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 ...
Until the Russian war in Ukraine and its strong effects on the re-organisation of energy flows in Europe, it seemed a consensus that fossil assets will become stranded within the coming decades due to ever more stringent climate policy. Therefore, investments in such assets should be avoided as early as possible. With the newly awakened focus on energy security, the insurance aspect of redundant...
Natural gas prices in Germany saw a strong increase at the end of 2021, subsequently worsening with the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022, raising concerns about the distributional consequences. Our study shows that low-income households are affected the most by the natural gas price increase. Low-income households pay at the median 11.70 percent of their equivalent income on gas bills, ...
Designing auctions that favor low resource quality installations allows countries to geographically diversify their renewable energy production, while lowering payments to low-cost producers. In this paper, we develop a stylized model showing that a discriminatory auction design favoring low-wind-yield locations leads to a tradeoff between production costs and producer rent and that the scheme can ...
The building sector plays a major role when it comes to meeting climate targets. An analysis by DIW Berlin based on data from energy provider ista SE shows that in the past two years both the temperature-adjusted heat consumption in German multi-apartment buildings and the temperature-adjusted CO2 emissions have dropped slightly. As positive as this decrease is—despite the increase in homeworking due ...