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Global climate
(2017)
On 7-18 November, the twenty-second Conference of the Parties (COP-22) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the twelfth Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP-12) took place in Marrakech. Due to the rapid entry into force of the Paris Agreement, Marrakech also hosted the first Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA-1). Nobody had expected this one year before in Paris - the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol, by comparison, had taken eight years. Many hailed the rapid entry into force as further proof of the commitment of the world community to finally tackle the climate problem.
Two for one : integrating the sustainable development agenda with international climate policy
(2017)
2015 was a watershed for international sustainability governance. With the Paris climate agreement and Agenda 2030, the international community adopted new targets and processes which are to guide policy for decades to come. Both emphasise the need for integration. In practice, however, climate change and sustainable development have so far been siloed issues.
As of June 2017, 150 countries have ratified the Paris Climate Agreement. This agreement calls for, among other things, strong reductions in CO2 emissions by 2030 and beyond. This paper reviews the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDCs) plans of six Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries and compares their current and projected future CO2 levels across sectors, and their stated targets in the context of their economic and demographic situations. This comparison reveals wide variations in the types of targets, with the "ambition" level changing as the perspective changes from total CO2 to CO2/capita and per unit gross domestic product (GDP). We also review national plans as stated in NDCs and find that while there are many types of policies listed, few are quantified and no attempts are made to score individual or groups of policies for their likelihood in achieving stated targets. We conclude that more analysis is needed to better understand the possible impacts of current policies and plans on CO2 emissions, and whether current plans are adequate to hit targets. Considerations on better aligning targets are also provided.
Optimization and simulation models are fit to work on a multitude of technical, economic, and techno-economic questions. However, they are by now not able to satisfactorily include societal aspects like acceptance, spatial implications and legal frameworks. In order to advance scope and explanatory power of simulation models, collaboration in interdisciplinary research teams is needed. Yet the exchange in such teams and its coordination can prove challenging. Furthermore, disciplinary approaches and methods for simulation and optimization might not be familiar to all participants.
To this end, a new conceptual model is introduced. The conceptual model employs few basic elements and concepts for describing and explaining arbitrary societal and technical relationships. Most notably, the conceptual model is general in its design, so contributions to the problem formulation and design components can be made by all team members regardless of their discipline. The procedure is based on common agent-based concepts without using their terminology. Consequently, an exchange among all team members becomes possible without them necessarily being proficient in agent-based modeling. A reduced presentation of workshop results exemplifies the use of novel elements for deriving an emergent agent-based simulation.
Energiesuffizienz ist neben Energieeffizienz ein zweiter Weg, den Energieverbrauch zu reduzieren. Während Energieeffizienz bei unverändertem Nutzen den Energieinput senkt, ist Energiesuffizienz eine Strategie mit dem Ziel, die Menge an technisch bereitgestellter Energie durch Veränderungen der Quantität oder Qualität des Nutzens aus Energie auf ein nachhaltiges Maß zu begrenzen oder zu reduzieren. Das kann durch Reduktion, Substitution oder Anpassung des Nutzens an den Bedarf im Alltag geschehen. Viele Haushalte praktizieren schon Energiesuffizienz, aber die Hemmnisse für eine stärkere Nutzung sind groß. Auch die Energiesuffizienz im Haushalt benötigt daher eine Flankierung durch die Politik. Im BMBF-Projekt "Energiesuffizienz" wurde daher erstmals eine integrierte Energiesuffizienzpolitik untersucht, die insbesondere den Stromverbrauch in den privaten Haushalten adressiert.
Global climate
(2017)
On 12 December, the twenty-first Conference of Parties (COP-21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted the Paris Agreement. This marked the conclusion of the long process of crafting a new international climate regime that began with the adoption of the Bali Roadmap in 2007, failed spectacularly in Copenhagen in 2009, and resumed with a new approach in Durban 2011. This article summarizes and analyzes the main contents of the Paris Agreement.
Mit dem Klimaschutz-Teilkonzept Mobilität für die Stadt Wolfsburg wurde eine neue Methode erprobt, mit der sich klimaschutzrelevante Handlungspotenziale an der Schnittstelle von Stadt- und Verkehrsplanung identifizieren lassen. Die Methode erlaubt es, bei der Abschätzung von Potenzialen zur Minderung verkehrsbedingter CO2-Emissionen stadträumliche Gegebenheiten zu erfassen und eine räumliche Differenzierung vorzunehmen. Sie stellt neben den für die Stadt- und Verkehrsplanung schon bestehenden Ansätzen die Analyse von variierenden CO2-Minderungspotenzialen innerhalb der Teilräume einer Stadt in den Vordergrund und ist eine sinnvolle Ergänzung zu den im verkehrsplanerischen Kontext oft angewandten Verkehrssimulationen.
This paper outlines the key elements of a low-carbon stabilization pathway for land transport, focusing on the potential of key policy measures at the local and national level, opportunities for synergies of sustainable development and climate change objectives, and governance and institutional issues affecting the implementation of measures. It combines several approaches to provide an integrated view on the decarbonization of the transport sector based on recent literature. It will assess the quantitative basis potential climate change mitigation pathways and will then look into policy and institutional aspects that relate to the feasibility of these pathways. This combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis to measure the potential, options, and feasibility of climate change mitigation strategies in the transport sector aims to synthesize recent papers on the subject and draw conclusions for future research.
Vision development towards a sustainable North Rhine-Westphalia 2030 in a science-practice-dialogue
(2017)
The paper presents the results of a participatory vision development process in the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) in Germany. The vision development was part of a scientific research project that accompanied the development of a sustainability strategy for NRW at state level. The Sustainability Strategy NRW was adopted in July 2016 and contains parts of the vision developed in the research project: Sentences from the narrative text vision and proposed targets and indicators that back-up the vision for a sustainable NRW in 2030 were used by the state of NRW. The vision was developed in iterative steps in three consecutive dialogue rounds with different stakeholders from science and practice. The paper presents the methodological approach and the results of the vision formulation process. The paper discusses the lessons learned from the vision development - from both practical and theoretical perspectives of transition management. The paper explores the relevance of setting ambitious targets for sustainable development as part of a state strategy by taking the proposed target of a "4 × 25% modal split" by 2030 as an example. The project demonstrated that a participatory approach for vision development is time and resource consuming, but worth the effort as it improves the quality and acceptance of a vision. Furthermore, the project demonstrated that transformative science contributes valuable inputs for sustainability transitions and for facilitating participatory vision development.
Since the majority of network concession contracts in Germany were set to expire some time between 2005 and 2016, a window of opportunity arose in which to rebuild and remunicipalise the local energy supply. As a result, 72 new local power companies were established in Germany within the space of just seven years (between early 2005 and late 2012). This paper provides an introduction to the topic of establishing municipal utilities in Germany. The findings were identified on the basis of the comprehensive screening of all newly established municipal utilities in Germany. Our analysis provides information about regional concentration, the size of municipalities, the legal forms of the newly founded municipal public utilities and the role of strategic partnerships. The key findings are that remunicipalisation is not a question of size and that knowledge gaps may be closed by entering into close strategic partnerships.