Zukünftige Energie- und Industriesysteme
The paper reviews the current knowledge on the use of biomass for non-food purposes, critically discusses its environmental sustainability implications, and describes the needs for further research, thus enabling a more balanced policy approach. The life-cylce wide impacts of the use of biomass for energy and material purposes derived from either direct crop harvest or residuals indicate that biomass based substitutes have a different, not always superior environmental performance than comparable fossil based products. Cascading use, i.e. when biomass is used for material products first and the energy content is recovered from the end-of-life products, tends to provide a higher environmental benefit than primary use as fuel. Due to limited global land resources, non-food biomass may only substitute for a certain share of non-renewables. If the demand for non-food biomass, especially fuel crops and its derivates, continues to grow this will inevitably lead to an expansion of global arable land at the expense of natural ecosystems such as savannas and tropical rain forests. Whereas the current aspirations and incentives to increase the use of non-food biomass are intended to counteract climate change and environmental degradation, they are thus bound to a high risk of problem shifting and may even lead to a global deterioration of the environment. Although the "balanced approach" of the European Union's biomass strategy may be deemed a good principle, the concrete targets and implementation measures in the Union and countries like Germany should be revisited. Likewise, countries like Brazil and Indonesia may revisit their strategies to use their natural resources for export or domestic purposes. Further research is needed to optimize the use of biomass within and between regions.
Inducing the international diffusion of carbon capture and storage technologies in the power sector
(2007)
Although CO2 capture and storage(CCS) technologies are heatedly debated, many politicians and energy producers consider them to be a possible technical option to mitigate carbon dioxide from large-point sources. Hence, both national and international decision-makers devote a growing amount of capacities and financial resources to CCS in order to develop and demonstrate the technology and enable ist broad diffusion.The presented report concentrates on the influence of policy incentives on CCS diffusion and examines the following research question: Which policy strategy is needed to stimulate the international diffusion of carbon capture and storage technologies in the power sector? Based on the analysis of innovation-specific (e.g. CCS competitiveness and compatibility), market-related (e.g. national CO2 discharges and storage capacities) and institutional determinants (e.g. existing national and international policy frameworks) of CCS diffusion, the paper discusses the suitability of various national and international policy instruments to induce the international deployment of CCS. Afterwards, three CCS diffusion paths are derived from fundamentally different carbon stabilisation scenarios which include climate policy measures to stimulate the adoption of CO2 mitigation technologies.
Norway's abundance of resources is the establishing factor in explaining how the North European state ranks among the countries worldwide with the highest standard of living. Indeed, fossil fuels are finite and after their depletion the Norwegian social welfare state should endure. Therefore, a sovereign wealth fund has been founded in the kingdom in 1990, in which the surpluses from the oil and gas industry sales have been invested from that time on. This method should secure the state's ability to act in the post-petroleum era.
At the end of the 1990's the voice of Norwegian society insisted that the sovereign wealth fund should not only be for intergenerational justice, but should also contribute to the implementation of worth and norms of the present country. In the end of 2004 the Parliament (Storting), on the basis of the Graver Report, finally agreed upon ethic regulations for the investment of the sovereign wealth fund. With capital of over 280 billion Euros (figures from 2007), the second largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, they should now only have businesses in their portfolio which adhere to those ethical regulations. In the present paper, the emergence and outcomes of the development of a "Third Way" between maximising profit and sustainability will be illustrated.
The ethical regulations have different dimensions (e.g. no contribution to human rights violations, child labour, serious environmental damages, etc.) to which the present text concentrates on posing the question to what extent sovereign wealth funds could be a new instrument of climate protection policy. For this purpose, the contribution of both main instruments of ethical regulations, "Active Ownership" and the exclusion of businesses, were analysed as well as the actors which have been created for their implementation. The repercussions reach from dialogs with businesses in the USA to stop lobby activities against Congress-planned climate protection laws, such as an emissions trading system, to adjusting to the exclusion of individual firms from the portfolio of welfare states, due to a breach of ethics.
The drawbacks and constraints of a takeover of the Norwegian regulations by other financial actors and its first diffusion effects will be analysed. Finally, this article will deal with the running evaluations of the ethical regulations and Norwegian current and future domestic climate policies.
How much is 100 billion US dollars? : Climate finance between adequacy and creative accounting
(2011)
The need for an "Energy Roadmap 2050" triggered a multitude of studies that were conducted between 2009 and 2011, which again contained a multitude of decarbonisation scenarios, which achieve the EU's long-term emission mitigation target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% until 2050 (relative to 1990 emissions). The variety of important analysis is difficult to compare and utilize for specific and timely policy decisions. Thus the Smart Energy for Europe Platform (SEFEP) has commissioned a comparative study of relevant energy scenario studies for Europe. The findings of this comparative study are summarized here briefly.
