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Neue Berechnungen des Bundesumweltministeriums zeigen, dass Deutschland wahrscheinlich die angestrebten Klimaziele für das Jahr 2020 deutlich verfehlen wird. Wie sollte die Klimapolitik neugestaltet werden, und welche Anreizsysteme sind für eine effektive und ökonomisch sinnvolle Klimapolitik notwendig? Ergänzend zu den Beiträgen im ifo Schnelldienst 1/2018 legen Andreas Löschel und Oliver Kaltenegger, Universität Münster, dar, dass die Entwicklungen der letzten Jahre die Schwächen des gegenwärtigen klimapolitischen Instrumentenmixes deutlich aufgezeigt haben. Die deutsche Klimapolitik liefere nicht, es bedürfe vielmehr einer zügigen und entschlossenen Neuausrichtung der Klimapolitik. Ein ökonomisch sinnvoller Ansatz zur Erreichung der Ziele des Energiekonzepts bestehe in einer möglichst umfassenden und einheitlichen CO2-Bepreisung als Leitinstrument und komplementären Instrumenten zur Adressierung zusätzlicher Marktunvollkommenheiten. Die Einführung des Leitinstruments sollte sich an folgenden Ausgestaltungsprinzipien orientieren: langfristige Orientierung, Aufkommensneutralität, Wettbewerbs- und Innovationsfähigkeit, internationale Koordination und soziale Gerechtigkeit.

We analyze the drivers and barriers that influence investments increasing the energy efficiency of firms' production processes or buildings in the German manufacturing sector based on microdata. In particular, we shed light on the relationship between financial barriers (e. g. credit constraints), information and knowledge (e. g. energy management practices), salience of energy-related topics, and the investments in energy saving technologies. A better understanding of firms' investment behavior regarding energy saving technologies is crucial to design efficient policy measures, which are necessary to achieve the imposed ambitious climate and energy policy targets. We use data from 701 structured telephone interviews in combination with commercial and confidential firm-level data. Our results suggest that energy management practices have a statistically significant positive relationship with investment decisions on energy saving technologies for production processes and buildings. Credit constraints are a barrier to investments in the energy efficiency of firms' production processes. Furthermore, high energy cost shares of heating or cooling, high energy intensity, energy self-generation and structured internal decision making processes influence the investments in energy efficiency positively.

This paper analyzes the way the content of the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management (JEEM) has developed over the last 40 years. We have classified the articles in the journal into five dimensions: content, methods, environmental media (pollutants and resources), cross-cutting issues and the regional dimension of studies. Up to about 10 years ago, non-market valuation and cost-benefit analysis, natural resource economics and environmental policy instruments were the subjects regularly representing the lion's share of the articles published in the journal. Thereafter we register a significant shift towards a more diversified array of research areas, with climate change and energy issues finding their way into the journal. In addition, increasing methodological plurality becomes apparent, reflected in a significant shift away from economic theory and towards empirical approaches. We also analyze key distinctions between the major environmental economics journals. To this end, we compare the 100 most frequently cited articles in JEEM, Ecological Economics, Land Economics, Environmental & Resource Economics, and the American Journal of Agricultural Economics. Here we find that non-market valuation studies play an important role in all the journals considered. Econometric studies are also widely represented in all of them, with theoretical models particularly strong in JEEM. Finally, we use citations as a criterion for analyzing JEEM's external influence on leading general economics (A+) journals. A regression analysis shows that a focus on market-based environmental policies and policy comparisons plus the use of econometric and statistical methods or experimental approaches correlates positively with an A+ citation. If we leave self-citations out of account, A+ citations are also positively correlated with a focus on air pollution and negatively correlated with a focus on water pollution and other pollutants.

