in the respective status quos, strategies and policies in both countries.
After a short introduction to the South Korean energy situation, Chapter 2 provides an overview of the South Korean power market, its situation regarding renewable power sources and the Korean definition of smart grids. Chapter 3 of this study highlights the major South Korean energy strategies and regulatory frameworks relevant to integration of renewable energies and smart grids. In Chapter 4, the status and perspectives of renewable energy sources integration and smart grids in South Korea are discussed, presenting various demonstrative examples, new business models and the current situation of technology deployment. Chapter 5 puts South Korea in the global context and compares it to Germany. Finally, Chapter 6 draws conclusions and presents recommendations on suitable areas for mutual learning.
The need for sustainable energy management at the municipal level is growing, in order to meet EU climate goals. Multiple initiatives have been launched to support municipalities in energy planning and strategy development process. Despite available support, research shows mixed results about implementation of plans and strategies. This research paper analyses what targets municipalities set, how they monitor implementation of their sustainable energy action plans (SEAPs) and searches for the most important factors that have enabled or hindered the implementation of local SEAPs at Latvia. The article shows that, in some cases, there is evidence that SEAP development is a project-based activity, supported by external experts. From municipal personnel point of view, it is a project that ends with approved SEAP, but not a part of their future daily routine. Eventually implementation of the plan is difficult, because municipalities lack experience in daily management of energy data, distribution of responsibilities and implementation of procedures. Municipalities also tend to exclude important stakeholders in their SEAPs, like, private sector, household sector and transport sector, which lead to lower targets and lower achievements in GHG reduction.
Digitalization is a transformation process which has already affected many parts of industry and society and is expected to yet increase its transformative speed and impact. In the energy sector, many digital applications have already been implemented. However, a more drastic change is expected during the next decades. Good understanding of which digital applications are possible and what are the associated benefits as well as risks from the different perspectives of the impacted stakeholders is of high importance. On the one hand, it is the basis for a broad societal and political discussion about general targets and guidelines of digitalization. On the other hand, it is an important piece of information for companies in order to develop and sustainably implement digital applications. This article provides a structured overview of potential digital applications in the German energy (electricity) sector, including the associated benefits and the impacted stakeholders on the basis of a literature review. Furthermore, as an outlook, a methodology to holistically analyze digital applications is suggested. The intended purpose of the suggested methodology is to provide a complexity-reduced fact base as input for societal and political discussions and for the development of new digital products, services, or business models. While the methodology is outlined in this article, in a follow-up article the application of the methodology will be presented and the use of the approach reflected.
Article 6.4 of the Paris Agreement establishes a new mechanism for Parties to cooperate in achieving their nationally determined contributions (NDCs). One key innovation of the Article 6.4 mechanism is its objective to "deliver an overall mitigation in global emissions" (Art. 6.4(d)). This report develops recommendations on how to implement this objective. A key difficulty lies in the fact that even basics of how the mechanism is supposed to function have so far not been clarified by the Parties. The report therefore first sketches out what has so far been agreed and discussed on the mechanism’s activity cycle. Second, as the concept of overall mitigation has so far also not been clearly defined by Parties, the report derives a working definition from the language that was agreed in the Paris Agreement. In the next step, the report provides a survey of the options to achieve overall mitigation that have so far been discussed in the relevant literature and in the Article 6 negotiations. Many of these options were developed in the context of the Kyoto mechanisms. The report therefore discusses to what extent the options are also applicable under the Paris Agreement or whether adjustments need to be made. In the following, the options that are applicable under the Agreement are assessed on the basis of a number of criteria. The report concludes with a summary of the main findings and recommendations.
Article 6 of the Paris Agreement establishes mechanisms for Parties to "pursue voluntary cooperation in the implementation of their nationally determined contributions to allow for higher ambition in their mitigation and adaptation actions [...]" (Article 6.1). I. e. the mechanisms are explicitly designed to foster higher ambition. However, without additional guidance and rules, the economic incentives of carbon markets may work against increasing host country ambition. For example, setting ambitious NDC targets may directly reduce the amount of mitigation outcomes that go beyond the NDC target and that a host country can transfer abroad. The report presents four options on how the risks can be ad-dressed and ambition can be increased: (1) Strengthening reporting, transparency and comparability; (2) Reconciling the design of the Article 6.4 mechanism with ambition raising of host countries; (3) Supporting the host country to raise ambition through the Article 6.4 mechanism; (4) Fostering the acquiring country to raise ambition through the Article 6.4 mechanism. These options are assessed and recommendations are provided on how they could be implemented.
This report explores the future role of the voluntary carbon market and its potential to contribute to raising the ambition of climate policy. For this purpose, desk research was complemented by interviews with voluntary carbon market representatives. The report finds that the current roles of the voluntary market are set to change fundamentally due to the Paris Agreement. For the future of the voluntary market as an investor, three roles were identified, each of which is associated with specific challenges: The market may maintain its current role of buyer of carbon neutrality credits, it may become a supporter of NDC implementation, or it may become a driver of ambition. With regard to the future role of private certification standards, the Paris Agreement may hold the possibility of using such standards in the context of compliance activities. Overall, the findings indicate that the voluntary market has some potential to contribute to ambition raising. Whether this potential will actually be unlocked depends on how the concept of ambition raising will be operationalized under the Paris Agreement and to what degree it can be integrated into the voluntary market's activities and business models.
The transformation of urban mobility systems causes financial costs for the procurement and operation of innovative products and services and for the adaptation of existing infrastructure. While public budgets are limited, investments in infrastructure and transport services compete against other spending priorities, and private investors often are reluctant to invest into sustainable transport projects. Thus, cities need to seek additional funding and financing options and to develop business models to attract private sector investments in the development of the urban transport system. Moreover, financing schemes should cover the entire SUMP (Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning) cycle, starting from planning, to project implementation and procurement up to the operation and maintenance of services and infrastructures.
This requires the blending of different revenue sources, including:
project related revenue sources such as public transport fares and the lease of advertising space in buses;
the extension of the local tax base, for example through the introduction of road user charges and parking fees or the use of value capture mechanisms;
National, bilateral, and European grants;
Debt financing through loans and other instruments such as issuing green bonds. Finally, a prudential engagement of the private sector in infrastructure development and service provision can reduce the direct burden on public budgets while enhancing service quality. The applicability of specific financing options critically depends on the national legislative environment. Many of the instruments and case examples presented here may not be transferred to other Member States due to the different distribution of responsibilities and powers between the political levels in the Member States. This report, however, can inspire the search for potential funding and financing sources and is therefore aimed not only at local and regional authorities but also at decisionmakers at the national level. Still, whether a specific instrument can be used in a Member State needs to be assessed on a case-by-case base.
Climate researchers agree that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions significantly contribute to climate change, and that radical measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to the impacts of no longer avoidable climate change are needed. The German Federal Government with its Climate Protection Plan 2050 reinforced its target to reduce Germany's greenhouse gas emissions by 80 to 95 percent compared with 1990. The achievement of these targets requires nothing less than a fundamental transformation of spatial planning.
In the paper a methodology to scientifically assess the likely impacts of possible combinations of policies or strategies to achieve the energy transition, i.e. to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of urban mobility and transport is proposed and demonstrated, using the Ruhr Area, the largest conurbation in Germany, as an example.
The results of the policies examined so far can be summarised as follows: Push measures as high energy prices, speed limits or reduction of the number of lanes of main roads are more effective in reducing greenhouse gas emissions than pull measures as the promotion of cycling, walking, electric cars or public transport. Between policies or policy packages there can be positive or negative synergies, i.e. the impacts of measures can reinforce or weaken each other. The results show that even with ambitious policies the greenhouse gas emission targets of the national and state governments will not be achieved and that more radical policies are needed.
The "fuzzy front end" of innovation is argued to be crucial for the success and sustainability impact of a final product. Indeed, it is a promising area of focus in efforts to achieve the United Nations' 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which provide a globally accepted framework for sustainability. However, the usability of the 17 goals and the large number of sub-goals represent barriers to innovation practitioners. Moreover, this early innovation stage proves to be a challenge for corporate practitioners and innovators, largely due to the concept's intangible, qualitative nature and the lack of data. To help overcome these barriers, this article proposes a four-stage approach for structuring the innovation process using an online tool called the "SDG-Check", which help assess an innovator's sustainability orientation in the early phases of product and service development. It is a semi-quantitative tool to gather and combine assessments by experts involved in innovation processes with implications for the United Nations' SDGs. Furthermore, this article presents our first experiences in applying the SDG-Check based on three living lab innovation cases. The results indicate that the tools can support and inspire a dialogue with internal and external stakeholders with regards to sustainability considerations in the early design stages of product and service development.
Before linking emissions trading systems, there should be a good understanding of the expected economic implications: How could linking affect the development of the common allowance price, the development of emissions or industrial production, capital flows or liquidity? Answering these questions requires a multitude of data and assumptions and therefore usually the use of economic models.
This report gives an overview of various economic models that are suitable for assessing the economic effects of linking. It analyses the economic indicators relevant for the assessment of the effects of linking, formulates requirements for economic models to answer this question, discusses the advantages and disadvantages of different modelling approaches and gives an assessment of which models are suitable in principle for the assessment of linking. Five models were selected for a more detailed description: E3ME, GEM-E3, PACE, POLES, and TIMES-MARKAL.
The Paris Agreement introduces long-term strategies as an instrument to inform progressively more ambitious emission reduction objectives, while holding development goals paramount in the context of national circumstances. In the lead up to the twenty-first Conference of the Parties, the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project developed mid-century low-emission pathways for 16 countries, based on an innovative pathway design framework. In this Perspective, we describe this framework and show how it can support the development of sectorally and technologically detailed, policy-relevant and country-driven strategies consistent with the Paris Agreement climate goal. We also discuss how this framework can be used to engage stakeholder input and buy-in; design implementation policy packages; reveal necessary technological, financial and institutional enabling conditions; and support global stocktaking and increasing of ambition.
On 26 January 2019, the Commission on Growth, Structural Change and Employment recommended that no more coal-fired power plants would be operated in Germany by 2038 at the latest. In this paper the Wuppertal Institute comments on the results of the Commission and makes recommendations for the current necessary steps for the climate and innovation policy in Europe, Germany and North Rhine-Westphalia.
