The energy and climate crisis enhance the need for energy savings. In the building sector, these savings can be achieved primarily through thermal retrofitting. So far, progress in this area has been slow. To date, less than one percent of the residential building stock in Germany is retrofitted each year. The existing support programs alone offer too little reliability for the necessary...
The influential Indian Parliamentarian Mr. Jayant Sinha envisages a global climate alliance building on the concept of the European Union and its Green Deal – a community attractive to its members because it addresses the diverse needs and ensures that joint action benefits all. To ensure the inclusive nature and broaden the political ownership of such an initiative, Mr. Sinha launched a report on...
Energy system models are used for policy decisions and technology designs. If not carefully used, models give implausible outputs and mislead decision-making. One implausible effect is “unintended storage cycling”, which is observable as simultaneous storage charging and discharging. Methods to remove such misleading effects exist, but are computationally inefficient and sometimes ineffective. Through ...
We fit CES and VES production functions to data from a numerical bottom-up optimization model of electricity supply with clean and dirty inputs. This approach allows for studying high shares of clean energy not observable today and for isolating mechanisms that impact the elasticity of substitution between clean and dirty energy. Central results show that (i) dirty inputs are not essential for production. ...
The EU Taxonomy is the first standardised and comprehensive classification system for sustainable economic activities. It covers activities responsible for up to 80% of EU greenhouse gas emissions and may play an important role in channelling investments into low-carbon technologies by helping investors to make informed decisions. However, especially in transition sectors much depends on the stringency ...
The energy and climate crisis enhance the need for energy savings. In the building sector, these savings can be achieved primarily through thermal retrofitting. So far, progress in this area has been slow. To date, less than one percent of the residential building stock in Germany is retrofitted each year. The existing support programs alone offer too little reliability for the necessary investments ...
To reach climate neutrality, carbon emissions from the production of basic materials need to be curtailed. When governments encourage this transition by adopting support measures, the measures must comply with the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures. This article analyzes three selected support schemes under the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures: (i) free allocation ...
We evaluate German purchase subsidies for battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) using data on new vehicle registrations in Germany during 2015-2022. We account for confounding time trends and interacting EU-level CO2 standards using neighboring countries as a control group. The program was cost-ineffective, as only 40% of BEV and 25% of PHEV registrations were ...