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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.
Mit fortschreitender Energiewende steigt der Anteil erneuerbarer Energien im Strommix. Deren Angebot variiert im Tagesverlauf, nach Wetterlage und saisonal. Um Angebot und Nachfrage zur Deckung zu bringen, benötigt es daher Speicher mit großen Kapazitäten. Von allen technologischen Optionen mit großer Speicherkapazität sind Wasser-Pumpspeicherwerke die einzige, die langjährig erprobt und wirtschaftlich ist. Diese könnten in Braunkohletagebauen, welche im Zuge der Energiewende aufgegeben werden, errichtet werden. Unsere Überschlagsrechnung am Beispiel eines Pumpspeicherwerks in den heutigen Tagebauen Hambach, Garzweiler und Inden zeigt, dass diese mit bis zu 400 GWh ein signifikantes technisches Speicherpotenzial haben. Dies entspricht etwa der kontinuierlichen Maximalleistung eines Kernkraftwerks über zwei Wochen. Im Kontext der Diskussion um den Braunkohleausstieg skizziert das Papier ein netzdienliches Nachnutzungskonzept für Braunkohletagebaue, das zumindest für einen Teil der heute in der Kohleförderung und -Verstromung Beschäftigten mögliche Zukunftsperspektiven bietet.
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.
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.
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.