Last year's conference of the global climate change regime took place from 2 until 15 December 2018 in Katowice, Poland. The conference had two main objectives: operationalising the Paris Agreement by adopting detailed rules for its implementation, and starting the process of strengthening Parties' climate protection contributions. This article covers the negotiations on these two sets of issues and also includes a discussion of other recent climate activities by Parties and non-Party actors. Success of the negotiations in Katowice was far from assured, but in the end COP24 concluded with the adoption of the "Katowice Climate Package" setting out detailed guidelines on how to implement its various elements. However, the conference fell short on the first objective, none of the major emitting countries was ready to step up its climate ambition. The most important aspect of the Katowice outcome is therefore that it has brought the wrangling about implementation procedures to a close, making way for the true task at hand: the strengthening of national and international activities to protect the climate and the implementation of the existing pledges. Arguably, a key factor that has been slowing down climate policy is the power of entrenched interests. The article therefore concludes with a reflection on how such barriers to climate action may be overcome and what role future COPs may play in this regard.
Each year, approximately one-third of the food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted worldwide. The waste of resources used for this food has significant environmental impacts in terms of land and water use as well as greenhouse gas emissions. Consequently, one of the targets of the UN sustainable development goals is to halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains by 2030. However, sufficient knowledge about the suitability of instruments for food waste prevention is still lacking. The purpose of this paper is therefore threefold: first, it outlines the generation and causes of food losses and waste. Second, it discusses good practices from different countries, such as laws to reduce food waste, voluntary agreements, awareness campaigns and results from behavioural economics. Finally, based on these findings, this paper identifies barriers to as well as requirements for the implementation of effective and efficient instruments.
Research on sustainability transitions has expanded rapidly in the last ten years, diversified in terms of topics and geographical applications, and deepened with respect to theories and methods. This article provides an extensive review and an updated research agenda for the field, classified into nine main themes: understanding transitions; power, agency and politics; governing transitions; civil society, culture and social movements; businesses and industries; transitions in practice and everyday life; geography of transitions; ethical aspects; and methodologies. The review shows that the scope of sustainability transitions research has broadened and connections to established disciplines have grown stronger. At the same time, we see that the grand challenges related to sustainability remain unsolved, calling for continued efforts and an acceleration of ongoing transitions. Transition studies can play a key role in this regard by creating new perspectives, approaches and understanding and helping to move society in the direction of sustainability.
Today more than 45 % of all energy-related CO2 emissions come from burning coal. Thus, reducing CO2 emissions from coal use is a necessity for reaching the targets of the Paris Agreement. This will not only pose challenges for coal consumers (restructuring of the energy system), but also for countries whose economy is strongly depending on the production of coal. This paper examines the role of coal in three countries, which are or were in recent years among the top coal exporters: Indonesia, Colombia and Vietnam. Understanding challenges and possible transition pathways in these countries will help to develop global strategies to reduce CO2 emissions from coal in the short to mid-term.
Nowadays, the main impetus to apply additive manufacturing (AM) of metals is the high geometric flexibility of the processes and its ability to produce pilot or small batch series. In contrast, resource and energy intensities are often not considered as constraints, even though the turnout of additive manufacturing is high, at least compared to chip removing processes.
The study at hand analyses the material characteristics and environmental impacts of a hose nozzle as an example of a commercial product of simple geometry. The production routes turning (conventional manufacturing) and laser beam melting (additive manufacturing) are compared to each other in terms of natural resource use, climate change potential and primary energy demand. It is found, that the product shows a lower demand for natural resources when produced via AM, but higher carbon emissions and energy demand when using a steel, that is mainly (80%) produced from high-alloyed steel scrap. However, different case studies during the sensitivity analyses showed that a number of factors highly influence the results: the steel source as well as the source of electricity play a major role in determining the environmental performance of the production routes. The authors also found that other production processes (here cold forging of tubes) might be an eco-friendly alternative to both routes, if feasible from an economic point of view.
In regard to the material characteristics, experimental testing revealed that the material advantages of AM produced hose nozzles (in particular higher yield strength) are reduced after a solution heat treatment is applied to the as-produced material, in order to increase corrosion resistance. However, products that do not require this production step might benefit from the higher yield strength, as a lower wall thickness could be realised.
In recent years, most countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), including Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia, have rolled out national policies with the goal of decarbonising their economies. Energy policy goals in these countries have been characterised by expanding the deployment of renewable energy technologies in the electricity mix in the medium term (i.e., until 2030). This tacitly signals a transformation of socio-technical systems by 2030 and beyond. Nevertheless, how these policy objectives actually translate into future scenarios that can also take into account a long-term perspective up to 2050 and correspond to local preferences remains largely understudied. This paper aims to fill this gap by identifying the most widely preferred long-term electricity scenarios for Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia. During a series of two-day workshops (one in each country), the research team, along with local stakeholders, adopted a participatory approach to develop multiple 2050 electricity scenarios, which enabled electricity pathways to be modelled using Renewable Energy Pathway Simulation System GIS (renpassG!S). We subsequently used the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) within a Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) to capture local preferences. The empirical findings show that local stakeholders in all three countries preferred electricity scenarios mainly or even exclusively based on renewables. The findings demonstrate a clear preference for renewable energies and show that useful insights can be generated using participatory approaches to energy planning.
German energy transition : targets, current status, chances and challenges of an ambitious pathway
(2019)
With the "Energiewende", the German term for the transformation of the national energy system, the German government pursues ambitious goals, primarily but not only to reflect the climate change challenge and to react to the risks associated with the use of nuclear power plants. After launching the energy concept in mid-2011, which describes the "Energiewende" goals, Germany was perceived as an international pioneer in energy transition for many years and has been acknowledged for its braveness to combine ambitious greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation targets with a phase out program for nuclear power plants. In this context, this article asks where Germany’s energy transition currently stands, what is planned next and how far the set targets have been achieved or where more action is required to stick to this pathway.
This paper offers a comparative analysis of small wind electrification programmes targeted at remote sheep farming households in two of the windiest regions of the world, Argentine Patagonia and the Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas. Despite comparable environmental conditions and local livelihoods, their impact was vastly different. Insights from socio-technical systems and strategic niche management approaches offered a deeper understanding of the local context and development dynamics, facilitating the identification of the critical success factors that contributed to these two distinct outcomes and finally highlighting those that can inform the design of future such initiatives. The research is based upon a series of semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, observational field visits and review of archival sources. The critical factors identified by this case study research include strong and consistent institutional support, investment in robust equipment creation of effective feedback loops from the field and hybridisation. Additionally, a user centred approach that assesses whether small wind is really the right option for each individual household and if so, matches an appropriate energy system to their unique and evolving needs. Finally, empowering users to take on as much responsibility for maintenance as possible by integrating maintenance practices with local culture and ensuring the support of an effective decentralised maintenance network.
Responsible consumption and production is one of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. To achieve this goal the currently high extraction rates of natural resources, that our economy is based on, needs a transformation of the consumption and production system considering technological as well as social change. One of the promising transition approaches is seen in collaborative consumption with its many facets of socio-cultural innovations and fast growing number of participants and businesses. With a decreasing production of goods, due to a utilisation of underutilised assets, these offers might support an absolute reduction of the global resource use. However, a positive environmental effect depends on the setting and the social practices of such sharing offers and is not sustainable or resource efficient generally. Also, resource efficient practices with a low diffusion potential that stick in a niche offer no leverage to achieve sustainable consumption patterns. Thus, this paper describes a mixed method approach to analyse the resource efficiency and diffusion potential of 20 sharing offers in the area of mobility, housing & travel and everyday objects in Germany. Results show that the overall positive environmental connotation of sharing offers cannot be confirmed. We identified five clusters of offers that are all treated to be differently when it comes to deploying the positive potential and avoid unnecessary societal effort to achieve the mentioned Sustainable Development Goal.
A significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions will be necessary in the coming decades to enable the global community to avoid the most dangerous consequences of man-made global warming. This fact is reflected in Germany's 7th Federal Energy Research Program (EFP), which was adopted in 2018. Direct Air Capture (DAC) technologies used to absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere comprise one way to achieve these reductions in greenhouse gases. DAC has been identified as a technology (group) for which there are still major technology gaps. The intention of this article is to explore the potential role of DAC for the EFP by using a multi-dimensional analysis showing the technology's possible contributions to the German government's energy and climate policy goals and to German industry's global reputation in the field of modern energy technologies, as well as the possibilities of integrating DAC into the existing energy system. The results show that the future role of DAC is affected by a variety of uncertainty factors. The technology is still in an early stage of development and has yet to prove its large-scale technical feasibility, as well as its economic viability. The results of the multi-dimensional evaluation, as well as the need for further technological development, integrated assessment, and systems-level analyses, justify the inclusion of DAC technology in national energy research programs like the EFP.
Reaching the climate goals for the building sector requires to improve insulation and to increase air tightness of buildings in order to minimize heat loss. To achieve these goals and to prevent risks to the health of occupants and damages to the building fabric due to insufficient removal of pollutants and humidity, broad implementation of Mechanical Ventilation and Heat Recovery (MVHR) systems is crucial.
Comparable and up to date figures on the market penetration of MVHR systems across the EU are hardly available. However, figures point to only a small share of residential buildings being currently equipped with such systems (cf. Riviere et al. 2009). For the German building stock the figure is estimated to be below 5% (Händel 2011). The paper presents insights into the reasons for the slow diffusion of HRV technologies in the German building stock. It builds on the results of a recently completed research project whose central aim was to identify actor-specific and structural barriers for the diffusion of efficient ventilation systems in apartment buildings and to examine how these barriers can be addressed.
The analysis is based on 40 semi-structured expert interviews with energy consultants, HVAC craftsmen, and housing companies, as well as guided in-depth interviews with private owners of apartment buildings or apartments that were evaluated by means of qualitative content analysis. Based on the collected data, seven barrier categories were identified, each containing a range of single barriers for the diffusion of efficient ventilation systems within the residential building stock.
Results of the analysis were quantitatively validated by means of online surveys and a household survey among 1,008 households. The paper points out interdependencies within the chain of effects leading up to the investment decision of building owners. Furthermore, based on good practice examples identified within the data collection process, it proposes different measures to address these barriers.
Global climate
(2019)
The twenty-third Conference of the Parties (COP-23) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was held in Bonn on 6-17 November 2017, under the presidency of Fiji. COP-23 focused, in particular, on developing rules to implement the 2015 Paris Agreement and on raising ambition for climate protection. Since this was the first "Oceanic" COP, special attention was given to supporting the countries of the Global South in their efforts to reduce emissions, adapt to climate change, and deal with the unavoidable impacts of climate change. This article summarizes the main developments and results of COP-23.