From a current perspective the Paris Agreement is not sufficient to limit the global mean temperature below 2êC above pre-industrial level as intended. The Agreement stipulates that parties review, compare and ratchet up efforts to combat climate change over time. Within this process, commitments heavily depend on what has been already achieved and this status-quo reflects an important reference point serving either as commitment advice or potential threat. We present an experimental study that is specifically designed to incorporate the effect of a status-quo via pre-existing contribution levels under endowment heterogeneity in a game in which participants make voluntary contributions to a public good. Our participants are sampled from the United Nations Youth Associations Network, representing participants from 51 countries. Members from developed and developing countries take decisions against the background of different initial levels of endowments and pre-existing contributions. Our analysis indicates that starting with ambitious pre-existing contribution levels can foster aggregate mitigation levels. Falling behind this status-quo contribution levels by reducing the public good appears to be a strong behavioral barrier. These observations might provide support for the basic structure of the Paris Agreement with Nationally Determined Contributions and the possibility to adjust them, even if a downward revision of national targets may not be precluded.

We investigate consumer inattention and imperfect information regarding the financial benefits of energy-efficient lighting using a randomized controlled trial with 1,084 observations. Results suggest that subjects generally know about cost savings of LED bulbs - the central lighting technology of the future - but largely underestimate the magnitude of these savings. As a result, stated willingness-to-pay for an LED bulb increases on average by 2.53€ through the provision of information on expected lifetime costs. Consumers also confound technology attributes of energy-efficient alternatives, which further explains low adoption rates of the LED technology.

The ongoing transformation of the world's energy systems requires an international monitoring to evaluate the transformation processes and to identify transferable leading practice policies. For this purpose, an independent scientific expert commission should be established for the G20. By actively involving political decision-makers in the discussion of the final results a broad basis of support can be ensured.

Increasing energy efficiency is one of the main goals in current German energy and climate policies. We study the determinants of energy efficiency in the German manufacturing sector based on official firm-level production census data. By means of a stochastic frontier analysis, we estimate the cost-minimizing energy demand function at the two-digit industry level using firm-level heterogeneity. Apart from the identification of the determinants of the energy demand function, we also analyze potential drivers of energy efficiency. Our results suggest that there is still potential to increase energy efficiency in most industries of the German manufacturing sector. Furthermore, we find that in most industries exporting and innovating firms as well as those investing in environmental protection measures are more energy efficient than their counterparts. In contrast, firms which are regulated by the European Union Emissions Trading System are mostly less energy efficient than non-regulated firms.

Das Problem der Unterbrechungen der Stromversorgung nach §19 StromGVV hat in den vergangenen Jahren erhebliche öffentliche Aufmerksamkeit erfahren und Rufe nach Maßnahmen zur Minderung von Stromsperren wurden laut. Bisher liegen keine systematischen Untersuchungen zum Problem der Stromsperren vor. Ziel dieses Gutachtens ist es, eine Einschätzung vorzunehmen, welche Ursachen Stromsperren haben. Darauf aufbauen werden Handlungsoptionen herausgearbeitet, welche zu einer Minderung von Stromsperren beitragen können. Alle verfügbaren Informationen weisen darauf hin, dass Stromsperren aus einem Komplex „multipler Problemlagen“ heraus entstehen. Charakteristisch ist dabei ein geringes Einkommen der betroffenen Haushalte. Dazu treten aber weitere Probleme im Haushalt, welche in Verbindung mit geringen finanziellen Ressourcen zu Stromsperren führen können.

Affordable energy is one of the objectives of EU's energy policy. This goal has been challenged by many factors inuencing energy prices and costs such as developments in global energy markets, the EU ETS and the promotion of renewables. Analysing energy costs (prices times quantity) instead of prices has the advantage of taking into account quantity adjustments. However, it does not allow for monitoring the burden which energy costs pose on firms. For this purpose, both the European Commission and the Energy Expert Commission of the German Government recommend using real unit energy costs, defined as energy costs as fraction of value added. We develop an input-output based (real unit) energy cost accounting framework and study the trends in Germany and the EU between 1995 and 2011. We find that many of the unveiled developments are not adequately represented in the political debate, especially with regard to indirect costs (via energy embodied in intermediate inputs), which are more diffcult to assess. Indirect energy costs are on the rise, are larger than direct costs in many industries, are increasingly imported and amplify the asymmetric impacts of legal exceptions available to energy-intensive industries.

