• Energy Research
• 12. Responsible consumption close
• DE close
• Leibniz Association close

Mit einem Anteil von rund 30% am Endenergieverbrauch und etwa 20% an den CO2-Emissionen haben private Haushalte in Deutschland einen großen Einfluss auf die Umwelt. Gleichzeitig sind private Haushalte ein zentraler Adressat für politische Interventionen zur Bekämpfung des Klimawandels. Vor diesem Hintergrund hat die Politik zahlreiche Maßnahmen zur Verringerung des Energiekonsums und zur Förderung regenerativer Energietechnologien ergriffen. Diese politischen Maßnahmen bedürfen einer sorgfältigen Evaluierung ihrer Effektivität und Kosteneffizienz, um kostspielige Redundanzen durch sich überlappende Instrumente zu vermeiden. Eine solche Evaluation umwelt- und energiepolitischer Maßnahmen erfordert eine umfangreiche Datenbasis. Besonders im Bereich der privaten Haushalte waren solche Daten in Deutschland bislang nicht verfügbar. Die Reagibilität deutscher Haushalte auf Maßnahmen zur Bekämpfung des Klimawandels war daher weitgehend unbekannt. Das Sozial-Ökologische Panel stellt zu diesem Zweck umfangreiche, frei verfügbare Informationen zum Energieverbrauch und Umweltverhalten privater Haushalte bereit. Die Befragung wurde in vier Wellen durchgeführt. Es liegen Daten für die Jahre 2012, 2013, 2014 und 2015 vor. Diese Daten können anhand einer ID aneinander gespielt werden. Darauf aufbauend können ökonometrische Schätzungen und Analysen verschiedener Präferenzindikatoren sowie des Anpassungsverhaltens privater Haushalte an den Klimawandel durchgeführt werden. Dieser Datensatz umfasst die Daten der Erhebung im Jahr 2012. With a share of 30% in total final energy consumption and around 20% in CO2 emissions, private households in Germany strongly affect the environment. At the same time private households are an important target group for policy interventions to fight climate change. Against this background, numerous policy measures that intend to decrease energy consumption and to support renewable energy technologies have been introduced. These policy measures call for accurate evaluation to avoid expensive redundancies due to overlapping policy instruments. The evaluation of energy and environmental policy measures requires comprehensive and reliable data. So far such data was unavailable in Germany, especially in the context of private households. Hence, the responsiveness of German households to climate protection policies was unknown. For this purpose, the Socio-Ecological Panel offers rich information on household’s energy consumption and environmental behavior. The data was gathered in four household surveys conducted in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015. The survey waves can be merged using the household ID. The data builds the basis for empirical analyses of households’ adaptation to climate change and the evaluation of environmental and climate policy measures. This data set comprises the information gathered in the 2012 survey wave and is labelled in German. It is available in German and English. Offline Rekrutierung für das repräsentative forsa omninet panel Selbst ausgefüllter Fragebogen Self-completed questionnaire 10.000 deutsche Haushalte Green-SÖP Green-SÖP

Dynamics of societal material stocks such as buildings and infrastructures and their spatial patterns drive surging resource use and emissions. Building up and maintaining stocks requires large amounts of resources; currently stock-building materials amount to almost 60% of all materials used by humanity. Buildings, infrastructures and machinery shape social practices of production and consumption, thereby creating path dependencies for future resource use. They constitute the physical basis of the spatial organization of most socio-economic activities, for example as mobility networks, urbanization and settlement patterns and various other infrastructures. This dataset features a detailed map of material stocks for the whole of Germany on a 10m grid based on high resolution Earth Observation data (Sentinel-1 + Sentinel-2), crowd-sourced geodata (OSM) and material intensity factors. Temporal extent The map is representative for ca. 2018. Data format Per federal state, the data come in tiles of 30x30km (see shapefile). The projection is EPSG:3035. The images are compressed GeoTiff files (*.tif). There is a mosaic in GDAL Virtual format (*.vrt), which can readily be opened in most Geographic Information Systems. The dataset features area and mass for different street types area and mass for different rail types area and mass for other infrastructure area, volume and mass for different building types Masses are reported as total values, and per material category. Units area in m² height in m volume in m³ mass in t for infrastructure and buildings Further information For further information, please see the publication or contact Helmut Haberl (helmut.haberl@boku.ac.at). A web-visualization of this dataset is available here. Visit our website to learn more about our project MAT_STOCKS - Understanding the Role of Material Stock Patterns for the Transformation to a Sustainable Society. Publication Haberl, H., Wiedenhofer, D., Schug, F., Frantz, D., Virág, D., Plutzar, C., Gruhler, K., Lederer, J., Schiller, G. , Fishman, T., Lanau, M., Gattringer, A., Kemper, T., Liu, G., Tanikawa, H., van der Linden, S., Hostert, P. (accepted): High-resolution maps of material stocks in buildings and infrastructures in Austria and Germany. Environmental Science & Technology Funding This research was primarly funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (MAT_STOCKS, grant agreement No 741950). ML and GL acknowledge funding by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (CityWeight, 6111-00555B), ML thanks the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC; project Multi-Scale, Circular Economic Potential of Non-Residential Building Scale, EP/S029273/1), JL acknowledges funding by the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF), project ESR17-067, TF acknowledges the Israel Science Foundation grant no. 2706/19.

