Water scarcity and droughts are on the increase and expected to aggravate further due to climate change. Early actions are required to adapt to these changes. The transnational project 'Benefit of governance in DROught adaPtation (DROP)' aimed to enhance the preparedness and resilience of Northwest European (NWE) regions to such periods of drought. Ecologic Institute was one of the five knowledge partners of DROP which jointly developed further an existing Governance Assessment Tool and applied the tool in the six regions of the participating water authorities.

Ecologic Institute advised the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) on the post-2020 update of EU climate and energy policy, analysing the climate, political, legal, financial and economic impacts of proposed options and developing recommendations for action. These include the thematic design of the emissions trading system after 2020, targets and instruments in the field of renewable energies and energy efficiency, as well as a redesign of the Effort-Sharing Decision.

The "Teacher Training Renewable Energy" project aimed to improve the capacities of future teachers in regards to their knowledge about renewable energies and also to identify methodologies that may help teachers share this knowledge in schools. During three years of project work, Ecologic Institute, Solare Zukunft, and the Independent Institute for Environmental Issues (UfU) developed a rich and comprehensive pool of (German) training materials. All teaching materials are also available beyond the project's duration and can be downloaded for free.

Ecologic Institute created an informative flyer in five languages that presented the EU-funded DEMEAU project. The project aimed to address challenges in water supply and wastewater treatment by promoting advanced technologies such as Managed Aquifer Recharge, Hybrid Ceramic Membrane Filtration, Hybrid Advanced Oxidation Processes, and Bioassays. With a strong consortium of research institutions, SMEs, and water suppliers from five EU countries, DEMEAU focused on innovation and partnership to effectively combat emerging pollutants.

On 19 December 2012, the first monitoring report from the Federal Government and the joint statement from the expert commissions about the "Energy of the Future" monitoring process were presented. The independent expert commission, composed of Prof. Dr. Andreas Löschel, Prof. Dr. Georg Erdmann, Prof. Dr. Frithjof Staiß, and Dr. Hans-Joachim Ziesing, provided scientific support and delivered a joint statement on the monitoring process, which should show progress towards the German "Energiewende", and with it a highly efficient energy system based on renewable sources by the year 2050,. Ecologic Institute provided scientific support to this work with a focus on the key topics that Dr. Hans-Joachim Ziesing and the expert commission selected for their joint statement. The joint statement is available for download.

In this project Umweltbundesamt Wien, the Research Institute for Managing Sustainability (RIMAS) and Ecologic Institute jointly support the Committee of the Regions in the process of stakeholder contribution to produce an Outlook Opinion on the review of the targets contained in European Waste legislation.

The European Commission regularly tracks the progress towards sustainable development objectives within the EU and the individual Member States, drawing upon sustainable development indicators (SDIs). In a consortium with the Vienna University of Economics and Business, INFRAS and the Haymarket Media Group, Ecologic Institute was drafting these monitoring reports for the years 2013 and 2015 on behalf of Eurostat. Ecologic covered the analysis on Natural Resources, Climate Change and Energy and Global Partnership.

The better integration of renewable energy, the creation of more flexibility for variable renewable energy, and the optimization of network expansion are shared challenges that China and Europe face on the way to a low-carbon economy. These topics were the discussion of a Dinner Dialogue hosted by Ecologic Institute with an expert delegation from China.