Thema Umweltmärkte

Collective Action: New Guiding Principles for International Climate Finance

To limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, it is necessary for industrialized countries to support developing countries financially. The channels and mechanisms under which this support would be provided are known as International Climate Finance. Building upon expert interviews with a focus on the industrial sector, this report analyses the different areas of International Climate Finance and ...

Optimal Discounts in Green Public Procurement

We consider a Green Public Procurement setting where the procurer provides a bid discount to environment-friendly technologies to foster their use. We assume that, before the auction, firms may switch to green technology via a publicly observable costly investment. We show that investment acts as a signaling device. This mitigates the effect of incomplete information on firms’ costs, thereby triggering ...

An Effective Federal Climate Change Act Needs Leading Indicators

To reach the climate targets, the course towards a climate-neutral society must be set now. However, the current monitoring instruments in the Climate Change Act do not provide sufficient information to policymakers and society on the effectiveness of policy instruments and programs, as they focus exclusively on greenhouse gas reduction targets, which are subject to uncertainty. Moreover, they only ...

Study on the Possibility to Set Up a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism on Selected Sectors: Final Report

Klimaneutralität braucht koordinierte Maßnahmen zur Stärkung von hochwertigem Recycling

Deutschland will bis 2045, Europa bis 2050 klimaneutral werden. Um dieser Herausforderung begegnen zu können, ist es erforderlich, sich stärker in Richtung einer Kreislaufwirtschaft zu orientieren: Abfallvermeidung, Wiederverwendung und Recycling helfen dabei, primäre Ressourcen und die Emissionen bei der Produktion von Grundstoffen wie Stahl, Zement und Kunststoff einzusparen. Ohne dies, allein durch ...

Hochwertiges Recycling hat hohes Einsparpotenzial an Treibhausgasen: Interview

Climate Neutrality Requires Coordinated Measures for High Quality Recycling

For Europe to reach climate neutrality by mid-century, it needs to move toward a circular economy. Waste avoidance, reuse, and recycling save primary resources and avoid emissions in the production of basic materials like steel, cement, and plastics. Without exploring circular economy potentials, switching production to climate-neutral processes alone would result in significant costs and tremendous ...

To Ban or Not to Ban Carbon-Intensive Materials: A Legal and Administrative Assessment of Product Carbon Requirements

By setting near-zero-emission requirements for the production of certain products to be sold on the European single market (product carbon requirements, PCRs), the European Union could accelerate the phase-out of carbon-intensive production processes.The announcement of such requirements would send a signal to producers,financing institutions and other relevant stakeholders, thus incentivizing them ...

A Green COVID-19 Recovery of the EU Basic Materials Sector: Identifying Potentials, Barriers and Policy Solutions

This paper explores climate-friendly projects that could be part of the COVID-19 recovery while jump-starting the transition of the European basic materials industry. Findings from a literature review on technology options in advanced development stages for climate-friendly production, enhanced sorting, and recycling of steel, cement, aluminium, and plastics, are combined with insights from interviews ...

Climate Neutral Production, Free Allocation of Allowances under Emissions Trading Systems, and the WTO: How to Secure Compatibility with the ASCM

To reach climate neutrality, carbon emissions from the production of basic materials need to be significantly reduced. For governments’ support measures to be consistent with their World Trade Organization obligations, they need to be compatible with the WTO’s Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (ASCM). This paper analyzes the ASCM consistency of three selected support schemes, namely: ...