Additionality revisited : guarding the integrity of market mechanisms under the Paris agreement
(2019)
The Paris Agreement requires mitigation contributions from all Parties. Therefore, the determination of additionality of activities under the market mechanisms of its Article 6 will need to be revisited. This paper provides recommendations on how to operationalize additionality under Article 6. We first review generic definitions of additionality and current approaches for testing of additionality before discussing under which conditions additionality testing of specific activities or policies is still necessary under the new context of the Paris Agreement, that is, in order to prevent increases of global emissions. We argue that the possibility of "hot air" generation under nationally-determined contributions (NDCs) requires an independent check of the NDC's ambition. If the NDC of the transferring country does contain "hot air", or if the transferred emission reductions are not covered by the NDC, a dedicated additionality test should be required. While additionality tests of projects and programmes could continue to be done through investment analysis, for policy instruments new approaches are required. They should be differentiated according to type of policy instrument. For regulation, we suggest calculating the resulting pay-back period for technology users. If the regulation generates investments exceeding a payback period threshold, it could be deemed additional. Similarly, carbon pricing policies that generate a carbon price exceeding a threshold could qualify; for trading schemes an absence of over-allocation needs to be shown. The threshold should be differentiated according to country categories and rise over time.
The Global Stocktake (GST) takes a central role within the architecture of the Paris Agreement, with many hoping that it will become a catalyst for increased mitigation ambition. This paper outlines four governance functions for an ideal GST: pacemaker, ensurer of accountability, driver of ambition and provider of guidance and signal. The GST can set the pace of progress by stimulating and synchronizing policy processes across governance levels. It can ensure accountability of Parties through transparency and public information sharing. Ambition can be enhanced through benchmarks for action and transformative learning. By reiterating and refining the long term visions, it can echo and amplify the guidance and signal provided by the Paris Agreement. The paper further outlines preconditions for the effective performance of these functions. Process-related conditions include: a public appraisal of inputs; a facilitative format that can develop specific recommendations; high-level endorsement to amplify the message and effectively inform national climate policy agendas; and an appropriate schedule, especially with respect to the transparency framework. Underlying information provided by Parties complemented with other (scientific) sources needs to enable benchmark setting for collective climate action, to allow for transparent assessments of the state of emissions and progress of a low-carbon transformation. The information also needs to be politically relevant and concrete enough to trigger enhancement of ambition. We conclude that meeting these conditions would enable an ideal GST and maximize its catalytic effect.
"400,000 new homes per year are needed in German cities." This figure has been cited repeatedly in political discussions, media, and statements of different groups for a couple of years now. Living space is needed to mitigate the (further) inordinate increase of rents in some cities and regions and to ease finding appropriate flats at affordable prices for low- and medium-income households. But how to activate investors and the real estate market?
Having the triangle of sustainability in mind with its ecologic, social and economic cornerstones the discussion - metaphorically spoken - currently pulls the three corners: Which should have the highest priority?
The economically driven most favourable solution is lowering the requirements for new buildings such as the energy performance to make building cheaper. The social perspective prefers an increase of public social housing investments regardless of efficiency standards. And the ecological side argues that a high performance is needed to reach energy and climate targets in the buildings sector.
Starting at this point of discussion, firstly, the paper reflects the assumptions behind the numbers of new homes needed against a sufficiency background.
Secondly, it presents current changes in German building policies: a new legislation for energy supply and efficiency is currently in preparation.
It discusses the potential to integrate sufficiency aspects in building policies, focussing specifically on the new regulation, financial incentives, and energy advice.
The paper analyses if and to what extent it is likely to balance the three cornerstones of sustainability by integrating sufficiency aspects into efficiency policies. Household experiences with prepayment meters are used as an example to illustrate the potential for tapping efficiency and sufficiency potentials in low-income households considering social, economic, and ecological aspects. Based on the identified (in)consistencies, thirdly, it suggests further development in German policies to make better use of synergies between the ecologic, social and economic demands on buildings.
Sulphate aerosols are dominated by SO2 emissions from coal-burning for the Indian electricity sector and they are thought to have a short term but significant, negative impact on South Asian Summer Monsoon rainfall. This reduction in precipitation in turn can lead to reduced economic outputs, primarily through smaller agricultural yields. By bringing together estimates of (a) the impact of sulphate aerosols on precipitation and (b) the observed relationship between monsoon rainfall and GDP, we present a methodology to estimate the possible financial cost of this effect on the Indian economy and on its agricultural sector. Our preliminary estimate is that the derived benefits could be large enough that around 50% of India's SO2 emissions could be economically mitigated at no cost or net benefit, although it should be noted that the large uncertainties in the underlying relationships mean that the overall uncertainty is also large. Comparison of the 1952-1981 and 1982-2011 periods indicates that the Indian economy may now be more resilient to variability of the monsoon rainfall. As such, a case could be made for action to reduce SO2 emissions, particularly in the crucial monsoon period. This would have a significant, positive effect on a crucial and large sector in India's economy and the effects would be visible almost instantly. The recent growth in renewable energy sources in India and the consequent, reduced increase in coal burning means that further financial costs have already been avoided. This impact should be further investigated so that it can be included in cost-benefit analyses of different fuel types in the region. The significant uncertainties associated with these calculations are discussed.
Phasing out coal in the German energy sector : interdependencies, challenges and potential solutions
(2019)
Relevant aspects of the options and requirements for reducing and phasing out coal-fired power generation have been under debate for several years. This process has produced a range of strategies, analyses and arguments, outlining how coal use in the energy sector could be reduced and phased out in the planned time frame, and determining structural policy measures suitable to support this. This Coal Report studies the existing analyses and provides an overview of the state of debate. It is intended to provide information on facts and contexts, present the advantages and disadvantages of individual courses of action, and reveal the respective scientific backgrounds. It strives to take a scientific and independent approach, and present facts in concise language, making it easy to follow for readers who are not experts in the field, without excessive abridgements or provocative statements.
Biofuels and electrification are potential ways to reduce CO2 emissions from the transport sector, although not without limitations or associated problems. This paper describes a life-cycle analysis (LCA) of the Brazilian urban passenger transport system. The LCA considers various scenarios of a wholesale conversion of car and urban bus fleets to 100% electric or biofuel (bioethanol and biodiesel) use by 2050 compared to a business as usual (BAU) scenario. The LCA includes the following phases of vehicles and their life: fuel use and manufacturing (including electricity generation and land-use emissions), vehicle and battery manufacturing and end of life. The results are presented in terms of CO2, nitrous oxides (NOx) and particulate matter (PM) emissions, electricity consumption and the land required to grow the requisite biofuel feedstocks. Biofuels result in similar or higher CO2 and air pollutant emissions than BAU, while electrification resulted in significantly lower emissions of all types. Possible limitations found include the amount of electricity consumed by electric vehicles in the electrification scenarios.
To contribute to a better understanding of consumer food leftovers and to facilitate their reduction in out-of-home settings, our study analyzes the effects of two common intervention strategies for reducing leftovers in a holistic behavioral model. Based on a quasi-experimental baseline-intervention design, we analyzed how the display of information posters and the reduction of portion sizes take an effect on personal, social and environmental determinants in a structural equation model. Applying data from online surveys and observations among 880 guests (503 baseline, 377 intervention) during two weeks in a university canteen, the suggested model allows to assign effects from the two interventions on plate leftovers to specific changes in behavioral determinants. Portion size reductions for target dishes are found to relate to lower levels of plate waste based on conscious perception, represented in smaller portion size ratings. Effects from seeing information posters are found to base on changed personal attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control. However, depending on how an individual reacts to the information (by only making an effort to finish all food or by making an effort and additionally choosing a different dish in the canteen) there are opposite effects on these determinants and consequently also on plate leftovers. Overall, the differentiated results on intervention effects strongly support the benefits of more holistic and in-depth analyses of interventions to reduce plate leftovers and therefore to contribute to more sustainable food consumption in out-of-home settings.
Urban energy systems have been commonly considered to be socio-technical systems within the boundaries of an urban area. However, recent literature challenges this notion in that it urges researchers to look at the wider interactions and influences of urban energy systems wherein the socio-technical sphere is expanded to political, environmental and economic realms as well. In addition to the inter-sectoral linkages, the diverse agents and multilevel governance trends of energy sustainability in the dynamic environment of cities make the urban energy landscape a complex one. There is a strong case then for establishing a new conceptualisation of urban energy systems that builds upon these contemporary understandings of such systems. We argue that the complex systems approach can be suitable for this. In this paper, we propose a pilot framework for understanding urban energy systems using complex systems theory as an integrating plane. We review the multiple streams of urban energy literature to identify the contemporary discussions and construct this framework that can serve as a common ontological understanding for the different scholarships studying urban energy systems. We conclude the paper by highlighting the ways in which the framework can serve some of the relevant communities.
Digitalisation is disrupting business practices worldwide and transforming consumption patterns. While a global increase in wealth is leading to higher consumption rates, consumption-related decisions are increasingly based on digital information and marketing; furthermore, shopping increasingly takes place online and products and services are more and more digitalised.
The transformative character of digitalisation calls for political action in order to ensure sustainable consumption in a new and dynamically changing context. Focusing on consumption is imperative in combatting many global challenges. Take climate change: consumption-based emissions (i.e. emissions from domestic final consumption and emissions caused by the production of imported goods) are rising more rapidly than production-based emissions in high-income countries. Meanwhile most political measures target production-based emissions (i.e. territorial emissions).
The German council for sustainable development (Rat für Nachhaltige Entwicklung) has called for the §principle of sustainable development [to] serve as the political framework for digital transformation" as "digitalisation has the potential to engender disruptive developments in the business world as well as society as a whole that carry both great opportunities and significant risks". Thus, to implement the 2030 Agenda, in particular SDG 12, and the National Program Sustainable Consumption, it is key to seize the opportunities that digitalisation presents for sustainable consumption and tackle the challenges. This assessment report thus examines the following key question: "What are the implications of the digital transformation of consumption patterns for the implementation of the German sustainability strategy in, by and with Germany?"
The key objective of this deliverable is to gain insights on and assess how CE is being implemented and R&I is being funded at regional level, e.g., via the RIS3 strategy and Structural Funds. As such it sets the scope for the project and provides the background against which programmes and measures can be understood, assessed, developed and recommended in succinct tasks and work packages. The objective of this report is to provide a concise overview of the current R&I priorities, as expressed in running and newly introduced funding and legislative measures with respect to Circular Economy in European countries and regions.
On the basis of a literature research, this subtask develops a conceptional framework for a common understanding of CE within the project team and for the following work packages and tasks. After a brief introduction into the objectives and the context of a circular economy, a more elaborated look into the necessity of an explicit understanding of CE, the objectives, the spatial perspective of CE and the specific challenges within the CICERONE context will be done, in order to develop a basis for a common understanding within the project context. Circular economy can and has to be understood as an (eco-)innovation agenda. Therefore, the paper investigates the role policy has to play to support innovation for a CE transition, for creating the framework conditions and why CE has also to be build from the ground up. Finally, the paper looks from two perspectives at emerging trends and business models in a CE to sketch next steps towards the transition in a selection of central sectors. Conclusions are drawn on the basis of the insights gained by the preceding chapters.
