A consortium of Öko-Institut (lead), ifeu and Ecologic Institute is once again examining and evaluating the National Climate Initiative's funding programmes for the projects completed in the periods 2022 to 2025 and 2026 to 2027 and developing proposals for their further development.

The project “Development of an Evaluation Framework for Restoration Measures under the Nature Restoration Regulation” aims to develop a nationwide, modular approach for assessing the effectiveness of restoration measures. This evaluation framework is intended to ensure that targets are achieved, progress is tracked transparently, and measures can be adapted where necessary.

The model regions programme "Eating Better in the Region" promotes innovative approaches to healthy and sustainable nutrition across Germany. Ecologic Institute and Technopolis Germany evaluate the extent to which the ten funded model regions achieve the five central funding objectives – ranging from increasing the use of organic products in out-of-home catering to reducing food waste – and what impacts they generate. The results serve to evaluate the funding initiative and provide insights and recommendations for the long-term continuation and transferability of successful approaches to other regions.

Those who contribute least to climate change are often the most severely affected by its impacts. Organisations like Bread for the World aim to amplify their voices and promote climate justice for vulnerable communities. Ecologic Institute conducted an independent evaluation of Bread for the World’s Climate Policy Unit to strengthen its long-term impact and strategic focus.

The aim of this project is to prepare a report that will serve as the basis for the evaluation report on the Federal Action Plan on Nature-based Solution for Climate and Biodiversity (ANK) to be submitted by the Federal Government in 2025. In March 2023, the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV) published the Federal Action Plan on Nature-based Solution for Climate and Biodiversity (ANK) with the aim of significantly improving ecosystems in Germany. It specifically counteracts the dual crisis of global heating and biodiversity loss.

The project objective was to analyse several datasets to gather insights on the progress of concepts of just resilience/equity within adaptation planning/policies at both national and sub-national levels in EEA countries. These insights are included in the Just Resilience report, published in 2025 by the EEA and in a separate draft briefing on just resilience at the national/sub-national level.

This project is focused on assessing and improving the impact of Climate-ADAPT through an evaluation that looks both backward and forward. The primary objective of the project is to comprehensively evaluate Climate-ADAPT, including its subsites such as the European Climate and Health Observatory and the EU Mission on Adaptation Portal.

For the period 2023-2029, Ecologic Institute joined the Core Team of 20 senior experts supporting the European Evaluation Helpdesk for the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). As part of the EU CAP Network, the Evaluation Helpdesk's mission is to ensure the effectiveness of CAP evaluations by specifically assisting managing authorities, national CAP networks, paying agencies, evaluators and the European Commission.

Ecologic Institute was commissioned by WISE Netherlands to take a more in-depth look at how Member States are spending their auctioning revenues, and if and how they are using them for climate action. Furthermore, we wanted to understand the political context and the narrative around auctioning revenues. For this purpose, we conducted eight country case studies, namely Czech, Germany, Greece, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Portugal. We based our analysis on Member States' reporting to the European Commission regarding the use of auctioning revenues, desk research on legal documents and interviews with relevant experts from ministries and NGOs.

Reaching climate neutrality by 2050 in the EU requires strong policy making and monitoring to ensure all areas of the European economy get and remain on track. Over two years (2021-2022) Ecologic Institute completed several related research projects and policy assessments on the functioning and fitness of EU climate policy for a net-zero future. These included a first-of-its-kind assessment of the substance of national long-term strategies (LTS), a scoping paper for an EU Carbon Dioxide Removal strategy, the creation of a Climate Framework Laws Info-Matrix as a new resource to document the substance and status of these legislative instruments across Europe, and a net-zero scorecard as proof of concept for a net-zero monitoring framework developed under a previous project.

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for the period 2023-2027 presents new opportunities to support the transition to sustainable agricultural production in Europe. In this project, Ecologic Institute together with a consortium led by Ecorys, supported the European Commission Directorate General for the Environment in their assessment of the new CAP Strategic Plans prepared by Member States.

The aim of this project is to assess – for a selection of EU Member States – the impacts of policies and measures (PaMs) as described in their National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs). To this end, the project team identifies specific policy instruments and related ex-ante and ex-post evaluations, to collect and compare impact estimates and analyze the implications for achieving the energy and climate goals. The assessment also provides insights into the methodological uncertainties of evaluations in different policy areas. The considered policy areas are energy efficiency, renewable energy, cross-cutting instruments and agriculture and the NECPs from the following Member States are included; Germany, Denmark, France, Slovenia and Sweden.

The aim of the project is to evaluate the agricultural extension services in Schleswig-Holstein with regard to their impact on the protected goods water, climate, soil and biodiversity. In addition, new advisory measures, incentive and control instruments are to be developed on the basis of the analysis and evaluation results.

How to link the goals of the Agenda 2030, the Paris Convention, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Reduction and climate adaptation policies? The project examines synergies and challenges in the joint implementation of these processes. To this end, several papers, among others on "sustainable adaptation pathways", are prepared. These present factors for successful implementation, examples of good practice and short country studies. The results are discussed with the expert audience at a seminar and a side event of the High Level Political Forum (HLPF) at the United Nations in New York.