The Sino-German project "Low Carbon Future Cities" (LCFC) aims to develop a low carbon strategy for its Chinese pilot city Wuxi. The strategy primarily focuses on carbon mitigation, but also considers links with the issues of resource efficiency and adaption to climate change. This report written by Daniel Vallentin, Carmen Dienst and Chun Xia offers strategic examples of good practice and makes recommendations to Wuxi city government about the changes that key sectors can adopt in order to comply with its low carbon targets. The recommendations are based on scientific analyses which were undertaken earlier in the LCFC project.
The brochure summarises the project's objectives and methodological approach, its key findings as well as conclusions. Both case studies have shown that technological solutions for low carbon development should be embedded in a well-developed institutional framework to foster their deployment and implementation. Therefore, recommendations for Wuxi include examples of innovative and integrated technical projects for increasing energy and resource efficiency, combining them with recommendations for the development of institutional frameworks. One element of such a framework could be a local energy agency in Wuxi, which would offer support and expertise to potential investors in low carbon technologies. Also for the German pilot region, the brochure offers concrete recommendations how to facilitate low carbon planning within the region.
The EU has set itself ambitious targets with regards to a significant reduction of its greenhouse gas emissions and has presented roadmaps depicting an overall decarbonisation of its economy by the middle of the century. In this context European policymakers and stakeholders are currently discussing the targets and the level of ambition of the 2030 climate and energy policy framework. The Commission is expected to present its own vision for the further development of the energy and climate policy framework in its White Paper "For a 2030 climate and energy policy framework". At this decisive point in the political debate the Wuppertal Institute presents a brief working paper that analyses some of the analytical work - particularly the underlying energy and GHG emission scenarios - behind the Commission's proposals to be presented in the forthcoming White Paper.
In early September 2014, about 4.000 scientists, activists and artists at the 4th International Conference on Degrowth sent out two messages.
1. Industrialized societies will change, either by disaster or by design. Accelerated resource exploitation and climate change can force societies into a transition. Or they swiftly develop new forms of economic, political and social organization which respect the planetary boundaries.
2. "Degrowth" has become a new social movement which translates scientific insights into cultural change, political change and social practice. Hence, the conference itself was an experiment on the potentials and limits of share economy, commoning and sufficiency.
A team of young scholars and activists from different German research institutes and non-govern- mental organisations prepared the conference. The team of the Wuppertal Institute was partly involved in the preperation of the conference. Scientists from all research groups took part in the conference, presenting and discussing project results.
The publication is a collection of contributions of the Wuppertal Institute to the conference and covers pivotal issues of the degrowth-debate: indicator development (Freyling & Schepelmann), working time reduction (Buhl), feminist theory (Biesecker & Winterfeld), and urban transition (Best).
Carbon markets in a <2 °C world : will there be room for international carbon trading in 2050?
(2016)
This JIKO Policy Paper analyses a series of very ambitious mitigation scenarios and complements this analysis with a review of several sectoral technology roadmaps. The results are quite clear: there is no reason to believe that international carbon trading will become obsolete any time soon. Whether or not international carbon trading is to play a role in international climate protection efforts is in the end not a physical or economic question, but a political one.
Will climate change stay below the 2 degree target in the 21st century on the basis of the COP 21 results? Looking into challenges and opportunities, this paper answers: To stay below the global 2dt is neither a real choice for the world society nor for businesses and civil societies in specific countries. It is a global guideline, scientifically developed for global negotiations, which should be broken down to national interests and actors. Key questions concerning the energy sector from the perspective of national interests are how to create and sustain a momentum for the inevitable energy transition, how to encourage disruptive innovations, avoid lock in effects, enable rapid deployment of energy efficiency and renewable energies etc. Or in other words: how to get to a competitive, economically benign, inclusive, low carbon and risk minimising energy system. With this background the paper argues that "burden sharing" is a misleading perception of strong climate mitigation strategies. It is more realistic to talk about "benefit sharing", using the monetary benefits and co-benefits of climate mitigation (e.g. energy cost savings, revenues from CO2-tax or emission trading systems) to help vulnerable national and international actors to adapt to the unavoidable climate risks. It has to be demonstrated on country level that the technologies and policy mix of strong climate mitigation and risk-minimising actions are indeed "benefit sharing" strategies which should be chosen anyhow, even if there was no climate change. For China and Germany this paper includes basic findings supporting this view.
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.
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.