This report provides an overview of the main findings from the different research tasks in the CIRCTER project and delivers selected policy messages with European coverage. The report provides: (Sec. 2) a territorial definition of the circular economy; (Sec. 3) insights into the available statistics on material and waste patterns and flows and their interpretation, alongside new territorial evidence on both aspects; (Sec. 4) a sectoral characterisation of the circular economy at regional level (NUTS-2), including data on turnover and jobs; (Sec. 5) key findings from the CIRCTER case studies; (Sec. 6) a systemic interpretation of the circular economy that works as a knowledge-integration mechanism for the entire report; (Sec. 7 and 8) an analysis of the most relevant circular economy policies and strategies at various territorial levels; (Sec. 8) a subset of policy recommendations focusing in particular on territorial and cohesion policies, and; (Sec. 9) suggestions for further research.
Reliably reducing the emissions in the building sector plays a crucial role if the 1.5°C climate target from the Paris Agreement is to be met. The observed trends show a significant increase in building energy use, especially in emerging economies. Counteracting these trends is absolutely essential, especially in the light of urbanisation, population growth and changing lifestyles. In terms of mitigating the climate impact of buildings, ensuring high levels of efficiency (i.e. very low energy needs, especially for heating and cooling) has the greatest potential for saving energy and emissions, and is at the same time the prerequisite for effective use of energy from renewable sources. Clearly defined targets and suitable metrics are essential to enable appropriate design decisions. Implemented projects clearly indicate that quality assured design and construction lead to reliable in-use energy performance. Effective policy packages to address opportunities and challenges are important drivers to support the uptake of state-of-the-art efficiency measures in the urban building sector.
There is an increasing pressure that enhanced and novel energy technologies are swiftly adopted by the market to ensure meeting the energy and climate targets. An important issue with such novel developments is their risk to be stuck in the "valley of death", i.e. that their transition to the market is delayed or unsuccessful. Publicly supported demonstration projects could help to bridge the valley of death by reducing barriers to the adoption caused by missing information and perceived risks. A challenge for technology demonstrations in the industrial context is their often high investments that are required to prove their real-world benefits. Given the magnitude of such investments, it becomes crucial that public funding focuses on the most promising demonstration proposals. Structured evaluation processes can help to facilitate the identification of promising proposals and to improve the quality and transparency of decisions. This paper deals with a corresponding multi-staged multi-criteria decision support system (DSS) suggested to the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. It deals with the evaluation of demonstration proposals across three stages: The first stage represents a filtering stage to identify those proposals relevant for further considerations. The second stage comprises a multi-criteria scoring method drawing on an evaluation against nineteen criteria. The final third stage serves to critically review the need for public funding of well-scored proposals. This contribution outlines the development of the DSS and its design and thus provides insights on proposal evaluating in energy research.
Alternative power initiatives are socio-ecological innovations that substantially contribute to city's sustainable development and, therefore, are of particular societal benefit and value. Cities should, consequently, have an inherent interest in their existence and proliferation. This, however, asks for strategic innovation management. While, acknowledgement of the project's innovativeness constitutes the precondition for management, in the further process of steering activity the tasks to reduce hurdles, create open space and support the project's capacities need to be mastered. Thereby, cities are increasingly asked to become innovative themselves in order to find ways to optimally make use of their available tools and capacities.
Although it is not part of what has been called the "ambition mechanism" or "ratchet mechanism", Article 6 of the Paris Agreement also has an explicit requirement to promote ambition. Article 6 specifically highlights that some Parties choose to pursue voluntary cooperation in the implementation of their nationally determined contributions to allow for higher ambition in their mitigation and adaptation actions. Despite the common purpose, the two elements have to date been discussed mostly in isolation, both in the negotiations as well as in the wider literature. This JIKO Policy Paper sets out to change this by exploring the relationship between Article 6 and the Global Stocktake.
An index of accessibility-based vulnerability is created based on a definition of transport-user vulnerability regarding transport accessibility created for the EMPOWER project, in order to assess the project's key performance indicator of the inclusion of vulnerable people in the project's scheme. The objective of the index is to account for various individual vulnerability aspects, but also for the "multi-dimensionality" of vulnerability, i.e. individuals may be vulnerable because of one specific aspect (e.g., disability), or they may be vulnerable because of multiple aspects which, if assessed in isolation, wouldn't classify the individual as vulnerable. Users of the project scheme in the Dutch city of Enschede are surveyed on, inter alia, their vulnerability based on this definition, according to their income, mobility budget, physical mobility, age, gender, living situation, nation of birth, and education. According to individual questions, 1% to 54% (single parents and females, respectively) of respondents have some level of vulnerability. According to the index, 23–36% of respondents can be considered to be vulnerable. Suitably modified for local conditions, the index is relevant to cities, especially quickly developing cities where congestion reduction is or has been a priority, insofar as it offers a way of measuring and monitoring the vulnerability of the users of their transport system. Finally, steps to adapt the index to other settings (cities or countries) are discussed.
Access to clean and affordable modern energy services has been widely recognised as a significant factor for enabling social and economic development. Stand-alone systems and mini-grids are presumed to play an important role in the provision of sustainable energy to those people who currently lack access. Accordingly, an increasing number of small-scale energy projects are being implemented in developing countries and emerging economies. However, despite the large number of energy development projects, only limited evidence exists about the actual contribution they make to sustainable development. This paper addresses this research gap by providing a systematic assessment of three selected impact pathways based on the evaluation of over 30 small-scale sustainable energy projects. Applying a theory-based evaluation approach in the form of a contribution analysis, the aim of this research is to better understand if and how these types of technical interventions can create development outcomes and impacts. The results show that technological issues are often not the most decisive factor in achieving development effects, but that embedding the technology in a set of actions that address social, cultural, economic and environmental aspects is essential.
This governance brief aims to provide practical examples on how investments in urban infrastructure, clean energy, and energy efficiency can be implemented; and how these are embedded in multi-level governance, experimentation, and policy-learning. It draws on examples from the German energy system transition, which can be understood as a large-scale, real-life laboratory for the governance of a sustainability transition of an entire national energy system. The federal state of North-Rhine Westphalia's experience illustrates the complexity of the governance challenge of implementing low-carbon system transitions.
This JIKO Policy Paper explores how Parties using Article 6 can increase their mitigation ambition. Building on a broad definition of ambition raising which puts the intensification of climate change mitigation targets and actions by Parties at its centre, eight different ambition raising options are identified. The analysis shows that these options are associated with different technical, institutional and political challenges, calling for a combination of different ambition raising options.
The objective of this paper is to analyse and make recommendations on a safeguard system for Article 6 that aims at preventing potential harm that mitigation activities may cause on the ground to local stakeholders and the environment. Following some definitory aspects of what and how to safeguard, the paper analyses a number of safeguard systems and do no harm principles as well as tools to implement them. It then gives an overview on Parties' views on the matter, as uttered in their latest submissions on Art. 6 options, as well as an overview of the references in the UNFCCC's SBSTA Chair's text with respect to sustainable development, safeguards, and human rights issues. The paper closes with recommendations on a possible safeguard system for Article 6.
This policy paper reviews the concept of additionality in the context of the Paris Agreement. Additionality is a key criterion that helps to maintain the environmental integrity of the Paris Agreement, especially when units created under Article 6.2 or 6.4 are used for offsetting purposes whether that is by Parties in order to meet their NDCs or whether by other entities with legal mitigation obligations.
It does so by first reviewing key concepts such as offsetting, environmental integrity, and baseline. Subsequently, it explores the context of additionality under the Paris Agreement. More specifically it discusses what should be counted as the baseline for additionality demonstration. The subsequent chapter then highlights the challenges with establishing additionality, that is establishing a causal relationship between a policy intervention and a proposed activity. Finally, the Policy Paper discusses aspects of international governance with respect to additionality.
It is widely recognised that access to sustainable and affordable energy services is a crucial factor in reducing poverty and enhancing development. Accordingly, various positive effects beyond simple access to energy are associated with the implementation of sustainable energy projects. One of these assumed positive outcomes is the productive use of energy, which is expected to create value - for example in the form of increased local availability of goods or higher incomes - thereby having a positive impact on local livelihoods. Many projects and programmes are based on such expectations regarding the productive use of energy but systematic evidence of these outcomes and impacts is still limited. This study analyses the results of an impact evaluation of 30 small-scale energy development projects to better understand whether and how the supply of sustainable energy services supports productive use activities and whether these activities have the expected positive impacts on local livelihoods. A contribution analysis is applied to systematically evaluate the impact pathways for the productive use of energy. The results show that access to sustainable energy does not automatically result in productive activities and that energy is only one of the input factors required to foster socio-economic development. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that activities, materials and information to support the productive use of energy - such as training, equipment or market research - need to be an integrated part of the energy project itself to allow for productive activities to develop on a wider scale.
The long-term transition towards a low-carbon transport sector is a key strategy in Europe. This includes the replacement of fossil fuels, modal shifts towards public transport as well as higher energy efficiency in the transport sector overall. While these energy savings are likely to reduce the direct greenhouse gas emissions of transport, they also require the production of new and different vehicles. This study analyses in detail whether final energy savings in the transport sector also induce savings for material resources from nature if the production of future vehicles is considered. The results for 28 member states in 2030 indicate that energy efficiency in the transport sector leads to lower carbon emissions as well as resource use savings. However, energy-efficient transport sectors can have a significant impact on the demand for metals in Europe. An additional annual demand for 28.4 Mt of metal ores was calculated from the personal transport sector in 2030 alone. The additional metal ores from semiprecious metals (e.g., copper) amount to 12.0 Mt, from precious metals (e.g., gold) to 9.1 Mt and from other metals (e.g., lithium) to 11.7 Mt, with small savings for ferrous metal ores (-4.6 Mt).
The water-energy-food (WEF) nexus is increasingly recognised as a conceptual framework able to support the efficient implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Despite growing attention paid to the WEF nexus, the role that renewable energies can play in addressing trade-offs and realising synergies has received limited attention. Until now, the focus of WEF nexus discussions and applications has mainly been on national or global levels, macro-level drivers, material flows and large infrastructure developments. This overlooks the fact that major nexus challenges are faced at local level. Aiming to address these knowledge gaps, the authors conduct a systematic analysis of the linkages between small-scale energy projects in developing countries and the food and water aspects of development. The analysis is based on empirical data from continuous process and impact evaluations complemented by secondary data and relevant literature. The study provides initial insights into how to identify interconnections and the potential benefits of integrating the nexus pillars into local level projects in the global south. The study identifies the complex links which exist between sustainable energy projects and the food and water sectors and highlights that these needs are currently not systematically integrated into project design or project evaluation. A more systematic approach, integrating the water and food pillars into energy planning at local level in the global south, is recommended to avoid trade-offs and enhance the development outcomes and impacts of energy projects.