We investigate the effect of the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) on the economic performance of manufacturing firms in Germany. Our difference-in-differences framework relies on several parametric conditioning strategies and nearest neighbor matching. As a measure of economic performance, we use the firm specific distance to the stochastic production frontier recovered from official German production census data. None of our identification strategies provide evidence for a statistically significant negative effect of emissions trading on economic performance. On the contrary, the results of the nearest neighbor matching suggest that the EU ETS rather had a positive impact on the economic performance of the regulated firms, especially during the first compliance period. A subsample analysis confirms that EU ETS increased the efficiency of treated firms in at least some two-digit industries.

Zusammenfassung Die Kosten der Energiewende sind schwierig zu ermitteln, da hierzu der Status-quo mit kontrafaktischen Szenarien verglichen werden muss. Im Beitrag wird deshalb auf die Energiekostenbelastung fokussiert. Bei der Betrachtung der aggregierten Elektrizitätsausgaben zeigt sich, dass die Belastungen durch die Energiewende bisher durchaus tragbar erscheinen. Daneben ist auch eine vertiefte Betrachtung der Verteilungswirkungen der Energiewende notwendig. Hierzu werden die Energiestückkosten – die aggregierten Kosten des Energieeinsatzes im Verhältnis zur Bruttowertschöpfung – als Indikator für die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit bzw. für die Belastung von Unternehmen genutzt. Dabei wird deutlich, dass im internationalen Vergleich die Belastungen im Verarbeitenden Gewerbe in der aggregierten Betrachtung (wenn auch nicht für einzelne Teilbereiche) wie auch die Energiekosten für Haushalte noch moderat sind. Allerdings fordert die Umsetzung der Energiewende ein höheres Opfer von einkommensschwächeren Haushalten. Die Kosten werden in Zukunft weiter stark ansteigen. Daraus resultierende Verteilungskonflikte können durch eine Dämpfung des Kostenanstiegs maßgeblich entschärft werden. Eine effiziente Umsetzung der Energiewende ist notwendiger denn je. Abstract The costs of the Energy Transformation are difficult to assess. It requires the comparison of the status quo with contra-factual scenarios. Rather it is proposed to look at the aggregate expenses for energy. In this perspective the cost situation is still under control. But it is also important to look at the distributional consequences of the Energy Transformation. Energy prices for households and industry are not good indicators. Energy per unit costs – the aggregated energy costs per unit of value added – are a better indicator of international competitiveness. It becomes clear that energy per unit costs are on aggregate still relatively low in the German manufacturing sector – although that is not true for some individual sectors. The costs are also relatively moderate for households. Yet, the Energy Transformation puts a larger burden on low income households. The costs are very likely to increase much further in the future. Distributional conflicts are reduced if these cost increases are dampened. An efficient implementation of the Energy Transformation is more important than ever., Jahrbuch für Christliche Sozialwissenschaften, Vol 56 (2015): Ethische Herausforderungen der Energiewende

Basically, measures aimed at guaranteeing security of supply must address the possible causes of capacity shortages as broadly as possible. When designing such measures, besides security of supply, additional objectives such as cost-effectiveness and the environmental and social acceptability of electricity supply should also be taken into account. Capacity payments only partially meet these requirements. Moreover, once introduced they are difficult to adapt, or revise even, to suit changing framework conditions. This is particularly problematic in view of the current lack of clear evidence for future security of supply problems. Therefore introducing capacity payments at this point in time would not appear to be constructive. It would make more sense to introduce instead a mix of measures which would strengthen the electricity market, create conditions for feeding in electricity from renewable energy sources as and when required, and set incentives for the expansion of grid capacity, storage systems and demand side management. Should security of supply still appear uncertain under these changed framework conditions, the introduction of a strategic reserve, which would be held by the regulatory authority or the transmission system operator, is recommended – not, however, the creation of an entirely new, additional market segment in the form of a capacity market.