The aim of this paper is to describe and discuss the weak and strong sustainability approach of assessing climate change and to show reasonable applications, weaknesses, possible improvements and linkages of both approaches. Main features of “weak” and “strong” sustainability approaches are characterised. Damage cost studies of global warming representing weak sustainability indicators are discussed. Further, the examples of the “inverse scenario” approach of the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) and the environmental space concept of the Dutch Advisory Council for Research on Nature and Environment (RMNO) are described and discussed for illustrating advantages and weaknesses of strong sustainability indicators. Finally, the integration of damage cost modules into a broader methodological framework of strong sustainability is recommended.

Climate disasters affect human security and development, moreso in fragile and conflict-affected contexts where population’ capacities to cope with climate change are compromised. Responses to such crises lie at the nexus of humanitarian assistance, development, and peacebuilding. Yet, there are still too few integrated programmatic responses coordinating peacebuilding and climate actions to ensure a progressive human development. This research develops a multi-scalar model to help actors identify thematic areas to inform synergistic efforts and programs at different scales to better coordinate their actions. Findings suggest that climate action and peacebuilding sectors can coordinate actions around climate and conflict risk assessments, the management of land and water resources, ecosystem restoration, nature-based climate adaptation, climate and conflict smart agriculture, natural resources governance, and sustainable market development. These collaborative efforts have the potential to generate co-benefits, such as increased social cohesion and livelihood creation.

The principle of multi-functionality simultaneously considers a variety of social, economic and environmental goods and services related to land use. It is thus a key to sustainable development of land and rural areas. Land use policies seek to support the economic competitiveness and sustainable development of rural areas. For efficient impact assessment, policy makers require tools for assessment of anticipated policy impacts on a wide range of sustainability issues across European regions. The European Union funded Integrated Project SENSOR develops ex-ante Sustainability Impact Assessment Tools (SIAT) to support decision making on policies related to multifunctional land use in European regions. SENSOR directly responds to the European sustainability objectives as applied to land use and rural development. This book provides an overview on the analytical approach in SENSOR and documents preliminary results. This includes the identification of end user needs for SIAT and the development of a first SIAT prototype. Methodological frameworks for scenario development and land use modelling including indicator analysis and web-based data management were established. Surveys of European sensitive areas and a regional spatial reference framework for socio-economic and environmental assessment were drafted.

The share of biofuels has increased significantly over the last decade, which has lead to several negative impacts on the environment. As a solution, several governments worldwide have promoted the use of certification systems, which have been implemented and in some cases have even been established as mandatory regulations. Due to the focus of the public debate, standard-setting has mainly been limited to developing and newly industrializing countries. Hence, the issues of environmental impacts as a consequence of agricultural intensification in Germany has been given little attention, and the question whether existing biofuel certification systems sufficiently cover ecological issues remains. In order to answer this question, this study performs a benchmarking analysis of selected certification systems, whereby their ability to ensure ecological sustainability is evaluated and compared. The assessment reveals that the currently existing national ordinances, like Cross Compliance, are in many aspects insufficient to ensure sustainability. Contrarily, they often deter necessary discussions to tackle these issues.

Recent years have seen a proliferation of studies that use archetype analysis to better understand and to foster transitions toward sustainability. This growing literature reveals a common methodological ground, as well as a variety of perspectives and practices. In this paper, we provide an historical overview of the roots of archetype analysis from ancient philosophy to recent sustainability science. We thereby derive core features of the archetype approach, which we frame by eight propositions. We then introduce the Special Feature, “Archetype Analysis in Sustainability Research,” which offers a consolidated understanding of the approach, a portfolio of methods, and quality criteria, as well as cutting-edge applications. By reflecting on the Special Feature’s empirical and methodological contributions, we hope that the showcased advances, exemplary applications, and conceptual clarifications will help to design future research that contributes to collaborative learning on archetypical patterns leading toward sustainability. The paper concludes with an outlook highlighting central directions for the next wave of archetype analyses.

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement have ushered in a new era of policymaking to deliver on the formulated goals. Energy policies are key to ensuring universal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy (SDG7). Yet they can also have considerable impact on other goals. To successfully achieve multiple goals concurrently, policies need to balance different objectives and manage their interactions. Refining previously contemplated design principles, we identify three key principles - complementary, transparency and adaptability - as highly pertinent for multiple-objective energy policies based on a synthesis of seventeen coordinated policy case studies. First, policies should entail complementary measures and design provisions that specifically target non-energy objectives (complementarity). Second, policy impacts should be tracked comprehensively in both energy and non-energy domains to uncover diminishing returns and facilitate policy learning (transparency). Third, policies should be capable of adapting to changing objectives over time (adaptability). These principles are rarely considered in current policies, implying the need to mainstream them into the next generation of policymaking by pointing to best practices and new tools.

Climate change and biodiversity loss trigger policies targeting and impacting local communities worldwide. However, research and policy implementation often fail to sufficiently consider community responses and to involve them. We present the results of a collective self-assessment exercise for eight case studies of communications with regard to climate change or biodiversity loss between project teams and local communities. We develop eight indicators of good stakeholder communication, reflecting the scope of Verran’s (2002) concept of postcolonial moments as a communicative utopia. We demonstrate that applying our indicators can enhance communication and enable community responses. However, we discover a divergence between timing, complexity and (introspective) effort. Three cases qualify for postcolonial moments, but scrutinising power relations and genuine knowledge co-production remain rare. While we verify the potency of various instruments for deconstructing science, their sophistication cannot substitute trust building and epistemic/transdisciplinary awareness. Lastly, we consider that reforming inadequate funding policies helps improving the work in and with local communities.