The Paris Agreement calls on all nations to pursue efforts to contribute to limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels. However, due to limited global, regional and country-specific analysis of highly ambitious GHG mitigation pathways, there is currently a lack of knowledge about the transformational changes needed in the coming decades to reach this target. Through a meta-analysis of mitigation scenarios for Germany, this article aims to contribute to an improved understanding of the changes needed in the energy system of an industrialized country. Differentiation among six key long-term energy system decarbonization strategies is suggested, and an analysis is presented of how these strategies will be pursued until 2050 in selected technologically detailed energy scenarios for Germany. The findings show, that certain strategies, including the widespread use of electricity-derived synthetic fuels in end-use sectors as well as behavioral changes, are typically applied to a greater extent in mitigation scenarios aiming at high GHG emission reductions compared to more moderate mitigation scenarios. The analysis also highlights that the pace of historical changes observed in Germany between 2000 and 2015 is clearly insufficient to adequately contribute to not only the 1.5 °C target, but also the 2 °C long-term global target.
For many years, carbon capture and storage (CCS) has been discussed as a technology that may make a significant contribution to achieving major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. At present, however, only two large-scale power plants capture a total of 2.4 Mt CO2/a. Several reasons are identified for this mismatch between expectations and realised deployment. Applying bibliographic coupling, the research front of CCS, understood to be published peer-reviewed papers, is explored to scrutinise whether the current research is sufficient to meet these problems. The analysis reveals that research is dominated by technical research (69%). Only 31% of papers address non-technical issues, particularly exploring public perception, policy, and regulation, providing a broader view on CCS implementation on the regional or national level, or using assessment frameworks. This shows that the research is advancing and attempting to meet the outlined problems, which are mainly non-technology related. In addition to strengthening this research, the proportion of papers that adopt a holistic approach may be increased in a bid to meet the challenges involved in transforming a complex energy system. It may also be useful to include a broad variety of stakeholders in research so as to provide a more resilient development of CCS deployment strategies.
The Port of Rotterdam is one of the pioneers in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. It is the largest port in Europe and extends over 40 kilometres to the North Sea coast. Its ambitious goal: the port wants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from its industrial cluster as well as from freight traffic to a large extent. For the study "Deep Decarbonisation Pathways for Transport and Logistics Related to the Port of Rotterdam" the Wuppertal Institute analysed available options for the maritime as well was hinterland transports on behalf of the Rotterdam Port Authority.
The 2050 scenarios by the Wuppertal Institute show that decarbonisation will significantly change both, volume and structure of the transported goods - which add to the on-going trend from bulk to container transport. This will have considerable structural effects on port operations and in particular on hinterland traffic. A comprehensive decarbonisation (>95 per cent) will require significant efficiency improvements through operational and technical measures and the switch to non-fossil fuels, as well as a strong shift of container transport from road transport to rail and inland navigation. For maritime shipping to and from Rotterdam two feasible pathways towards full decarbonisation by 2050 are presented. Both include a stepwise shift towards renewable electricity based energy carriers for ships (liquids and gaseous for long distances and hydrogen and electricity for shorter distances).
Finally the report derives a set of recommendations for the Port Authority as well as the Dutch, German and European policymakers to support the transition towards a drastic reduction of greenhouse gase (GHG) emissions from in the transport sector and for using this as a strategy for a sustainable economic development.
Many hope that the Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement can become a catalyst for increased mitigation ambition over time. Based on different theories of change, this paper outlines four governance functions for the Global Stocktake. It can contribute to the Paris Agreement as a pacemaker (stimulating and synchronizing policy processes across governance levels), by ensuring accountability of Parties, by enhancing ambition through benchmarks for action and transformative learning, and by reiterating and refining the guidance and signal provided from the Paris Agreement. The paper further outlines process- and information-related preconditions that would enable an ideal Global Stocktake.
Living-Lab-as-a-Service : exploring the market and sustainability offers of living labs in Germany
(2018)
European coal mining regions face massive transformational challenges. The necessity of climate protection only intensifies a trend, prevalent in all of Europe: coal mining has been losing its economic importance over the last decades. Fewer and fewer people are employed in the sector. Coal regions face the challenge of how to facilitate a just transition, and which perspectives to develop for a future beyond coal.
Against this background this study analyses the current situation in four key European coal mining regions, namely: Aragon in Spain, Lusatia in Germany, Silesia in Poland and Western Macedonia in Greece. The study provides a brief summary of the regions' socio-economic structure, including the respective role of coal mining. An assessment of how existing European structural instruments, specifically the European Structural and Investment Funds (the ESI Funds) are utilised in the region, forms the core of the study.
Transition modelling is an emerging but growing niche within the broader field of sustainability transitions research. The objective of this paper is to explore the characteristics of this niche in relation to a range of existing modelling approaches and literatures with which it shares commonalities or from which it could draw. We distil a number of key aspects we think a transitions model should be able to address, from a broadly acknowledged, empirical list of transition characteristics. We review some of the main strands in modelling of socio-technological change with regards to their ability to address these characteristics. These are: Eco-innovation literatures (energy-economy models and Integrated Assessment Models), evolutionary economics, complex systems models, computational social science simulations using agent based models, system dynamics models and socio-ecological systems models. The modelling approaches reviewed can address many of the features that differentiate sustainability transitions from other socio-economic dynamics or innovations. The most problematic features are the representation of qualitatively different system states and of the normative aspects of change. The comparison provides transition researchers with a starting point for their choice of a modelling approach, whose characteristics should correspond to the characteristics of the research question they face. A promising line of research is to develop innovative models of co-evolution of behaviours and technologies towards sustainability, involving change in the structure of the societal and technical systems.
The Ernst Strüngmann Forum seeks to link justice, sustainability, and diversity agendas. In support, this chapter discusses how linkages between these three concepts have formed and changed in the climate change discourse, particularly in light of the recent Paris Agreement. As the latest addition to the portfolio of international climate change agreements, the Paris Agreement establishes a landscape in which nation-states, subnational actors, and transnational networks will be able to reconfigure existing linkages between sustainability, diversity, and justice, and perhaps improve upon them.
Here, three possible developments are identified which may substantially influence the reconfiguration process. Recognition is given to the sustainability and justice deficits that have plagued the "top-down" character of the international climate change discourse, and it is hypothesized that the Paris Agreement opens the door for "bottom-up" movements to claim a larger segment of climate change policy decision making and design. In turn, the "polycentric" landscape created by such "movement from below" appears to emphasize concepts such as inclusivity and transparency perhaps allowing for explicit climate justice commitments. Finally, to advance societal transformation and embrace diversity, it is hypothesized that the scientific endeavor needs to be transformed from a purely analytical pursuit to an effort that makes use of the wide range of scientific competences and provides support for transformative innovations to change unsustainable sociotechnical systems.
Energy and climate change
(2018)
The inclusion of references to human rights in the Paris Agreement was celebrated as a milestone towards greater integration of human rights in environmental and climate governance. Beyond their symbolic value, the significance of these provisions however depends on the extent to which they inform the implementation of the Paris Agreement both at the national and international levels. This article takes stock of the integration of human rights in climate governance and identifies concrete opportunities to ensure that human rights considerations are included in the Paris Implementation Guidelines to be adopted at COP-24, promoting climate action that aligns with Parties' human rights obligations. We first consider the relevance of human rights to climate action and the incremental recognition of these linkages in the international climate regime - both in the lead up to the adoption of the Paris Agreement and since. We then consider in specific terms how human rights could inform five key dimensions of the Paris Agreement's Implementation Guidelines: NDC guidance, adaptation communications, transparency framework, global stocktake, and the article 6 mechanisms. This article will reflect on past experience of how climate policy impacts human rights and on proposals put forward in the context of the negotiations of the implementation guidelines. It concludes with recommendations on a right-based approach to the implementation of the Paris Agreement.
This paper investigates the multimodal nature of urban congestion and network performance, with the aim of developing practice ready policy tools to alleviate the adverse effects of excess demand, no matter in which mode it realizes. As part of the efforts to get an overall understanding of how congestion is defined in various disciplines, we conduct a literature review of relevant engineering and microeconomics studies. The investigation reveals the main areas where contradiction can be identified between engineering and economics approaches. In a second step, we investigate the results of an expert survey about the principles of congestion analysis from a multimodal perspective. The main contribution of the paper is twofold. First, we draw attention to the pitfalls of oversimplified and narrow viewpoints on congestion. Second, we operationalize these principles in order to enable decision makers to assess the impact of urban transport measures on congestion.
Poor households in Germany and those that are close to the poverty line are more likely to suffer from increases in electricity costs. One consequence of this is the increasing number of cases in which the supplier disconnects a household's power. According to the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur), a total of almost 359,000 interruptions of the electricity supply were caused in 2015 due to outstanding payments. In order to avoid disconnection from the electricity grid, more and more utility companies have begun to offer prepayment meters (PPMs) to their customers as a response to outstanding payments and a growing number of customers owing debts to their energy supplier. The phenomenon of an increasing number of households affected by energy poverty in Germany is new, and thus the number of PPMs is still low. As a result, experiences in this context are - compared to other countries (e.g. Great Britain) - far from extensive, and political awareness of the problem is low. This paper presents the findings of Germany's first scientific survey on experiences with the use of PPMs.
The German government aims to achieve virtually climate-neutral building stock by 2050 to tackle climate change. To realise this goal, comprehensive policy packages based on neoclassical economic theory are in place to foster energy efficiency investment. However, in the building sector, there is increasingly a gap between this aspiration and the reality. It is claimed that one of the main reasons for this is that the existing policy framework fails to address the specific characteristics and needs of different groups of building owners. This is a particular challenge in Germany, where 80% of all dwellings are owned privately and 37% are rented out by small private landlords (SPL). Despite the significant numbers of SPL, they often follow black box decision-making processes when considering energy renovations. In this study, the author uses an explanatory model to understand the decision-making processes of SPL, combining theoretical aspects from different research disciplines. This model was applied to a low-demand housing market in a neighbourhood in the Ruhr area. Eighteen semi-structured interviews (each lasting between 37 and 115 min) were conducted, demonstrating that in addition to economic factors, the values, beliefs, norms and routines of SPL - as well as their personal capabilities and contextual factors - play an important role in their decision-making. Based on the findings, recommendations are made for enhancing the effectiveness of existing energy efficiency policies and other supporting instruments (e.g. tenancy law and social legislation), tailored to the specific needs of SPL.
