Topic Climate Policy

Shared Pooled Mobility: Expert Review from Nine Disciplines and Implications for an Emerging Transdisciplinary Research Agenda

Shared pooled mobility has been hailed as a sustainable mobility solution that uses digital innovation to efficiently bundle rides. Multiple disciplines have started investigating and analyzing shared pooled mobility systems. However, there is a lack of cross-community communication making it hard to build upon knowledge from other fields or know which open questions may be of interest to other fields. ...

Questioning Nuclear Scale-up Propositions: Availability and Economic Prospects of Light Water, Small Modular and Advanced Reactor Technologies

This paper addresses the pressing need for rapid decarbonization of energy systems by examining the role of nuclear power in future energy scenarios collected in the IPCC database. Despite their explorative character, energy scenarios can influence decision-makers or might be used to promote certain technology developments. They are increasingly subject to the integration into real-world settings and ...

Avoid, Shift or Improve Passenger Transport? Impacts on the Energy System

Electricity Markets Stabilized Following the Energy Crisis; 80 Percent Renewable Energy and Coal Phase-out by 2030 Are Possible

The German electricity market has recovered well from the 2022 energy crisis. Policymakers should now redirect the focus of energy policy to further expanding renewable energy sources. The year 2023 showed that the German electricity supply remained secure following the shutdown of nuclear power plants. It is possible, affordable, and plausible in light of climate policy to cover 80 percent of electricity ...

Explaining the Absence of Climate Change Integration in Low-Carbon Sectoral Policies: An Analysis of Brazil’s Maritime Cabotage Policy

Although maritime cabotage emits comparatively less CO2 per tonne kilometre than other means of transportation, the potential contribution of Brazil’s cabotage policy toward tackling climate change remained largely unexplored throughout its legislative process. Hence, to gather insights into how climate change can be integrated into sectoral policies, we apply Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) ...

Bridges over Troubled Waters: Climate Clubs, Alliances, and Partnerships as Safeguards for Effective International Cooperation?

Driven by the motivation to raise the ambition level of climate action and to foster the transformation of economies, current climate policy discourse revolves around ways to improve cooperation between industrialized countries and emerging economies. We identify three broad types of initiatives—multilateral-cross sectoral, multilateral, sector specific, and climate and development partnerships—and ...

Certification against Greenwashing in Nascent Bond Markets: Lessons from African ESG Bonds

Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents to climate change. Climate and sustainability-linked bonds can provide funding to African governments and corporations for projects that help to mitigate climate change, combat biodiversity loss, and foster sustainable development. However, less than 0.3% of the global environmental, social, governance (ESG) bond issuance volume is devoted to projects ...

Exploring the Interdependence of Climate, Finance, Energy, and Geopolitics: A Conceptual Framework for Systemic Risks Amidst Multiple Crises

Navigating the transition toward a zero-emission and just future amidst multiple crises requires a nuanced understanding of potential hindrances to investments and energy transitions. As current approaches hardly consider the big picture of interacting crises, this study offers a framework to analyze the dynamics and risk channels between 1) the climate crisis, 2) financial (in)stability, 3) the geopolitical ...

Heat Transition: Municipalities Need Federal Support in Decommissioning Natural Gas Networks

Large parts of the existing natural gas distribution networks must be decommissioned due to the decarbonization of the heat supply. However, there are neither regulatory nor economic incentives for the gas network operators to do so and delaying the decommissioning could be expensive for the remaining customers. This Weekly Report analyzes to what extent municipalities can partially decommission the ...

The Energy Transition in France: Expansion of Renewables Stalling, Good Progress on Heat Pumps

The energy transition is a major challenge for both Germany and France. This Weekly Report provides an overview of the short- and long-term goals as well as current developments and trends in France’s energy and climate policy. It reveals that France is largely on track with its greenhouse gases targets and is also making good progress on installing heat pumps. However, its expansion of renewable energy ...