The National Renewable Energy Action Plans offer a unique insight into the energy policy context of each EU Member State. For a comparative analysis of six European action plans, Katharina Umpfenbach and Stephan Sina contributed a review of Germany's action plan.

Under the title "Setting the Course for the Future, not Nursing a Hangover – After the Copenhagen Debacle, Europe Needs an Effective Strategy for Climate Negotiations", Sascha Müller-Kraenner, Senior Policy Advisor at the Ecologic Institute, suggests options for the future external climate policy of the European Union. The article (in German) is available exclusively online from Internationale Politik, Germany's leading foreign policy magazine.

This year, Ecologic Institute turns 15. Since its founding, Ecologic Institute has built a reputation for excellence in transdisciplinary and policy-relevant research. As an environmental think tank, Ecologic Institute uses its extensive project experience and network of partners on both sides of the Atlantic to address a broad range of environmental challenges.

A new publication in the journal "Ecological Indicators" by Tanja Srebotnjak, from Ecologic Institute, and Peter Hardi, from the Central European University in Hungary, examines the potentials for sustainable bioenergy production in Bulgaria, Romania and the former Soviet republics in Central Asia. The study draws on official statistics and modeling results and concludes that bioenergy potentials are highest in Bulgaria, Romania, and Kazakhstan but depend on several factors including crop choice, climatic conditions, availability of suitable land, and the institutional and legal infrastructure.

In his 2010 State of the Union address, President Obama declared the need for "serious investments in clean energy" because "the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy". In a new paper funded by the German Marshall Fund of the United States under the Transatlantic Climate Bridge initiative, authors from the Ecologic Institute in Washington DC and Berlin identify investment needs and policy incentives required to achieve this transition to a clean energy economy.

Grünig, Max; Ian Skinner; Mary Ann Kong 2010: Study on Consumer Information on Fuel Economy and CO2 Emissions of New Passenger Cars. Implementation of the Directive 1999/94/EC. Brussels.

R. Andreas Kraemer of Ecologic Institute moderated a panel entitled "Quo Vadis Carbon Trading?" at the conference "The Great Transformation – Greening the Economy", which was jointly organized by the Heinrich Böll Stiftung, the Center for American Progress, and the Mercator Foundation. The panel focussed on economic instruments in climate policy, the EU Emission Trading Scheme and its links to carbon markets and also Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects in other countries.<p></p>

EU water policy under the 10th European Development Fund has shifted its focus away from Public Private Partnerships (PPP) in water management in ACP countries towards Public-Public (PuP) Partnerships. PUPs are new partnerships developed between public water operators, communities, trade unions and other key groups, without profit motive and on a basis of equality. The Overseas Development Institute (Josephine Tucker and Roger Calow) and Ecologic Institute (Darla Nickel and Thomas Thaler) conducted a study for the European Parliament that provided an evaluation of the comparative advantage of different partnership approaches in water policy.

At the invitation of the U.S. Consulate General Leipzig Katharina Umpfenbach held a lecture on U.S. climate and energy policy on 27 May 2010. The event was part of a lecture series titled &ldquo;Obama and the &lsquo;new&rsquo; U.S.&rdquo; organised jointly by the political science faculty of the University of Erfurt, the Regional Center for Political Education and the U.S. Consulate General.</p>

At the EU level, there is great need for legal reforms concerning the liability of enterprises for violations of human rights and environmental norms abroad. This is the result of a study co-authored by Christiane Gerstetter, Fellow Ecologic Legal and pro bono lawyer for the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights.