Achieving the objectives of the German governments 2010 Energy Concept and the accelerated phase-out of nuclear energy will require significant investment in restructuring energy supply. In particular, this includes investment in installations for the use of renewable energy sources in the power and heating sector, as well as in the infrastructure, such as power grids. In addition, substantial investment ...
Environmental employment is an issue with high interest to the public and to policy makers. Yet, the debate is blurred by a great number of distinct definitions and hence estimates of environmental employment. Therefore it is essential to carefully document delimitations and methods used in any attempt to quantify environmental employment. This paper presents a method for estimating gross environmental ...
One of the central debates surrounding the design of the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme is the approach to address carbon leakage concerns. Correctly identifying the economic activities exposed to the risk of carbon leakage represents the first step in mitigating the risk effectively. This paper assesses the robustness of the quantitative assessment criteria used by the European Commission ...
The “Inclusion of Consumption in EU ETS” is currently gaining traction as a new approach to address carbon leakage and improve the effectiveness of the EU ETS, within legal and political constraints. It complements the current approach of coverage of emissions by upstream installations where trade exposed sectors at risk of leakage, such as steel and clinker, receive free allowances. In order to ensure ...
This study comprehensively assesses the immediate effects of extreme weather conditions and high concentrations of ambient air pollution on population health. For Germany and the years 1999 to 2008, we link the universe of all 170 million hospital admissions, along with all 8 million deaths, with weather and pollution data reported at the day-county level. Extreme heat significantly increases hospitalizations ...
The German decision to finally phase-out nuclear electricity has led to a debate on its effects on electricity prices, emission prices in the European emission trading system, as well as on international electricity trade. We investigate these effects with a Electricity market model for Europe with investments in power plants under oligopolistic conditions in Germany. We find modest price increases ...
Germany’s energy transformation that aims to transform the current energy mix towards an energy portfolio with higher renewable energy share has an effect on power plants, the transmission grid, and the power storage. This requires a new approach for the assessment of the electricity market design through techno-economic modeling as a basis for policy and management decisions. The project...
Governments willing to commit themselves to maintain carbon prices at or above a certain level face the challenge that their commitments need to be credible both for investors in low-carbon technology and for foreign governments. This article argues that governments can make such commitments by issuing long-term put option contracts on the price of CO2 allowances. This mechanism gives investors the ...