There is significant potential for family farming to contribute to several dimensions of the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015. Our research aims to provide insights to help strengthen sustainable family farming. We focus on initiatives that have advanced sustainable family farming innovations in Colombia and analyse the factors and dynamics that have led to the limited penetration of those innovations across the country. To that aim, a transformative methodology is applied involving representatives of farmers' associations, supporting organisations and researchers from various disciplinary fields. We analyse the network of initiatives against the conceptual background of sociotechnical niches and identify a stable niche where generic lessons are being systematically identified and used to establish replication projects. However, this niche is still limited in its breadth, which results in a low capacity for expansion and a strong dependency on international donors for reproducing experiences. Specific recommendations are outlined for broadening the type of actors involved in the interpretation and dissemination of lessons from the niche. Moreover, we outline suggestions for further research and conceptualisation in two directions: for exploring effective ways of broadening the niche and translating niche lessons to state policies and for deepening the understanding of interactions between the niche and other levels.
The paper describes patterns of resource use related to German households' equipment. Using cluster analysis and material flow accounting, data on socio-demographic characteristics, and expenditures on fuel, electricity and household equipment allow for a differentiation of seven different household types. The corresponding resource use, expressed in Material Footprint per person and year, is calculated based on cradle-to-gate material flows of average household goods and the related household energy use. Our results show that patterns of resource use are mainly driven by the use of fuel and electricity and the ownership of cars. The quantified Material Footprints correlate to social status and are also linked to city size, age and household size. Affluent, established and/or younger families living in rural areas typically show the highest amounts of durables and expenditures on non-durables, thus exhibiting the highest use of natural resources.
The experience curve theory assumes that technology costs decline as experience of a technology is gained through production and use. This article reviews the literature on the experience curve theory and its empirical evidence in the field of electricity generation technologies. Differences in the characteristics of experience curves found in the literature are systematically presented and the limitations of the experience curve theory, as well as its use in energy models, are discussed. The article finds that for some electricity generation technologies, especially small-scale modular technologies, there has been a remarkably strong (negative) relationship between experience and cost for several decades. Conversely, for other technologies, especially large-scale and highly complex technologies, the experience curve does not appear to be a useful tool for explaining cost changes over time. The literature review suggests that when analysing past cost developments and projecting future cost developments, researchers should be aware that factors other than experience may have significant influence. It may be worthwhile trying to incorporate some of these additional factors into energy system models, although considerable uncertainties remain in quantifying the relevance of some of these factors.
Energy system optimization models (ESOMs) such as MARKAL/TIMES are used to support energy policy analysis worldwide. ESOMs cover the full life-cycle of fuels from extraction to end-use, including the associated direct emissions. Nevertheless, the life-cycle emissions of energy equipment and infrastructure are not modelled explicitly. This prevents analysis of questions relating to the relative importance of emissions associated with the build-up of infrastructure and other equipment required for decarbonization.
Tackling fuel poverty has become an increasingly important issue on many European countries' political agendas. Consequently, national governments, local authorities and NGOs have established policies and programmes to reduce the fuel poverty vulnerability of households. However, evaluations of such policies and programmes show that they barely reach those who are most in need. The reasons for this failure are diverse and include fuel poverty measurement metrics, local scale data availability and policy design. This raises the question of how fuel poor homes can be more effectively identified and targeted to ensure that limited local and national budgets are used to benefit those who most need help.
Area-based approaches, which pinpoint spatial units highly affected by fuel poverty due to their specific characteristics, offer an opportunity for creating more tailored policies and programmes. In this study, the author developed a GIS-MCDA (Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis), using an AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process) and applied the approach to the German city of Oberhausen. The overall issue of fuel poverty was broken down into three vulnerability dimensions (heating burden, socio-economic and building vulnerability), the relative importance of fuel poverty criteria and the dimensions were evaluated by experts, and an overall Fuel Poverty Index was created to assess the relative fuel poverty vulnerability of 168 urban neighbourhoods.
The analysis offers insights into the spatial pattern of fuel poverty within a city and thus provides an opportunity to channel efforts towards households in those neighbourhoods most in need. It also demonstrates that a trade-off between ecological and social targets should be considered in the development of future policies for tackling fuel poverty.
The study shows that more cyclists and pedestrians can make cities safer. The ranking, compiled by the Wuppertal Institute and funded by Greenpeace, compared 13 metropolises in terms of public transport, road safety, air quality, mobility management, and the proportion of cyclists and pedestrians. The result: Amsterdam and Copenhagen, residents travel about a third of their trips by bicycle, and these cities have the fewest bicycle accidents.
The Port of Rotterdam is an important industrial cluster mainly comprising of oil refining, chemical manufacturing and power and steam generation. In 2015, the area accounted for 18 % of the Netherlands' total CO2 emissions. The Port of Rotterdam Authority is aware that the port's economy is heavily exposed to future global and EU decarbonization policies, as the bulk of its activities focuses on trading, handling, converting and using fossil fuels. Based on a study for the Port Authority, our paper explores possible pathways of how the industrial cluster can keep its strong market position in Europe and still reduce its CO2 emissions by 98 % by 2050. The "Biomass and CCS" scenario assumes that large amounts of biomass can be supplied sustainably and will be used in the port for power generation as well as for feedstock for refineries and the chemical industry. Fischer-Tropsch fuel generation plays an important role in this scenario, allowing the port to become a key cluster for the production of synthetic fuels and feedstocks in Western Europe. The "Closed Carbon Cycle" scenario assumes that renewables-based electricity will be used at the port to supply heat and hydrogen for the synthetic generation of feedstock for the chemical industry. The carbon required for the chemicals will stem from recycled waste. Technologies particularly needed in this scenario are water electrolysis and gasification or pyrolysis to capture carbon from waste, as well as technologies for the production of base chemicals from syngas. The paper compares both scenarios with regard to their respective technological choices and infrastructural changes. The scenarios’ particular opportunities and challenges are also discussed. Using possible future pathways of a major European petrochemical cluster as an example, the paper illustrates options for deep decarbonisation of energy intensive industries in the EU and beyond.
Converting electricity into heat offers the opportunity to make of use large scales of renewable (surplus) energy in the long run in order to reduce shut-downs of renewable power plants and to substitute fossil fuels. Electrification seems to be also very promising for industrial heat applications, as it enables high process temperatures to be achieved in a tailor-made and efficient way and enables the utilisation of other energy sources like waste heat, geothermal or ambient heat (via heat pumps). This article analyses theoretical and technical electrification potentials of Steam Generation and Other Process Heat Generation in the following energy-intensive branches: iron & steel, non-ferrous metal, iron foundries, refineries, base chemicals, glass, cement clinker and paper industry in Germany. Literature research, expert interviews as well as own modelling were conducted to determine potentials and their implementation barriers. Based on these methods, market potential to electrify industrial steam generation was estimated. On the basis of two climate protection scenarios, the effects of both a monovalent and a hybrid industrial power-to-heat strategy were quantified with regard to greenhouse gas reduction and energy efficiency (primary energy saving). The pathway towards electrification will be reflected by criteria such as path dependency, dependency of infrastructure and system compatibility. Recommendations for research and development as well as policies are derived from the overall analysis. The article shows that electrification can be an important option to achieving high CO2-savings in the industrial heating sector in a long-term perspective. However, the scenario calculations show that electrification does not in itself guarantee reduction of greenhouse gases or savings of primary energy. To reach these goals, it is essential to further develop industrial heat pumps and to map electrification and further development of renewable energy (including infrastructure such as power networks and storage facilities) in a concerted strategy.
The German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) is home to important clusters of energy-intensive basic materials industries. 15% of the EU's primary steel as well as 15% of high-value base chemicals are produced here. Together with refinery fuels, cement, lime and paper production (also overrepresented in NRW) these are the most carbon-intensive production processes of the industrial metabolism. To achieve the ambitious regional and national climate goals without relocating these clusters, carbon-neutral production will have to become standard by mid-century. We develop and evaluate three conceptual long-term scenarios towards carbon-neutral industry systems for NRW for 2050 and beyond:
* a first scenario depending on carbon capture and storage or use for heavy industries (iCCS),
* a second scenario sketching the direct electrification of industrial processes (and transport) and
* a third scenario relying on the import of low carbon energies (e.g. biomass, and synthetic fuels (like methanol) for the use in industries and transport. All scenarios share the assumption that electricity generation will be CO2-neutral by 2050.
For all three scenarios energy efficiency, primary energy demand for energy services and feedstock as well as the carbon balance are quantified. We apply a spatial-explicit analysis of production sites to allow for discussion of infrastructure re-use and net investment needs. Possible symbiotic relations between sectors are also included. The robustness of the three conceptualised future carbon-neutral industry systems is then analysed using a multi-criteria approach, including e.g. energy security issues and lock-ins on the way to 2050.
Climate change induces various risks for supply chains of manufacturing firms. However, surveys have suggested that only a minority of firms conducts strategic adaptations, which we define as anticipatory and target-oriented action with the purpose of increasing resilience to climate change. While several barrier-centered studies have investigated the causality of non-adaptation in industry, the examined barriers are often not problem-specific. Furthermore, it has been shown that even in cases when managers perceive no barriers to adaptation at all, strategic adaptations may still not be conducted. On this background, the present analysis focuses on the logic of adaptive inaction, which we conceive, in particular, as inaction with regard to strategic adaptations. Adopting an action-theoretical perspective, the study examines (a) which aspects may shape the rationality of adaptive inaction among managers, (b) which more condensed challenges of conducting strategic adaptations emerge for managers, and (c) how the theoretical propositions can be tested. For this purpose, the study employs an exploratory approach. Thus, hypotheses on such aspects are explored, which may shape the rationality of adaptive inaction among managers. Subsequently, predictions are inferred from the theoretical propositions, which allow testing their empirical relevance. Methodologically, the hypotheses are explored by reexamining existing explanatory approaches from literature based on a set of pretheoretical assumptions, which include notions of bounded rationality. As a result, the study proposes 13 aspects which may constrain managers in conducting adaptations in such a way, which serves the economic utility of the firm. By condensing these aspects, 4 major challenges for managers are suggested: the challenges of (a) conducting long-term adaptations, of (b) conducting adaptations at an early point in time, of (c) conducting adaptations despite uncertain effects of the measures, and of (d) conducting adaptations despite cross-tier dependencies in supply chains. Finally, the study shows how the propositions can be tested and outlines a research agenda based on the developed theoretical suggestions.
