The EU adopts essential climate issues – such as carbon taxation – by special legislative procedures. This means that the European Parliament is not an equal co-legislator and the Council decides by unanimous vote, providing each Member State with a veto. This is a problem because the urgency of climate action requires swift and bold EU action. EU climate action cannot afford a governance structure that allows one Member State to hold all others hostage in essential areas of climate action. A new Ecologic paper explores how to address this problem.

This report arises from the European Commission's Environmental Implementation Review process, a biennial assessment of Member State performance on implementation of EU environmental law and policy. It addresses an issue identified in the 2017 review as a root cause of implementation weaknesses; poor environmental governance. The authors from IEEP, Ecologic Institute and the Central European University outline the development of, and the rationale for, a standard assessment template, the Environmental Governance Assessment (EGA).

A 2018 report co-published by Interpol estimates the annual turnover generated by environmental crime at 110 - 281 billion US dollars. Environmental crime causes significant damage to the environment and public health. This report presents insights on environmental criminal law and its application in Germany. It is the result of a research project carried out by Ecologic Institute for the German Federal Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt). The report is available for download.

This study, commissioned by Greenpeace, analyses a range of existing measures that have a direct impact on the increased uptake of electric passenger cars with respect to 1) the measures’ overall effectiveness in incentivising electric vehicles (EV purchases); 2) the ease of administering them; 3) affordability for governments; and 4) the consistency with other goals, mainly with the goal of reducing traffic. The study is available for download.

The objective of this project is to provide clarity on the legal nature of the allowances of the EU Emission Trading System (EU ETS) excluding the international carbon units (e.g. assigned amount units (AAUs), certified emission reductions (CERs), emission reduction units (ERUs)) pursuant to the Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

In June 2019, the joint statement of the Expert Commission on the second progress report of the German government was published. Ecologic Institute provides scientific support to the work of the Expert Commission with a focus on the key topics that the Expert Commission selected for their joint statement.

This final report addresses the question of how German resource policy could be further developed, based on the studies within the research project "Policies to Strengthen the German Resource Efficiency Program" (PolRess II). Options for further development are shown and their possible advantages and disadvantages discussed. Options include tailoring the process of the strategy, dealing with related strategy processes, and instrumentation. The final report of the PolRess II project, to which Dr. Martin Hirschnitz-Garbers of Ecologic Institute contributed, is available for download.

This study by Ecologic Institute shows that Germany can learn a lot from experiences made in its neighbouring countries to give its climate policies a robust framework and thus make it more reliable, also for investments in climate-friendly measures. At the same time, Germany could establish a new standard through legislation adapted to the latest EU requirements, which would than again serve as an example for our neighbours.

In the current debate about a Federal Climate Change Act, people often overlook that in Germany about half of the federal states already have a climate change law as a comprehensive legal framework. In a study for WWF Germany, Ecologic Institute gives an overview over core elements of federal climate change laws and their impact on a potential Federal Climate Change Act. The study underlines the added value of such climate change laws. It concludes that climate change laws at the federal and state levels are not only compatible but strengthen each other. The study can be downloaded at the WWF website.

The research report by Ecologic Institute provides a legal assessment of whether German law is suitable to achieve the sustainable development goal "land degradation neutral word" (LDN) by 2030, and recommends options for improvement. The analysis focuses on rules for erosion, sealing by human settlement and pollution by industry. The report also compiles and explains key insights and lessons learned in English, as a contribution to the international discussion on implementing LDN. The report is available for download.

A report by Ecologic Institute and Climact shows that the draft National Energy and Climate Plans presented by governments at the start of 2019 are in acute need of improvement. They suffer from inadequate targets and insufficient details on the policies and financing needed to move towards net-zero emission economies in Europe. Member States also need to do better in involving their national stakeholders in providing input to the plans, to benefit from their expertise and to get them on board for future policies. The report is available for download.

This study, co-authored by Raffaele Piria, provides an overview of the New England region, the current focus of energy and climate policy debates, key energy policy institutions, and the common electricity market. The study was produced to accompany the New England-Germany Energy Transition Forum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2019.

Bangladesh needs to turn its pledges into effective policy instrument to realize the promises about greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation made in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC). In that regard, analyzing the energy and climate policies of Bangladesh and consulting with the stakeholders from Bangladesh and other countries, Shafiqul Alam provides insights on the possible policy instrument for Bangladesh to achieve the target of NDC and raises some fundamental policy issues. His study is available for download.

How can the recycling of construction materials in Germany be further expanded and professionalised? What needs to be changed so that more high-quality recycled construction materials can be used, especially in high-rise construction? The stakeholder analysis by Ecologic Institute focuses on these questions. Based on interviews with actors in the construction industry, concrete proposals for measures will be presented.

This assessment system is the first of its kind with an integrated approach to assess sustainability and the transformative potential of civil society initiatives.