As part of the project Dialogue Forum "Private Households", a mapping of existing actors and initiatives in Germany was carried out and evaluated. The aim of this structured categorisation is to gain an overview of the current landscape of measures in order to identify which effective starting points are already covered by current measures and which are not, and how existing measures can be improved and their effectiveness increased.
The publication summarizes the key messages from all 20 joint research projects and the seven cross-cutting topics of the German research focus "Plastics in the Environment". Structured by main topics, the central results are presented in order to derive recommendations for various addressees. More than 70 researchers and practitioners from across the research focus have jointly co-authored the key messages.
This report takes stock of emission trajectories, climate policies and complementary policies in G7 countries. It helps to identify gaps in the existing policy landscape of global decarbonisation efforts and proposes potential improvements. Based on these insights, we consider that G7 countries have many viable options for accelerating the global energy transition.
This paper describes important findings from the project "Data Governance and Regulation for a Sustainable Berlin" and formulates – in addition to the application field-specific papers – overarching recommendations.
The EU has set out to become the world's first climate-neutral continent, but how are its regions progressing towards this goal? A new report commissioned by the European Parliament assesses this question. It discusses how progress towards net-zero can be measured on regional level and identifies common barriers facing regional governments. The study is based on six case studies from EU regions that have successfully begun the journey towards net neutrality. For the report, Ecologic Institute provided conceptual input on how to define climate neutrality and on how to gauge regions' progress towards it. In addition, the team carried out the case study on industry decarbonisation in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.
This final report assesses the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) provisions of the SUP-Directive with a view to its implementation in the Member States. The focus of this analysis lays on those aspects that represent novelties as compared to other EU legislation on EPR, and thus raise legal questions that have not been addressed before, especially regarding the cleaning up of litter from relevant SUP products.
The central objective of the work presented in this report was to assess the European Commission's Strategic Long-Term Vision and supplementary materials and reflect on them in light of state-of-the-art sector analyses.
The UNITED project report "Business Analysis of UNITED Pilots" provides a detailed business analysis of the various pilot projects. This analysis includes an assessment of the economic viability, SWOT and PESTEL analyses as well as a review of the financial aspects of the projects. The aim of the report is to assess the financial attractiveness and feasibility of multi-use concepts in European marine areas, with a particular focus on the synergies and challenges arising from the combination of different maritime activities.
This paper examines the concept of an "extended" digital product passport from a socio-ecological perspective using the example of batteries for electric vehicles. It evaluates different approaches to data regulation and formulates policy recommendations for decision makers in Berlin. It is based on preliminary work from the project, in which in particular three ideal types of data regulation and a methodology for their scenario-based evaluation were developed.
The European Commission's Fit for 55 package proposes two significant reforms to energy pricing in the EU: Energy Taxation Directive (ETD) reform; and extending emissions trading to cover emissions from buildings and road transport (ETS2). A concern among stakeholders is how these reforms would impact lower income households. Various policy mechanisms are under consideration to help address potential distributional impacts. Based on a microsimulation model developed by the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3) with IEEP, this report analyses a series of reform scenarios supported by graphical depictions of their distributional effects in Germany.
This report identifies various risks that climate change impacts pose to the critical electric infrastructure in Germany and the United States, including the generation, transmission and distribution facilities, and suggests a political course that both countries can follow. The American States of California and Texas are used as case studies in this report.
This paper is a slight adaptation of the German-language analysis "Wasserstoffimportsicherheit für Deutschland – Zeitliche Entwicklung, Risiken und Strategien auf dem Weg zur Klimaneutralität", published in December 2021. The analysis takes a close look at Germany’s future need for hydrogen imports, hydrogen import-related risks as well as strategies to secure hydrogen imports.
The European Environment Agency's report "Costs of Adaptation versus Costs of Inaction" highlights the urgent need for climate change adaptation strategies. In the face of increasing climate events such as heatwaves, forest fires and floods, the report notes that the European Union has already taken important initiatives on adaptation, including the formulation of the EU Adaptation Strategy. This strategy aims to make adaptation measures more efficient, faster and more comprehensive and to increase international readiness to act.
A team at Ecologic Institute has produced new best-practice guidelines for co-creating research. The guidelines are based on experiences gathered in the Horizon 2020 project COACCH (Co-designing the Assessment of Climate Change Costs). The authors summarise an in-depth evaluation carried out over the four-year collaborative research process. Based on this evaluation, the Ecologic Institute team highlights lessons learned and proposes step-by-step guidelines for best-practice in co-creation.
To support Member States meet their reporting requirements and improve their monitoring, Ecologic Institute developed a site selection guidance. The use of this guidance will help Member States develop a representative network of ecosystem monitoring sites across the EU, covering freshwater ecosystems, natural and semi-natural habitats as well as forests. The guidance on how sites are selected is voluntary for the Member States to apply in accordance with their own circumstances. It can be used for setting up a new monitoring network or expanding/improving an existing network to identify the most appropriate locations to monitor.
Support to Member States regarding the monitoring of effects of air pollution on ecosystems according to Article 9(1) of the NEC Directive (Directive (EU) 2016/2284)