Nutrition is responsible for about 30% of global natural resource use. In order to limit the negative impact the nutritional sector has on the environment and on society, the consumption and processing of foodstuffs with assumed low negative impact is an important topic in the effort of sustainable development. In professional kitchens, clearly defined indicators assessing the impact of business activities are needed in this effort. The research and development in the NAHGAST project provides groundwork that could be of important assistance in this effort. Two versions of an assessment tool, with indicators of different complexity (NAHGAST Meal-Basic and NAHGAST Meal-Pro), were developed that can be used by kitchen professionals to determine the sustainability performance of their products - the offered meal. An informed selection of indicators, and a discussion of what processes and impacts this indicator relates to in the wider context, are essential and are discussed in this paper. Furthermore, in the selection of indicators for the purpose of our research certain criteria were considered simultaneously: (1) Communicability - What information an indicator can communicate and how comprehensible this information is for different actors; (2) Feasibility and data availability - Whether there is sufficient data for an indicator to be included and whether it is realistic for companies to integrate this indicator in their daily work practice; and (3) Scientific relevance - Whether the indicator is relevant for sustainability efforts on a larger scale and for related discussions in the scientific community. Insights related to these considerations are valuable for future developments in sustainability assessment in out-of-home gastronomy. The tool has been used to evaluate a number of dishes and results are deemed meaningful. However, assessments must not be understood as an accurate measurement but as an approximation of the sustainability of meals. At the level of individual indicators, they allow a detailed analysis and targeted optimization of recipes, while the aggregated results in the form of labels can be communicated well to customers. However, deficiencies and challenges, as discovered in the application phase of the project, demonstrate research gaps in the wider context. Finally, further steps for an integration of the tool in company processes and remaining options for companies to adjust the tool are discussed.
In this paper we highlight the importance of structural dimensions of real-world laboratories (RwLs). Giddens' structuration theory provides a promising framework to better understand the interlinked abstract and physical (infra-)structural features of RwLs. We argue that research on and in RwLs needs to be sensitive to the spatial, temporal, and thematic scope of structuration processes. A systematic conceptualization of these dimensions remains an important task for future research. In order to arrive at such a more in-depth understanding and possibly an improvement in the transferability of knowledge created in RwLs, the idea proposed by the WBGU should be taken up: building RwLs for the long term and focusing more explicitly on their structural dimensions. First steps have been taken in the German city of Wuppertal where a RwL infrastructure has been built up over the course of various projects including a broad variety of resources, actors, and topics in the broader search and learning process for sustainable transitioning.
Jointly experimenting for transformation? : Shaping real-world laboratories by comparing them
(2018)
Real-world laboratories (RwLs, German Reallabore) belong to a family of increasingly popular experimental and transdisciplinary research approaches at the science-society interface. As these approaches in general, and RwLs in particular, often lack clear definitions of key characteristics and their operationalization, we make two contributions in this article. First, we identify five core characteristics of RwLs: contribution to transformation, experimental methods, transdisciplinary research mode, scalability and transferability of results, as well as scientific and societal learning and reflexivity. Second, we compare RwLs to similar research approaches according to the five characteristics. In this way, we provide an orientation on experimental and transdisciplinary research for societal transformations, and reveal the contributions of this type of research in supporting societal change. Our findings enable learning across the different approaches and highlight their complementarities, with a particular focus on RwLs.
Labs in the real world : advancing transdisciplinary research and sustainability transformation
(2018)
There is a strong trend towards research in society-based laboratories,
especially in relation to sustainability. Semantic analysis reveals related discourses and emerging lines of inquiry, namely transformative potential, transdisciplinarity and learning. Real-world laboratories are a dynamic example of this research. Contributions of how to deepen and broaden their analysis are presented.
As part of this dissertation, a categorisation of the social costs of electricity supply is suggested. The following three main cost categories are differentiated: plant-level costs, system costs and external costs. Different types of costs are allocated to these categories and are examined and quantified (to the extent possible) for several power generation technologies. The limits of monetizing certain types of costs are also discussed. In a further step, and based on a large number of empirical studies, individual factors that have had a significant influence on the development of plant-level costs in the past, are identified and categorized. Finally, based on an online survey conducted among energy modellers, the dissertation examines to what extent the identified relevant types of costs and cost-influencing factors are taken into account in different types of energy models.
New energy technologies may fail to make the transition to the market once research funding has ended due to a lack of private engagement to conclude their development. Extending public funding to cover such experimental developments could be one way to improve this transition. However, identifying promising research and development (R&D) proposals for this purpose is a difficult task for the following reasons: Close-to-market implementations regularly require substantial resources while public budgets are limited; the allocation of public funds needs to be fair, open, and documented; the evaluation is complex and subject to public sector regulations for public engagement in R&D funding. This calls for a rigorous evaluation process. This paper proposes an operational three-staged decision support system (DSS) to assist decision-makers in public funding institutions in the ex-ante evaluation of R&D proposals for large-scale close-to-market projects in energy research. The system was developed based on a review of literature and related approaches from practice combined with a series of workshops with practitioners from German public funding institutions. The results confirm that the decision-making process is a complex one that is not limited to simply scoring R&D proposals. Decision-makers also have to deal with various additional issues such as determining the state of technological development, verifying market failures or considering existing funding portfolios. The DSS that is suggested in this paper is unique in the sense that it goes beyond mere multi-criteria aggregation procedures and addresses these issues as well to help guide decision-makers in public institutions through the evaluation process.
In this perspective article, we undertake a brief empirical analysis of the dominant narratives in debates around India's energy future. India has ambitious goals for increasing renewable energy and enabling universal energy access, but there is little social consensus on how these goals should be achieved. We find two compelling narratives in energy policy debates in the country: "energy for development" that privileges energy as critical to economic growth and long term strategic security; and "energy for all" that prioritises the role of energy for basic development and ending poverty. We find that while these narratives find common ground on certain issues such as the role of coal, they clash in the socio-technical imaginaries they represent about India’s energy future. Indian energy policy has been characterised so far by top down, centralised policymaking. With this article, we highlight the societal choices that are inherent in discussions about transformations in India's electricity sector and call for further research on the socio-cultural dimensions of future energy pathways in India.
Combined heat and power (CHP) production in buildings is one of the mitigation options available for achieving a considerable decrease in GHG emissions. Micro-CHP (mCHP) fuel cells are capable of cogenerating electricity and heat very efficiently on a decentralised basis. Although they offer clear environmental benefits and have the potential to create a systemic change in energy provision, the diffusion of mCHP fuel cells is rather slow. There are numerous potential drivers for the successful diffusion of fuel cell cogeneration units, but key economic actors are often unaware of them. This paper presents the results of a comprehensive analysis of barriers, drivers and business opportunities surrounding micro-CHP fuel-cell units (up to 5 kWel) in the German building market. Business opportunities have been identified based not only on quantitative data for drivers and barriers, but also on discussions with relevant stakeholders such as housing associations, which are key institutional demand-side actors. These business opportunities include fuel cell contracting as well as the development of a large lighthouse project to demonstrate the climate-neutral, efficient use of fuel cells in the residential building sector. The next step could involve the examination and development of more detailed options and business models. The approach and methods used in the survey may be applied on a larger scale and in other sectors.
Background: For a successful transition to a sustainable energy system, not only technical but also social innovations are required. A major challenge to social innovation research is how to translate the social innovation from a novelty with big potential into a mainstream practice. The multilevel perspective (MLP) of socio-technical transitions provides a heuristic to understand how niches can potentially break through to the regime level. In this paper, we examine in how far a multilevel perspective approach is suited to analyze and better understand diffusion trajectories of social rather than technological innovations, taking a social practice theory perspective. Five example projects, selected among the top social innovations for the Energiewende in North Rhine-Westphalia, are analyzed. We discuss to what extend the MLP provides a helpful tool to understand the transition processes.
Results: Social innovations can be very divers. We find that the MLP does not offer a one-size-fits-all framework for the analysis of the diffusion of social innovations. The MLP proves applicable only in those cases where the social innovation (1) can lead to a system change and (2) has a clear competing or symbiotic relationship with an existing regime.
Conclusions: Social innovations that aim to be transformative in the sense that they have the goal to be system changing (rather than incremental) can be analyzed along the heuristics of the MLP. For this type of social innovation, the MLP can be fruitful to learn to better understand the diffusion dynamics of social innovation and the barriers and drivers they might face. However, for social innovations that aim at incremental improvements without challenging the existing system, the MLP cannot be applied to study the diffusion process.
The production of commodities by energy-intensive industry is responsible for 1/3 of annual global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The climate goal of the Paris Agreement, to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels while pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C, requires global GHG emissions reach net-zero and probably negative by 2055-2080. Given the average economic lifetime of industrial facilities is 20 years or more, this indicates all new investment must be net-zero emitting by 2035-2060 or be compensated by negative emissions to guarantee GHG-neutrality. We argue, based on a sample portfolio of emerging and near-commercial technologies for each sector (largely based on zero carbon electricity & heat sources, biomass and carbon capture, and catalogued in an accompanying database), that reducing energy-intensive industrial GHG emissions to Paris Agreement compatible levels may not only be technically possible, but can be achieved with sufficient prioritization and policy effort. We then review policy options to drive innovation and investment in these technologies. From this we synthesize a preliminary integrated strategy for a managed transition with minimum stranded assets, unemployment, and social trauma that recognizes the competitive and globally traded nature of commodity production. The strategy includes: an initial policy commitment followed by a national and sectoral stakeholder driven pathway process to build commitment and identify opportunities based on local zero carbon resources; penetration of near-commercial technologies through increasing valuation of GHG material intensity through GHG pricing or flexible regulations with protection for competitiveness and against carbon leakage; research and demand support for the output of pilot plants, including some combination of guaranteed above-market prices that decline with output and an increasing requirement for low carbon inputs in government procurement; and finally, key supporting institutions.
Design for sustainability
(2018)
In this project, an overview and prioritization of relevant technologies of the German energy transition are presented in a consolidated form. Many of the relevant technologies have already been developed and deployed to the market. However, in various sectors like system integration or sector coupling, innovation needs remain, as well as in-depth research on further possibilities and potentials for cost degression and technology optimization for all technologies.
The international governance landscape on climate change mitigation is increasingly complex across multiple governance levels. Climate change mitigation initiatives by non-state stakeholders can play an important role in governing global climate change. The article addresses the relationship between intergovernmental and transnational governance processes in global climate governance. Particularly, the article aims to complement existing research on the role of "orchestration" by and through the UNFCCC process by focusing on how successful transnational initiatives can resonate within the intergovernmental negotiation process in order to inspire more ambitious climate action also on the part of national governments. This issue is addressed by systematically analysing interdependencies between transnational and international governance. Building on a structurational regime model, the article develops a theory of change of how and through which structuration channels non-state initiatives can contribute to changing the politics of international climate policy, traces existing UNFCCC processes and the Paris Agreement with a view to identifying inroads for a more direct feedback from non-state initiatives and derives recommendations on how and under which agenda items positive experiences can resonate within the UNFCCC negotiation process.
