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 ...
Green public procurement has gained high political priority and is argued to be an effective demand-side policy to trigger environmental innovations. However, the empirical evidence on its innovation impact is limited. We construct a novel firm-level dataset to investigate the effect of winning public procurement tenders with additional environmental award criteria on firms’ introduction of environmental ...
As COP26 drew to a close earlier this month, almost 200 nations agreed to “phase down” coal power in the coming years. How this is done, for coal and other fossil fuels, will have implications for individuals and communities that depend on these resources for their livelihoods. The case study conducted by DIW Berlin focuses on Germany and the efforts it has undertaken to support ...
Air pollution’s influence on cognitive productivity is a highly relevant and not fully understood economic issue. This study provides evidence of an adverse effect of exposure on the productivity of Mexican judicial workers. The empirical strategy approximates productivity with the length of the hearing and infers causality through instrumental variable panel models. Results show that nitrogen dioxides ...
With the energy sector being one of the largest sources of global greenhouse-gas emissions, a swift change in the ways of energy generation and consumption is needed for a fulfilment of climate goals. But while the existence of global warming and the resulting need for action are widely agreed upon, there is a lot of discussion around the concrete measures and their timeline. A major cause of this ...
The aim of this paper is to showcase different decarbonization pathways for Europe with varying Carbon dioxide (CO2) constraints until 2050. The Global Energy System Model (GENeSYS-MOD) framework, a linear mathematical optimization model, is used to compute low-carbon scenarios for 17 European countries or regions. The sectors power, low- and high- temperature heating, and passenger and freight transportation ...
Diese Dissertation befasst sich mit den Auswirkungen von Luftverschmutzung und Naturkatastrophen auf verschiedene Aspekte der menschlichen Umwelt. Im ersten Abschnitt konzentriere ich mich auf die Luftverschmutzung. Konkret stelle ich in Kapitel 2 fest: Die stündlichen Veränderungen der Luftverschmutzung wirken sich über zwei verschiedene Wege auf die Kriminalität aus, und zwar über physiologische ...
A rapid coal phase-out is needed to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, but is hindered by serious challenges ranging from vested interests to the risks of social disruption. To understand how to organize a global coal phase-out, it is crucial to go beyond cost-effective climate mitigation scenarios and learn from the experience of previous coal transitions. Despite the relevance of the topic, evidence ...
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 ...
This paper tests the independence property under the Coase Theorem in a large multinational cap-and-trade scheme for greenhouse gas emissions, the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS). I analyze whether emissions of power producers regulated under the EU ETS are independent from allowance allocations, leveraging a change in allocation policy for a difference-in-differences strategy. The evidence suggests ...