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Is it true that a nuclear technology approach to generate electric energy offers a clean, safe, reliable and affordable, i.e., sustainable option? In principle yes, however a technology impact on the environment strongly depends on the actual implementation bearing residual risks due to technical failures, human factors, or natural catastrophes. A full response is thus difficult and can be given first when the wicked multi-disciplinary issues get well formulated and “resolved”. These problems are lying at the interface between: the necessary R&D effort, the industrial deployment and the technology impact in view of the environmental sustainability including the management of produced hazardous waste. As such, this problem is clearly of multi-dimensional nature. This enormous complexity indicates that just a description of the problem might cause a dilemma. The paper proposes a novel holistic approach applying Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis to assess the potential of nuclear energy systems with respect to a sustainable performance. It shows how to establish a multi-level criteria structure tree and examines the trading-off techniques for scoring and ranking of options. The presented framework allows multi-criteria and multi-group treatment. The methodology can be applied to support any pre-decisional process launched in a country to find the best nuclear and/or non-nuclear option according to national preferences and priorities. The approach addresses major aspects of the environmental footprint of nuclear energy systems. As a case study, advanced nuclear fuel cycles are analyzed, which were previously investigated by the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA/OECD) expert group WASTEMAN. Sustainability facets of waste management, resource utilization and economics are in focus.

Diese Dissertation beantwortet verschiedene politikrelevante ökonomische Fragen in den Bereichen Handelspolitik, Geldpolitik, sowie Rohstoffmärkte und Energieökonomik mit Hilfe von strukturellen Vektorautoregressionsmodellen (SVAR). SVARs stellen eine effektive Möglichkeit dar, die Beziehungen zwischen verschiedenen makroökonomischen und/oder Finanzmarkt-Variablen zu modellieren und werden verwendet, um die dynamischen kausalen Effekte von ökonomischen Schocks zu schätzen. Für jede ökonomische Fragestellung wird eine Identifikationsstrategie angewandt, die auf die betrachteten Daten und ihre statistischen Eigenschaften sowie die zugrundeliegenden Annahmen über ökonomische Mechanismen zwischen den betrachteten Zeitreihen zugeschnitten ist. Im Einzelnen besteht diese Dissertation aus vier Kapiteln. In den ersten beiden Kapiteln werden die Auswirkungen von Handelspolitik auf Finanzmärkte und auf die Makroökonomie geschätzt. Das dritte Kapitel liefert einen methodischen Beitrag zur SVAR-Literatur, der in einer Anwendung zu den Effekten von Geldpolitik dargestellt wird. Das letzte Kapitel verlässt die Felder der Handels- und Geldpolitik und wendet sich Rohstoffmärkten und der Energiewirtschaft zu, stützt sich dabei aber ebenfalls auf Zeitreihenmethoden. Es analysiert die Rolle von Metallen in der Energiewende. This dissertation answers various policy relevant economic questions in the fields of trade policy, monetary policy, and commodity markets and energy economics using structural vector autoregression (SVAR) models. SVARs constitute a parsimonious way to model the relations between different macroeconomic and/or financial variables and they are used to estimate the dynamic causal effects of economic shocks. For each economic question, this dissertation applies an identification strategy that is tailored to the relevant data and its statistical properties as well as the underlying assumptions about economic mechanisms among the regarded time series. Specifically, this dissertation consists of four chapters. The first two chapters estimate the effects of trade policy on financial markets and on the macroeconomy. The third chapter makes a methodological contribution to the SVAR literature in an application to monetary policy shocks. The final chapter moves away from trade and monetary policy to commodity markets and energy economics but also relies on time series methods. It analyzes the role of metals for the clean energy transition.

