The Covid-19 pandemic and, most recently, the war that has erupted in Ukraine have shown that such crises can have a major impact on European emissions trading. This raises the central question: Can and must the European emissions trading system become more crisis-proof? In the present project, concrete crisis scenarios are developed that could put a strain on the European emissions trading system (EU ETS). This is followed by an analysis of the possibilities that the existing laws and regulations offer for reacting to such crises. The further aim of the project is to show ways to improve the handling of crises within the trading system.

In KliMaWerk, integrated measures and strategies are developed to increase hydrological and ecological resilience for watercourses affected by climate change. Special consideration is given to low-flow and drying situations, alternating with heavy rainfall events. The ecological functions of the water bodies as well as competing water body uses are taken into account through the integrated consideration of an entire water body catchment area. What is new here is the holistic view of the landscape water balance, instead of a narrow focus on individual spatial elements or individual user groups.

Agri-food systems in Central Eastern Europe are key to achieving the EU climate goals. To deliver these goals, strategic planning and integrated policies are needed that will enable reduced emissions, increased carbon removals, and at the same time support biodiversity and adaptation. Ambitious climate targets for the agri-food sector are needed, as well as alignment of the national strategic plans under the Common Agricultural Policy with climate targets and the European Green Deal objectives.

Germany took over the G7 Presidency from the United Kingdom at the start of 2022. Climate continues to stand on top of the G7's agenda as global emissions continue to grow. In this project Ecologic Institute, in partnership with WWF and E3G, brings together a select group of think-tanks and NGOs to discuss priorities for the German G7 presidency. Based on policy briefs by E3G and Ecologic Institute, experts in the German climate policy field discuss key issues around climate at the G7 to identify and concretise priorities and action items for the G7. Key topics include decarbonising industry, climate partnerships and their financing, climate clubs, and loss and damage.

The EU has specified climate neutrality as a legally binding 2050 target. This transformation requires bold policy tools that can deliver concrete results – sector-by-sector. To inspire policymakers across the EU to get active, Agora Energiewende is compiling best practice examples of policies that are successful in initiating progress towards climate neutrality. Ecologic Institute contributes to this project by researching and drafting fiches for ten best practice cases. Moreover, the team is supporting Agora Energiewende in selecting suitable cases. Ecologic Institute draws on its in-house expertise in a wide range of sectors.

Regional governments are key players in driving the transformation towards climate neutrality, as they are the ones who enable and implement solutions on the ground. For the European Parliament's Committee on Regional Development, Ecologic Institute together with partners identifies EU regions that are successfully transforming their economies towards climate neutrality. Based on six case studies, the project distills key drivers, conditions and mechanisms for a successful transformation of regional economies – leading to concrete policy recommendations for the EU level on how to support in this effort.

The briefing provides a didactic overview on carbon farming. Specifically, it summarizes the current scientific understanding of the mitigation potentials, co-benefits and trade-offs of carbon farming, as well as the key agronomic practices and key knowledge gaps that need to be addressed to scale up carbon farming and to deliver robust climate mitigation and EU Green Deal objectives.

To strengthen climate protection in Germany, the amendment of the Climate Protection Act in 2021 further tightened the greenhouse gas emission targets for 2030 and set the goal of climate neutrality for the year 2045. An important step in the energy sector is the phase-out of lignite mining and coal-based electricity generation. The decision to phase out lignite mining in Germany by 2038 at the latest does not only affect energy and climate policy. In the coming years, the lignite mining areas will face a fundamental structural change, which is to be flanked with extensive funding and steered in the sense of sustainable spatial development.

Climate lawsuits have become a frequently chosen tool in the fight for more ambitious climate policies in recent years. In the extensive reporting on this topic, one aspect has so far been neglected: the differences between the jurisprudence in the Global South and the Global North. To address the related issues, Verfassungsblog, Völkerrechtsblog and the journal World Comparative Law (WCL) in cooperation with the Ecologic Institute are organizing an online symposium on the subject of "Comparative Climate Litigation in North-South Perspective".

Ecologic Institute, together with the Oeko-Institut and Prof. Dr. Klinski of the HWR Berlin, supports the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK) in the preparation of negotiations at the EU level, the implementation of EU law, and the further development of the national legal framework. The support is provided by elaborating legal issues including economic and other effects as well as by ad hoc analyses.

To achieve climate neutrality by 2050, EU policy will have to be reoriented – from incremental towards structural change. As expressed in the European Green Deal, the challenge is to initiate the necessary transformation to climate neutrality in the coming years, while enhancing competitiveness, productivity, employment. To mobilise the creative, financial and political resources, the EU also needs a governance framework that facilitates cross-sectoral policy integration and that allows citizens, public and private stakeholders to participate in the process and to own the results.

The project "Capacity Building Emissions Trading to Support Bilateral Cooperation" aims to disseminate knowledge on emissions trading internationally and to support partner countries in setting up national emissions trading systems. The consortium supports the Federal Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety's bilateral activities in the field of capacity development and training on emissions trading. Former and current cooperation partners include Brazil, China, Chile, Kazakhstan, Mexico, South Korea, Thailand, Turkey and Ukraine.

Photovoltaic technology is a key lever for decarbonising Berlin's power consumption and for social participation in the transformation process, especially for tenants. Therefore, solar energy and projects on rental apartment blocks are key elements of the Berlin Senate's Energy and Climate Protection Programme. In the research project "ElectricityNeighbours", Ecologic Institute and IÖW evaluate the experience gained so far in implementing such prosumer projects in Berlin, outline innovation potentials for the field and develop ideas on how the regulatory framework can be further developed. In doing so, the team looks beyond pure tenant electricity projects to the potentials of sector coupling.

The H2020 EU-funded PONDERFUL project will investigate how ponds can be used as nature-based solutions (NBS) for climate change. It will evaluate the interaction and feedback between biodiversity, ecosystem services and climate in pondscapes.