Quo vadis voluntary markets? : new Paris Agreement architecture puts business model to the test
(2018)
Real-world laboratories (RwLs) often put researchers in highly demanding research contexts regarding their roles and self-conceptions. Helpful roles of researchers have been described but still little is known about the factors influencing the adoption of certain roles. Using data from three parallel RwLs in Wuppertal, Germany, we found four roles of researchers: the reflective scientist, the facilitator, the change agent and the (self-)reflexive scientist. We sequenced the RwLs into situations and analysed them by RwL process steps and conditions, considering the roles of researchers as outcomes. Although the conditions convey only limited explanatory power, there was a consistent picture that being pressured to carry out real-world action, having a practice partner with fewer resources and working without a functional project group is (in conjunction) sufficient to cause the researcher to partake in activities beyond conventional research. Process steps played a minor role. Our research on factors influencing the adoption of roles may help RwL researchers to perform their roles as intended.
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.
Considering the role of transport for a 1.5 Degree stabilization pathway and the importance of light-duty vehicle fuel efficiency within that, it is important to understand the key elements of a policy package to shape the energy efficiency of the vehicle fleet. This paper presents an analysis focusing on three types of policy measures: (1) CO2 emission standards for new vehicles, (2) vehicle taxation directly and indirectly based on CO2 emission levels, and (3) fuel taxation. The paper compares the policies in the G20 economies and estimates the financial impact of those policies using the example of a Ford Focus vehicle model. This analysis is a contribution to the assessment of the role of the transport sector in global decarbonisation efforts. The findings of this paper show that only an integrated approach of regulatory and fiscal policy measures can yield substantial efficiency gains in the vehicle fleet and can curb vehicle kilometres travelled by individual motorised transport. Using the illustrative example of one vehicle model, the case study analysis shows that isolated measures, e.g. fuel efficiency regulation without corresponding fuel and vehicle taxes only have minor CO2 emission reduction effects and that policy measures need to be combined in order to achieve substantial emission reduction gains over time. The analysis shows that the highest level of impact is achieved by a combination regulatory and fiscal policies rather than only one policy even if this policy is more aggressive. When estimating the quantitative effect of fuel efficiency standards, vehicle and fuel tax, the analysis shows that substantial gains with regard to CO2 emission are only achieved at a financial impact level above 500 Euros over a four year period.
Previous studies showed that using carbon dioxide (CO2) as a raw material for chemical syntheses may provide an opportunity for achieving greenhouse gas (GHG) savings and a low-carbon economy. Nevertheless, it is not clear whether carbon capture and utilization benefits the environment in terms of resource efficiency. We analyzed the production of methane, methanol, and synthesis gas as basic chemicals and derived polyoxymethylene, polyethylene, and polypropylene as polymers by calculating the output-oriented indicator global warming impact (GWI) and the resource-based indicators raw material input (RMI) and total material requirement (TMR) on a cradle-to-gate basis. As carbon source, we analyzed the capturing of CO2 from air, raw biogas, cement plants, lignite-fired power, and municipal waste incineration plants. Wind power serves as an energy source for hydrogen production. Our data were derived from both industrial processes and process simulations. The results demonstrate that the analyzed CO2-based process chains reduce the amount of GHG emissions in comparison to the conventional ones. At the same time, the CO2-based process chains require an increased amount of (abiotic) resources. This trade-off between decreased GHG emissions and increased resource use is assessed. The decision about whether or not to recycle CO2 into hydrocarbons depends largely on the source and amount of energy used to produce hydrogen.
The Paris Agreement (PA) emphasizes the intrinsic relationship between climate change and sustainable development (SD) and welcomes the 2030 agenda for the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Yet, there is a lack of assessment approaches to ensure that climate and development goals are achieved in an integrated fashion and trade-offs avoided. Article 6.4 of the PA introduces a new Sustainable Mitigation Mechanism (SMM) with the dual aim to contribute to the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions and foster SD. The Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has a similar objective and in 2014, the CDM SD tool was launched by the Executive Board of the CDM to highlight the SD benefits of CDM activities. This article analyses the usefulness of the CDM SD tool for stakeholders and compares the SD tool's SD reporting requirements against other flexible mechanisms and multilateral standards to provide recommendations for improvement. A key conclusion is that the Paris Agreement's SMM has a stronger political mandate than the CDM to measure that SD impacts are "real, measurable and long-term". Recommendations for an improved CDM SD tool are a relevant starting point to develop rules, modalities, and procedures for SD assessment in Article 6.4 as well as for other cooperative mitigation approaches.
The transformative research approach of Real-World Laboratories (RWL) has recently attracted attention in German sustainability science. Some definitions and understandings have been published, but guidelines and procedural quality criteria for establishing and running a RWL are still missing. To address this gap, this article has two aims. First, it aims to derive key components of RWLs from the current discourse on RWLs and similar, but more elaborated research approaches. Second, it aims to transfer these key components into a comprehensive research practice. This practice is illustrated by the RWL process in the project "Well-being Transformation Wuppertal" (WTW).
Methodologically, the article builds on a review of RWL-related approaches for collaborative, intervention-oriented research. This includes transition management, transdisciplinary process models and action research. Based on this review, eight key components for RWLs are proposed. They position RWLs as a normatively framed approach that aims to contribute to local action for sustainable development and the empowerment of change agents. The approach uses transdisciplinary methods of knowledge integration and engages in cyclical real-world interventions within certain spatial and content-related boundaries.
The components are transferred into a flowchart, detailing process steps, aims, responsibilities and overall principles for putting RWLs into practice. Thus, a hitherto missing tool for designing and running RWLs is provided. Then, the RWL in the district of Mirke, Wuppertal, is used as an empirical example to illustrate the application of the flowchart and related key components. Consecutive discussions centre on the different roles of researchers and practitioners in the research process, as well as the relevance of an underlying theory of change for effective interventions. Finally, critical reflection, application and amendment of the proposed flowchart are encouraged
Environmentally extended multiregional input-output (EE MRIO) tables have emerged as a key framework to provide a comprehensive description of the global economy and analyze its effects on the environment. Of the available EE MRIO databases, EXIOBASE stands out as a database compatible with the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) with a high sectorial detail matched with multiple social and environmental satellite accounts. In this paper, we present the latest developments realized with EXIOBASE 3 - a time series of EE MRIO tables ranging from 1995 to 2011 for 44 countries (28 EU member plus 16 major economies) and five rest of the world regions. EXIOBASE 3 builds upon the previous versions of EXIOBASE by using rectangular supply-use tables (SUTs) in a 163 industry by 200 products classification as the main building blocks. In order to capture structural changes, economic developments, as reported by national statistical agencies, were imposed on the available, disaggregated SUTs from EXIOBASE 2. These initial estimates were further refined by incorporating detailed data on energy, agricultural production, resource extraction, and bilateral trade. EXIOBASE 3 inherits the high level of environmental stressor detail from its precursor, with further improvement in the level of detail for resource extraction. To account for the expansion of the European Union (EU), EXIOBASE 3 was developed with the full EU28 country set (including the new member state Croatia). EXIOBASE 3 provides a unique tool for analyzing the dynamics of environmental pressures of economic activities over time.
The growing demand for timber, in particular for renewable energy, increases pressures on global forests and requires a robust monitoring system to ensure sustainability. This article takes a first step toward more systemic monitoring by asking how the global use of forests by EU consumers can be accounted for. Specifically, this article builds on and develops the method of global land use accounting to account for the EU-27's consumption of primary timber between 2002 and 2011 in terms of both volume and forest area. It assesses international trade flows for around 100 commodities and converts them into a volume of primary raw timber based on conversion values. Results reveal that both imports and exports increased over the assessed time period, with primary EU-27 timber estimated to be around 1 m3/cap in 2011. Gaps, uncertainty and a lack of harmonization regarding especially trade data and conversion values are key challenges to further improving the robustness of the method and reliability of results. Future research may focus on improving the method to address in particular recycled and recovered flows as well as the question of whether area or volume is the most appropriate metric for further development of a forest footprint indicator.
Status and future dynamics of decentralised renewable energy niche building processes in Argentina
(2018)
Despite significant natural potential for renewable energy in Argentina and the political intention to generate 8% of electricity from renewable sources by 2017, by 2016 the share was only 1.95%. Although this aggregated picture appears unfavourable, several diverse initiatives promoting the development and application of decentralised renewable energy technologies are in place across the country. The aim of this study is to characterise those initiatives promoting decentralised renewable energy and to assess their potential role in inducing the wider transformation of the Argentinian energy system. To achieve this, we apply conceptualisations for the development of sociotechnical niches and use qualitative research techniques to characterise the sociotechnical dynamics of the decentralised renewable energy sector in Argentina. A niche in an advanced stage of development, in which lessons are systematically aggregated in networks, was identified and examples of generic lessons being used to frame new projects or programmes were also found. In addition to considering the internal niche development processes, we investigate how external factors affect the development of the niche. Finally, we suggest two possible development pathways by which the niche might exert stronger influence on the broader sustainability transformation of the Argentinian power system.
Urban areas, being responsible for large shares of global greenhouse gas emissions, are important arenas for achieving global decarbonisation. However, the systemic challenge of decarbonisation requires deep structural changes - transitions - that take place across multiple scales and along entire value chains. We argue in this article that understanding the role of urban areas for global decarbonisation therefore requires consideration of their context and analysis of urban areas' contributions to transitions that extend past the individual urban area. We develop an analytical framework that proposes three principal ways urban areas contribute to low-carbon transitions and ten competences that regional and local governance actors have to support them. We apply this framework to the Cologne metropolitan area in Germany to demonstrate the ability of our framework to relate urban-scale activities to more encompassing low-carbon transitions. The paper concludes with future research possibilities.
The author demonstrates that digital technologies and new mobility concepts can lead to a reduction of the automobiles in urban areas by a factor of 10. The book features two vivid case studies of such digital mobility concepts: TwoGo by SAP and smexx. The author proposes six prototypes of business models for "Shared Automobility Services". Janasz offers also the "Transformative Literacy" for designing sustainable urban mobility systems of the future. The author elaborates on the socio-political patterns of urban mobility by presenting the case of the City of Basel (Switzerland). He proposes the framework of "Integrated Sustainable Urban Mobility" to explain how to overcome car dependence in cities.