This paper reviews the literature on distributional effects of energy and carbon taxation with focus on microsimulation models. Most studies find that direct energy and carbon taxation tends to be regressive. Regressive effects occur mostly with respect to taxation of electricity or space heating. Taxation of transportation fuels show less regressive, neutral, or even progressive effects. Adequate revenue recycling often allows for neutralisation or full elimination of regressive effects so that energy and carbon tax reforms can be progressive. Some studies find evidence for the existence of a double dividend. There seems to be an efficiency-equity trade-off in revenue recycling, i.e. whether to foster growth or to assist low-income households. While a large number of studies on advanced economies are available, there clearly is a gap with regard to evidence for developing countries. Another gap relates to the lack of documentation on the challenges of incorporating macroeconomic models and long-term modelling perspectives in microsimulation. Both aspects can be of great importance with respect to the design of green growth policies. Thoughtful incorporation of social considerations, including aspects of poverty in modelling approaches could enhance the existing instruments of exante policy assessments since poverty is a tangible concept which is well-known, understandable, and openly observable for citizens and policy makers.

The residential building sector is a major driver of current and future energy consumption and associated emissions, which can be potentially mitigated through significant energy-efficiency (EE) improvements in both emerging and developed countries. Yet, there are several persistent barriers that hinder the attainment of EE improvements in this area. Using data from a 2008 national representative survey of Spanish households, this paper is interested in the determinants of EE-related decisions. In particular, a discrete-choice model empirically analyzes whether pro-environmental households are more likely to invest in EE and to adopt daily energy-saving habits. We show that households with eco-friendly behaviors are more likely to investment in well-differentiated EE measures as well as to steer daily habits towards energy savings. However, no effects are found for households with environmental attitudes based on stated willingness to pay to protect the environment. In addition to this, households belonging to higher income groups and education levels are more likely to invest in EE but not to adopt energy-saving habits; while households with older members are less likely to invest in EE and show fewer eco-friendly habits.

The European Union has implemented demand push and technology pull policies to foster innovation on the energy and resource efficiency of capital goods. The state of the art of general equilibrium modelling applied to environmental policy rarely treats product and process innovation separately and product quality is, in the best case, exogenous. We develop a dynamic multi-sector CGE model that distinguishes between R&D-based process innovation for all firms, endogenous product innovation in the capital good sector and adoption decisions with respect to the installation of new capital vintages in the rest of the economy. Our results support the previous literature in finding that aggregate innovation declines following an energy tax but whereas process innovation is reduced, product innovation actually rises. We find that demand pull policies are less effective than product-related R&D subsidies to reduce aggregate energy intensity.

In the last two decades, large scale CGE models used for environmental policy assessment underwent an important upgrade to integrate endogenous technological progress. Nevertheless, several complexities of innovation are still neglected even if they are of primary interest for policymakers. This paper provides a review of the current state of the art in the CGE modelling literature through a special lens. We discuss how existing models deal with different types of innovation (i.e. product and process innovation) and how differences in innovation activities influence modelling results. We also emphasise the implications of product innovation in a multisector framework, which has received little attention in the literature.

Das vorliegende Dokument ist die Stellungnahme zum zweiten Monitoring-Bericht der Bundesregierung zur Energiewende. Zur Begleitung des Monitoring-Prozesses "Energie der Zukunft" wurde von der Bundesregierung eine Kommission aus unabhängigen Energieexperten berufen. Die Expertenkommission erstellt in jedem Jahr eine Stellungnahme zum Entwurf des Monitoring-Berichts. Bei der Stellungnahme der Expertenkommission geht es um die wissenschaftliche Einordnung und Bewertung der Monitoring-Berichte der Bundesregierung. Am 8. April 2014 wurde der zweite Monitoring-Bericht "Energie der Zukunft" von der Bundesregierung veröffentlicht. Anhand von Indikatoren wird im Bericht das Fortschreiten der Energiewende abgebildet. Er wurde vom Bundeswirtschaftsministerium unter Beteiligung der anderen Ressorts und nachgeordneter Behörden erarbeitet.

International audience

We estimate the impact of a feed-in tariff for renewable power on wind power investment in Germany at the county level from 1996-2010 controlling for windiness and access to the electricity transmission grid. After the Renewable Energy Law (EEG) was passed in 2000, the feed-in tariff became linked to wind power potential, such that more windy locations received a lower incentive per unit of output. We find that a 1 e-cent/kWh increase in the feed-in tariff rate would increase additions to capacity at the national level by 764MWper year from 1996- 2010 or 1,528 MW per year from 2005-2010. We analyze counterfactual scenarios, in which a uniform incentive is offered instead of the wind-dependent EEG incentive. Significantly more wind power plants are installed along the northern coastal counties in the uniform incentive scenario. We find that while the uniform incentive results in greater total wind power output per installed capacity, the EEG is ultimately more efficient by achieving 1% greater wind power output per euro and 3.7% greater reductions in power sector emissions per euro. In addition, we find a significant response from investors to an EEG provision that shifted the cost of transmission system upgrades from wind power developers to grid operators in 2000. The lack of a signal on scarcity of transmission capacity has likely resulted in a distribution of wind power plants that makes suboptimal use of existing infrastructure, necessitating investment in new transmission corridors.

