Topic Climate Policy

Realizing the Value of Recycling – Assessing the Elements of a Policy Package

We investigate policies for increasing recycling to facilitate decarbonization within the basic material sector, including market-based policies, such as carbon pricing, advanced disposal fee and minimum recycled content requirement, and non-market policies, such as product design standard. We develop an analytical model to assess the role of these policy instruments for recycling related choices of ...

Measuring Total Carbon Pricing

While countries increasingly commit to pricing greenhouse gases directly through carbon taxes or emissions trading systems, indirect forms of carbon pricing-such as fuel excise taxes and fuel subsidy reforms-remain important factors affecting the mitigation incentives in an economy. Taken together, how can policy makers think about the overall price signal for carbon emissions and the incentive it ...

Five Essays in Energy Economics: Numerical and Empirical Perspectives on the Decarbonization of the Energy Sector

Diese Dissertation behandelt die Herausforderungen der Dekarbonisierung im Energiesektor aus verschiedenen Perspektiven mit unterschiedlichen Methoden. Kapitel 1 liefert Hintergrund und Motivation. Kapitel 2 analysiert die Beziehung zwischen geografischer und zeitlicher Flexibilität im Strommarkt in einem Szenario mit 100% erneuerbaren Energien in zwölf mitteleuropäischen Ländern. Unter Anwendung eines ...

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. ...

Thermal Retrofitting of Worst Performing Buildings Mitigates Risk of High Heating Costs

The pace of thermal retrofit of buildings in Germany remains slow. A Worst-First approach, prioritizing the retrofit of inefficient buildings, would address energy- and social policy objectives and deliver economic and climate benefits. Data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) show how such an approach would protect especially low-income households often living in very inefficient buildings ...

Ampel-Monitor Energiewende: ambitionierte Ziele, aber zu geringe Dynamik

The German “traffic light” (Ampel) coalition has set ambitious new energy transition targets. Using an open data tool developed at DIW Berlin, we discuss the progress and challenges of selected indicators. Since the government took over, photovoltaic capacity increased by 45 % to 87 GW by April 2024, with a planned doubling by 2030. However, onshore wind power grew by only 11 % to 62 GW. The installation ...

Energy Transition Metals: Bottleneck for Net-Zero Emissions?

The energy transition requires substantial amounts of metals, including copper, nickel, cobalt, and lithium. Are these metals a bottleneck? We identify metal-specific demand shocks, estimate supply elasticities, and study the price impact of the transition in a structural scenario analysis. Prices of these four metals would reach previous historical peaks but for an unprecedented, sustained period ...

Mixed mid-term review for German traffic light coali-tion in the energy transition; significant effort needed to achieve targets

December 13, 2023 – The German traffic light coalition began its term two years ago with ambitious energy policy goals. Halfway through the legislative period, its track record is mixed. Good progress has been made in some areas, but in others a large gap between targets and the status quo remains. The Ampel-Monitor Energiewende by the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) shows...

Videorückblick: Scientific Podcasts for Sustainability Transformations: Berlin Science Week

Heterogeneous Sourcing, CO2 Emissions and Trade

International trade separates the location where emissions occur (production) and where they are ultimately consumed. Thus, a substantial share of emissions is embodied in international trade. Moreover, firms within narrowly defined industries differ in their emission intensity. However, most firm-level studies only consider the direct emissions released during the production process. In this...