With the National Climate Initiative (NKI), the Federal Environment Ministry has been supporting climate protection projects throughout Germany since June 2008, contributing to the achievement of Germany's climate protection goals. During this time, the NKI's guidelines and calls for proposals have been further developed and new guidelines and calls for proposals initiated, in order to tap strategic climate protection potentials, particularly in the target groups of municipalities, business and private households. All along this process, Independent experts have continuously evaluated the impact of the National Climate Initiative, assessed gaps and identified potentials for further development of the NKI. Overall, the effect of the National Climate Initiative to date has been largely positive, also in terms of its contribution to national climate protection targets. In the fourth edition in a suite of contracts on the evaluation and further development of the NKI, a consortium of Öko-Institut, IFEU, Fraunhofer ISI, Ice-Tex, Prognos, Dr. Tews, Prof. Dr. Klinski and Ecologic Institute is examining and evaluating the NKI's funding programmes and developing proposals for their further development.

This project provides important input into the Commission report to the European Parliament and Council on the implementation of the National Emissions Ceilings (NEC) Directive (2016/2284/EU), which is due by 1 April 2020. Under the NEC Directive, Member States are required to provide the Commission and EEA with data on the negative impacts of air pollution upon ecosystems, which they collect from a network of monitoring sites representative of their different habitats and forest ecosystem types. This project analyses the submitted data – including on completeness and quality –and assesses how the ecosystem monitoring and reporting process could be improved for future reporting rounds.

The National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs) are a key tool of the Energy Union Governance towards achieving the EU’s 2030 climate and energy targets. All Member State had to submit their drafts by 31 December 2018. The Ecologic Institute, together with CLIMACT, developed a methodology to rate and rank the draft NECPs. Funded by the European Climate Foundation, this project sheds light on how well Member States are fulfilling the obligation of the Governance Regulation and thereby, how well Member States are supporting the achievement of the 2030 targets.

Retailers play an essential role in shaping product decisions via their own business choices—choices regarding which suppliers to work with, what items to stock, how to manage supply-chain operations, what information to provide to consumers, as well as how their own brand identity and market positioning will relate to sustainability. Retailers thus occupy a unique position in the product value chain, being intermediaries between producers and consumers, with considerable influence on which goods we enjoy as consumers, the means by which they come to us and the long chain of impacts related to our purchasing decisions.

The objective of this project is to support DG Climate Action (European Commission) in its assessment of Member States’ key challenges to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and related policies recently put into place. The information should also help DG CLIMA in enhancing the role of climate policies in the European Semester. With this project, Ecologic Institute continues the work in this field since 2012.

The 2016 REFIT Evaluation of the Environmental Liability Directive (ELD) showed that the national implementation is working to a much lower extent than could be expected and with a great variation between the Member States. Under the Multi-Annual Work Programme for the period 2017 to 2020, the European Commission promotes, among others, the availability of financial security across the EU. Supporting this objective, the project aims to enhance the evidence base in relation to the current situation in Member States.

A Climate Neutral Europe by 2050 – a possible vision for the future? On 28 November 2018, the European Commission published analysis to underpin a new long-term strategy (LTS) on climate policy for the EU, laying out a vision of how to decarbonize the European economy. Ecologic Institute evaluates the Commission's analysis in a project for the German Environment Agency (UBA) and monitors further development of the 2050 strategy's adoption process.

The further development of the National Climate Initiative (NCI) is based on the guiding principle of "100 % climate protection" and is ultimately intended to lead to a complete decarbonization of the economy and society, combined with a halving of energy consumption. Achieving this goal requires new approaches at many levels, among many actors and in many areas of daily life. The future further development of the NCI is also to be increasingly focused on this, and the necessary support programs are to be developed for this purpose.

The digitization of all spheres of life is progressing steadily, a mega-trend that will continuously and fundamentally change society. Municipalities are also making increasing use of the potential offered by digitization of political and administrative processes. Doris Knoblauch and Susanne Langsdorf (both Ecologic Institute) developed a method that allows municipalities to easily check their (digitization) projects for their contribution to sustainable development. The report and the questionnaire are available for download.

In 2018 the "Implications of the Paris Agreement for national climate protection ambition" project is rolled out in support of the Talanoa Dialogue and these 8 countries will be examined carefully: the EU, Germany, China, USA, Canada, Japan, India and Brasil. How are they implementing the Paris Agreement? Can these contributions secure a 1.5-2°C degree world? Who is a climate leader, and who isn't? This new project will shed light on the actual climate impact of said countries mitigation efforts and their level of ambition.

Using natural resources sustainably in the long term requires applying and scaling-up resource efficient technologies and infrastructures as well as changing behaviour and social practices. Technologies and infrastructure can only then unfold resource savings potential, when accepted and used across society. In this context, socio-economic and socio-cultural developments will affect both the availability and the use of technological and social innovations.

In the research programme "Smart Energy Showcases – Digital Agenda for the Energy Transition" (SINTEG), over 300 research institutions and companies in five model regions are developing new solutions for a completely renewable energy system. Ecologic Institute is part of the accompanying research process of the SINTEG programme, where it leads the work on the legal framework. Ecologic Institute supports the Federal Ministry of Economics (BMWI) and the SINTEG showcases in generating insights on how the regulatory framework has to be adapted so that the solutions developed in the programme can be put into practice.

The valuation of damages and risks for the human health caused by environmental pressures is a methodological challenge, as there are no market prices for most of those damages and risks. But a number of economic methods have been developed to estimate and value those risks and damages.

The objective of this assignment is to provide country specific and up-to-date information and analysis on the main national policies and measures in the 28 Member States relevant for the climate and energy objectives set out in the Europe 2020 Strategy, as well as for the Energy Union targets.

<p>The framework agreement with the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy includes support in economic, technical and legal issues in the areas of energy efficiency, renewable energy sources for heating and cooling systems and waste heat, among others.</p>