In this paper, we investigate both short- and long-term impacts of financial stimuli on public goods provision when contributions are tied to individual harm-related behavior. We conduct a large-scaled field experiment to examine voluntary contributions to a carbon offsetting program during the online purchase of a bus ticket. We systematically vary the individual payoff structure by introducing different matching grants (1/3:1, 1:1, 3:1) and price rebates (r-25%, r-50%, r-75%). Our results show that price rebates are more effective than matching schemes in raising participation rates while matching grants induce higher contributions to the offsetting program. We suspect differences in the personal responsibility for the compensated emissions to drive this result. Analyzing repeated bookings, we find decreasing treatment effects for returning customers except for the case of 1:1 matching grants. The equal matching scheme is also the only intervention that increases net contributions of customers compared to the control group.

This paper examines the extent and the determinants of individual global climate change be-liefs. In contrast to former studies, it is focused on China due to its crucial role in global cli-mate policy and its responsibility as the worldwide biggest producer of CO2 emissions. The empirical analysis is based on unique data from a survey among more than 1000 individuals from five cities in China, namely Beijing, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Wuhan, and Shenyang. In line with previous studies in other countries, our results suggest that the vast majority of al-most 90% of the Chinese respondents believe in the existence of global climate change, which seems to be a convenient basis for ambitious climate policy in China. Our econometric analy-sis reveals that the personal experience with extreme weather events (and particularly heat-waves) alone is already sufficient to increase global climate change beliefs, although conse-quential personal physical or financial damages lead to stronger effects. A rising number of extreme weather events and consequential personal damages in the future might thus further decrease climate change skepticism. Our estimation results additionally reveal that females as well as people in medium ages, with higher household incomes, a lower education, and from Chengdu or Shenyang are more skeptical with respect to global climate change.

Given the vital and controversial debate on fairness concerns in international climate negotiations, the acceptance of a climate treaty may be fostered if the distribution of costs and benefits from global environmental protection is perceived to be “fair”. Since an agreement must be acceptable to all negotiating countries, it is likely that no single burden sharing concept will gain unconditional support from all parties. We have conducted a world-wide survey among participants in international climate negotiations to address the question whether negotiating weights for different fairness concepts may enlarge the bargaining space among heterogeneous agents and overcome the currently dominating self-interested use of fairness claims. Even though our empirical results confirm different positions on burden sharing among key regions, there is evidence that a broad majority favors allocations that are based on a variety of fairness rules. Turning the debate rather towards justice claims based on needs than towards culpability may serve as a fruitful starting point to depart from a purely egoistic use of equity rules in international climate negotiations.

Social norms can help to foster cooperation and to overcome the free-rider problem in private provision of public goods. This paper focuses on the enforcement of social norms by a self-introduced punishment and reward scheme. We analyse if subjects achieve to implement a norm-enforcement mechanism at their own expense by applying the theory of non-governmental norm-enforcement by Buchholz et al. (2014) in a laboratory experiment. Based on their theory without central authority and endogenously determined enforcement mechanism, we implement a two-stage public good game: At the first stage subjects determine the strength of penalty/reward on their own and in the second stage they decide on their contributions to the public good. We find that the mechanism by Buchholz et al. (2014) leads to a higher public good contribution than without the use of any mechanism. Only in a few cases groups end up with a zero enforcement mechanism. This result indicates that subjects are apparently willing to contribute funds for implementing an enforcement mechanism. Moreover, higher enforcement parameters lead to higher public good contributions in the second stage, although too high enforcement parameters lead to unreachable theoretical optima.

