<p>&#13; Are the levels of cost recovery, investment and financing sufficient to ensure affordable access to freshwater and sanitation services?</p>&#13;

<p>&#13; At the EnergyAgency.NRW expert conference on future energies, expert speakers addressed the subject of efficient energy generation, especially regarding biomass, energy storage, geothermal energy, wind energy research and power plant technology. Aaron Best, Ecologic Senior Fellow, spoke in the opening plenary session, highlighting the nascent energy and climate policies of the new Obama administration.</p>&#13;

Rural areas face a number of new challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss and the increasing demand for biomass. This series of conferences and workshops with different themes and a wide range of actors investigated new strategies for innovation in rural areas, compliant with environmentally friendly economic activities:

<p>&#13; In an explorative study commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Finance, the Ecologic Institute is currently analysing the long-term impacts of climate change on Germany’s financial budget. On 26 November 2008, Ingo Bräuer presented first results to the Ministry’s Working Group on Public Finance and discussed methodological questions with the experts in the audience.</p>&#13;

Illegal logging not only destroys primeval forests and biodiversity, but has also a negative impact on the German economy. On 14 October 2008, Greenpeace published a study carried out by Ecologic, which shows that losses of turnover for the wood industry add up to an estimated one billion Euro annually (total revenue 2007: 10.3 billion Euro), caused by declining image and credibility at the consumer. Illegal timber also beats down prices for timber products and leads to shortages in specific types of wood. Mostly, the timber comes from Brazil, Indonesia, China, Congo, and Russia and was often harvested through overexploitation and the destruction of primeval forests.

<p>&#13; Since the Security Council debated the security implications of climate change in April 2007, security aspects of climate change rank high on the political agenda of the UN. In a presentation at Haus Rissen Hamburg, Nils Meyer-Ohlendorf discussed the contribution of the UN to environmental security.</p>&#13;

<p>&#13; The Hertie School of Governance and Ecologic Institute cooperated on international energy and climate policies as agents of change. During the fall term of 2008, Sascha Müller-Kraenner, Partner of Ecologic, taught a course on "International energy and climate policy" at the Hertie School of Governance.</p>&#13;

<p>&#13; During a further vocational training for management assistants in the energy sector Ms. Hanna Schumacher gave an introduction to the German Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) with a focus on the amendment which will come into force in 2009.</p>&#13;