In this article, Ecologic Institute's Lena Donat and Ralph Bodle provide a structured approach for developing and evaluating options for a dynamic adjustment mechanism in the 2015 climate agreement. To ensure that the 2015 Agreement, that is currently being negotiated under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), provides an effective response to climate change over time, it needs to encorporate flexible and dynamic elements. This should include a possibility for Parties to regularly adjust their mitigation commitments so as to increase the level of ambition and to reflect changing circumstances.

Smart homes offer significant potential to enable new energy saving services and capabilities offered via smart grids. However, research reveals that consumer perception regarding reliability and data privacy risks, as well as high costs of technologies act as significant barriers to consumer acceptance of smart homes. In a paper, published in Energy Research and Social Science, Benjamin Boteler and co-authors investigated the differences and similarities in technical and economic drivers and barriers to smart home market development in the UK, Germany, and Italy. The paper European smart home market development: Public views on technical and economic aspects across the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy is available for download.

Lui, Charles; Tanja Srebotnjak and Renee Yuen-Jan Hsia 2014: "California Emergency Department Closures are Associated with Increased Inpatient Mortality at Nearby Hospitals.". Health Affairs, Vol. 33, No. 8, 1323-1329.

Emissions trading promises the achievement of a pre-defined environmental outcome at least cost. If the system works and key assumptions hold, it would seem to be an "optimal" climate policy instrument. On closer inspection, however, it is less clear what constitutes an "optimal" climate policy. This paper argues that optimality involves a range of criteria beyond short-term economic efficiency, but also has to consider the longer-term dynamic efficiency, as well as the political, administrative and legal feasibility of policy instruments.

Hsia, Renee Yuen-Jan et al. 2014: "The Association of Trauma Center Closures with Increased Inpatient Mortality for Injured Patients". The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, Vol. 76, No. 4, 1048-1053.

Cigarette smoking is a leading risk factor for morbidity and premature mortality in the United States, yet information about smoking prevalence and trends is not routinely available below the state level, impeding local-level action. Tanja Srebotnjak of Ecologic Institute and co-authors now publish county-level estimates of cigarette smoking prevalence: These provide a unique opportunity to assess where prevalence remains high and where progress has been slow. The estimates provide the data needed to better develop and implement strategies at a local and at a state level to further reduce the burden imposed by cigarette smoking.

Wang, Tiffany; Tanja Srebotnjak; Julia Brownell and Renee Y. Hsia 2014: "Emergency Department Charges for Asthma-Related Outpatient Visits by Insurance Status". Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, Vol. 25, No. 1, 396-407.

Bieling, Claudia et al. 2014: "Kulturlandschaften entwickeln – Ökosystemleistungen stärken". Natur und Landschaft, Vol. 2014, No. 2, 82-84.

Economic instruments and marine litter control, published in Ocean and Coastal Management, provides a comprehensive up-to-date review of the literature on the economic instruments that can reduce marine litter. The paper, written by Frans Oosterhuis, Elissaios Papyrakis, and Ecologic Institute's Benjamin Boteler, assesses their cost of implementation, level of effectiveness as well as indirect environmental and socioeconomic effects (externalities) that may arise as a result of their implementation. The article is available for download.

Hsia, Renee Yuen-Jan; Charles Lui; Tanja Srebotnjak and Judith Maselli 2013: "Do Emergency Department Closures have Ripple Effects on Surrounding Communities?: An Analysis of Closures on Inpatient Mortality for All-Comers in California, 1999-2010". Annals of Emergency Medicine, Vol. 62, No. 4, 157.

European Union (EU) legislation, such as the Water Framework Directive (WFD), as well as international, national, and regional environmental policies and strategies explicitly acknowledge the importance of environmental costs and benefits and the need to integrate them into the policy-making process. However, the application of valuation studies to policy often involves a trade-off between the accuracy of the required analysis and the necessity to include all costs and benefits associated with the different policy options. Thus, there is no accepted EU-wide approach on how to deal with environmental benefits in the policy process.

In an issue focusing on "Transformative Science" of the German-language journal "Ökologisches Wirtschaften", Thomas Jahn of the Institute for Social-Ecological Research (ISOeE) and R. Andreas Kraemer of Ecologic Institute present the Ecological Research Network (Ecornet) and explain the historic, current, and expected future roles of the participating, independent policy-relevant research institutes.

In the medium-term, biomass is expected to be an important part of the German energy mix. In this journal article, Ecologic Institute's Wolfgang Urban and Michael Jandewerth (Fraunhofer UMSICHT) present the results of the project "Biogas Feed-In" which was sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The focus lies on the question of how processed biogas can be fed into the natural gas network under concrete local conditions. The article, which has been published in "Informationen zur Raumentwicklung", is available for download.

In this journal article, the authors – among them Darla Nickel and Melissa Keeley, both Ecologic Institute alumnae – analyze the stormwater infrastructure of the two cities. The focus lies on the question of how green and grey infrastructure can most successfully be combined and integrated for rain-water management. While grey infrastructure refers to conventional piped drainage and water treatment systems, the term "green infrastructure" encompasses land and plant based ecological treatment systems and processes. The report can be purchased on the homepage of the publisher "Springer-Verlag".

The precautionary principle is used in arguments both for and against climate engineering: On the one hand, the principle can suggest caution against climate engineering so as to minimize the (unknown) risks of proposed techniques to the environment and health. On the other hand, arguments can be made that climate engineering is a precautionary measure against the (known) risks of climate change. This article, written by Elizabeth Tedsen and Gesa Homann, provides an overview of this debate and what the precautionary principle means in a climate engineering context.