In this paper we discuss what needs to be done in a number of key policy areas. Certainly, the EU should focus on fields where benefits for all of Europe can be produced, and should withdraw from policy areas where this is not the case. Furthermore, deeper economic and political integration is required to address future challenges in many important policy areas.

The KfW/ZEW CO2 Barometer – developed as part of a cooperative project of KfW Bankengruppe and the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) – has been analyzing the situation of German companies regulated under the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) on an annual basis since 2009. The study’s objective is to closely monitor firm behavior in carbon markets in order to regularly provide detailed information to policy-makers, businesses and the research community. For that purpose, all German firms regulated under the EU ETS, are invited to participate in the survey every year. On average, approximately 140 companies of 800 have responded to the questionnaire per year. The results are reported in an annual publication, the KfW/ZEW-CO2-Barometer – Carbon Edition. Main Results of the Survey: The Low CO2-Emission Price in the European Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) Barely Leads to CO2 Avoidance. Trading Volumes of Regulated Companies Are Increasing. Firms Expect Only a Decent Recovery of the CO2-Emission Price for the Next Year. Emissions in Germany Are Increasing Whereas Europe in Total Experiences Downswing.

This paper investigates the extent to which the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster of March 2011 has had an impact on the private demand for climate protection in Germany. Data are taken from two framed field experiments (Löschel et al. 2013a, b) conducted before and after the disaster. We find that the demand for climate protection in the experiment after the nuclear disaster is significantly higher than in the experiment before the disaster.

In this paper, we investigate the real demand for climate protection when the purely individual perspective of existing revealed preference studies is relaxed. This is achieved in two treatments; first, we determine the information subjects receive about the demand revealed by other subjects in a similar decision making situation, second, collective action is implemented whereby all subjects are required to purchase the group’s median quantity at a given price. Participants in the experiment were offered the opportunity to contribute to climate protection by purchasing European Union Allowances. Allowances purchased were withdrawn from the European Emissions Trading Scheme. In our experiment, information about other subjects’ behaviour has no treatment effect on the demand for climate protection. Under collective action however, the probability of purchasing allowances is higher compared to the reference treatment situation, an individual contribution mechanism. Furthermore, we observe a strong correlation between subjects’ demand and their expectations about other participants’ behaviour. When collective action is not available, subjects’ expectations are consistent with free rider behaviour.

Der deutsche Strommarkt ist im Umbruch. Strom aus erneuerbaren Quellen verdrängt solchen aus konventioneller Erzeugung. Die bestehende Marktordnung fördert zwar effektiv den Ausbau der erneuerbaren Elektrizitätserzeugung, geht aber mit hohen Kosten einher. Zudem entstehen regionale Ungleichgewichte zwischen Elektrizitätserzeugung und -nachfrage. Im Folgenden wird eine neue Marktordnung für den deutschen Strommarkt skizziert, die einen kosteneffizienten Ausbau der Erneuerbaren und die Stabilität der Netze gemeinsam berücksichtigt. Das zentrale Instrument für eine neue Strommarktordnung sind Knappheitspreise. Stromerzeuger müssen Anreize erhalten, ihr Verhalten an die Knappheit von Strom am Markt anzupassen. Dazu müssen die Preise widerspiegeln, wann und wo Elektrizität knapp ist. Die Kombination aus einer Marktprämie zur Förderung der Erneuerbaren und Market Splitting zum Management von Netzengpässen kann dies erreichen.

As a complementary study, KfW Bankengruppe and the ZEW have developed a second annual survey in the framework of the KfW/ZEW-CO2-Barometer: the KfW/ZEW-CO2-Barometer – Manufacturing Industry Edition. The aim is to shed light on recent developments in the German manufacturing industry driven by European climate and energy regulations as well as the German energy transition in particular. The survey covered topics concerning energy price expectations, investments in energy efficiency and the German energy transition. Main Results of the Survey: Most of the Companies Conduct Energy Efficiency Checks on a Regular Basis. Medium-Sized and Large Companies Are More Likely to Invest Energy Efficiency Measurements than Smaller Companies. Energy Consumption Targets Might Trigger Investments in Energy Efficiency. Grid Expansion is Considered as the Major Challenge to the German Energy Transition.