Current climate and energy policy has to operate under an ex-ante unforeseen economic crisis. An obvious consequence is the collapse of prices for carbon emission allowances as, for example, seen in the European Union. However, this price collapse may be amplified by the interaction of a carbon...

In the absence of an international agreement on climate policy, unilateral carbon abatement creates two problems: It tends to have a detrimental effect on domestic competitiveness, and it leads to an increase in carbon emissions abroad (leakage). This paper analyses two policies that have...

From a current perspective the Paris Agreement is not sufficient to limit the global mean temperature below 2°C above pre-industrial level as intended. The Agreement stipulates that parties review, compare and ratchet up efforts to combat climate change over time. Within this process,...

We investigate the importance of 'what'-flexibility on top of 'where'- and 'when'-flexibility for alternative emission control schemes that prescribe long-term temperature targets and eventually impose additional constraints on the rate of temperature change. We find that 'what'-flexibility...

Voluntary environmental management programs for firms have become an increasingly popular instrument of environmental policy. However, the literature's conclusion on the effectiveness of suchprograms is ambiguous, and for the European region there is a lack of evidence based on a large control...

We analyze the drivers and barriers that influence investments increasing the energy efficiency of firms' production processes or buildings in the German manufacturing sector based on microdata. In particular, we shed light on the relationship between financial barriers (e. g. credit...

Increasing energy efficiency is one of the main goals in current German energy and climate policies. We study the determinants of energy efficiency in the German manufacturing sector based on official firm-level production census data. By means of a stochastic frontier analysis, we estimate the...