Global mitigation pathways play a critical role in informing climate policies and targets that are in line with international climate goals. However, it is not possible to directly compare modelled results with national inventories used to assess progress under the UNFCCC due to differences in how land-based fluxes are accounted for.National inventories consider carbon flux on managed land using an area-based approach with managed land-areas determined by nations. Emissions scenarios consider a different managed land area and are calibrated against data from detailed global carbon cycle models that account for natural (indirect) and anthropogenic (direct) fluxes separately by design. To disentangle the direct and indirect components of land-based carbon fluxes, we use a reduced complexity climate model with explicit treatment of the land-use sector, OSCAR, one of the models used by the Global Carbon Project. We find the discrepancy between model and NGHGI-based accounting methods globally to be 4.4 ± 1.0 Gt CO2 yr-1 averaged over the 2000-2020 time period, which is in line with existing estimates. We then apply OSCAR to the set of pathways assessed by the IPCC to quantify how this gap evolves over time and estimate how key mitigation benchmarks change.Across both 1.5°C and 2°C scenarios, LULUCF emissions pathways aligned with NGHGI accounting practices show a strong increase in the total land sink until around mid-century. However, the ‘NGHGI alignment gap’  decreases over this period, converging in the 2050-2060s for 1.5°C scenarios and 2070s-2080s for 2°C scenarios. The convergence is primarily a result of the simulated stabilization and then decrease of the CO2-fertilization effect as well as background climate warming reducing the overall effectiveness of the land sink, which in turn reduces the indirect removals considered by NGHGIs. These dynamics lead to land-based emissions reversing their downward trend in most NGHGI-aligned scenarios by mid-century, and result in the LULUCF sector becoming a net-source of emissions by 2100 in about 25% of both 1.5°C and 2°C scenarios.Assessing emission pathways using LULUCF definitions from national inventory accounting results in downward revisions to emissions benchmarks derived from scenarios. NGHGI-aligned pathways result in earlier net-zero CO2 emissions by around 2-5 years for both 1.5°C and 2°C scenarios, and 2030 emission reductions relative to 2020 are enhanced by about 5 percentage points for both pathway categories. When incorporating the additional land removals considered by NGHGIs, the assessed cumulative net CO2 emissions to global net-zero CO2 also decreases systematically by 15-18% for both 1.5°C and 2°C scenarios.We find that increasing removals from direct fluxes in 1.5C scenarios overtake estimated removals using NGHGI conventions in the near term. However, by midcentury, the strengthening of direct removals is balanced by weakening of indirect removals, meaning that, on average, carbon removal on land accounted for using NGHGI conventions in 1.5C scenarios results in about half of the LULUCF removals in current policy scenarios. We discuss the implications of our results for future Global Stocktakes and market mechanisms under the Paris Agreement.

This paper describes the methodology developed and the calculation steps used to evaluate the energy efficiency potential of office buildings. The methodology enables a detailed analysis of retrofit options for the building envelope and its energy supply system. Different simplification measures accelerate the data acquisition process for office building stock owners and allow a data handling according to the existing building information, thus enabling office building structures to be prompted to design typical building constructions. We implement solutions enabling both a time-saving accelerated data input for office buildings and the handling of incomplete data. An automated calculation of the most common refurbishment measures allows a comparison of up to 64 combinations of measures, the illustration of energy and CO2 savings, and an economic evaluation. The latter takes into account the time value of money, the uncertainty of future energy prices, and the possibility of delaying an investment. To this end, a net present value analysis and a real options analysis are implemented, enabling a comparison of retrofit alternatives with different initial and future cash flows both for buildings occupied by the investor (owner-occupier perspective) and for rented buildings (tenant perspective). Energy price scenarios as well as a Monte Carlo simulation account for the uncertainty in energy price trends. For a university building used as a test case, the simplified and time-saving data input methods were successfully tested and an automated evaluation of 64 typical retrofit combinations carried out. The results of the energy, ecological and economic efficiency evaluation shows that a generally preferred retrofit option cannot always be identified. Specifically, for the test case, the best-rated economic refurbishment possibility leads to the largest increase in final energy demand amongst all options considered, which points out the necessity of a multi-criteria evaluation.

Setting up strategies for a sound management of plastic packaging waste (PPW) is becoming increasingly crucial at many levels of the value chain in Europe. After the very first implementation of an extended producer responsibility scheme in Germany in 1991, many EU Countries followed. This resulted in a complex network of schemes that differ from one member state to another. This paper brings together the three latest studies describing the current flows of PPW across the waste value chain from Austria (reference year 2013), Germany and the Netherlands (reference year 2017). With this aim, the models of the three single studies have been adapted to fit into a common model, allowing to perform a comparative analysis. Although with a relatively comparable product market, the three countries have different management systems (e.g., separate collection systems, target sorting products and treatment of residual waste), reflecting different national strategies to achieve the circular economy targets. Recycling rates (in terms of washed milled goods at the output of the recycling process) for the three countries resulted in 23%, 43% and 30% of the total mass of PPW generated in, respectively, Austria, Germany and the Netherlands. The fraction of mixed recycled plastics, relevant for Germany and the Netherlands only, was determined to be one of the major determinants of the differences in recycling rates. Furthermore, the discussion revolves around new political targets that have the potential to contribute to addressing the issue of tradeoff between quantity and quality of recycled plastics placed on the market, with measures such as design-for-recycling and eco-modulation of EPR fees playing a critical role, while also pointing out the aspects that inevitably hinder closed-loop recycling.

This paper aims to fill a research gap in the area of consumer-citizen attitudes to business models for decentralized energy storage, at the level of households and buildings. The study focuses on the interaction of such attitudes and their underlying motivation factors with socio-cultural, contextual factors. Self-determination theory (SDT) is used as a theoretical framework, to connect interpersonal and contextual factors, addressing the question of how contexts influence the motivation to support energy storage. Drawing on SDT, this study examines the role of autarky (independence from the energy system), autonomy (control over energy management) and relatedness (degree of sharing required) in this regard, embedded and interpreted in the socio-cultural local context of two demonstration sites in Sweden and Portugal. A mixed method approach is used. Quantitative survey data provides information on local social and cultural dimensions, followed by stakeholder consultation workshops that elicit participants’ views on different models of decentralized energy storage. The findings raise questions of how to improve autarky and autonomy for prosumers, while keeping the need for time investment low and provide flexibility regarding the required degree of interaction between prosumers. Implications for business models and policy support for citizen-centered sustainable urban energy systems are derived.

Abstract Since the adoption of the Kyoto protocol in 1997 and its entry into force in 2005, as well its aftermath such as the Doha amendment and Paris agreement, national policies have become more conscious of the usage of clean energy, mostly the different forms of renewable energy and nuclear energy. Ratifying countries and signatories had committed themselves to binding targets for the reduction of greenhouse emissions by 8% with respect to 1990 levels until 2012, also based on the particular contribution to global emissions from each country. This paper examines the integrational properties of clean energy consumption from eight emerging economies which are also high greenhouse gas emitters. The empirical results show that the clean energy consumption is stationarity for Brazil and Philippines by using a quantile unit root test without smooth breaks (Koenker and Xiao, 2004). However, after capturing the smooth breaks (Bahmani-Oskooee et al., 2018), we find the clean energy consumption of China, Pakistan and Thailand are stationary. The time-varying deterministic trend with smooth breaks is more fitted to the path of clean energy consumption in comparison to the deterministic trend without smooth breaks. The paper suggests economic insights useful for policy making.

In the early 21st century, societies and their governments around the world have been meeting unprecedented challenges, many of which surpass the capacities, capabilities, and reaches of their traditional institutions and their classical processes of governing. Among these challenges are the need for an accelerated transition of the global economy from its current fossil fuel basis to renewable energies, the so-called post-carbon era also known as the third industrial revolution, the containment and reduction of government spending and debt financing, the increasing rapidity of market changes, and the expanding lag of timely interventions via traditional lawmaking and government action. While upholding the proven principles of Western democracy, democratic self-governance in 21st century market economies apparently needs to develop new institutional formats and novel mechanisms for staying abreast with the systemic dynamics of a tightly interconnected global society. We claim that actionable and omnipresent information along with its underlying technologies are substantial prerequisites and backbones for developing models of smart (democratic) governance, which foster smart, open, and agile governmental institutions as well as stakeholder participation and collaboration on all levels and in all branches of the governing process. We present and discuss an agenda for research and practice, which advances the concept of smart, open, and participatory government of the 21st century.