Amidst other national and global climate protection initiatives, the new EU Commission under the leadership of Ursula von der Leyen is facing the challenge of concretely following through on previous announcements regarding an ambitious climate policy. Specifically, action must be taken to raise...

The construction of a second Baltic Sea natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany (Nord Stream 2) is very controversial for political, energy economic, and ecological reasons. The project owner and some European energy companies argue that it is a profitable, private-sector investment project...

Power generation from lignite and hard coal was responsible for more than a quarter of German greenhouse gas emissions in 2016. Of all federal states, North Rhine-Westphalia is by far the largest carbon emitter. The Growth, Structural Change and Regional Development Commission (also known as...

Structural changes in the European natural gas market such as liberalization, increasing demand, and growing import dependency have triggered new attempts to model this market accurately. This paper presents a model of the European natural gas supply, GASMOD, which is structured as a...

We apply the EMF 23 study design to simulate the effects of the reference case and the scenarios to European natural gas supplies to 2025. We use GASMOD, a strategic severallayer model of European gas supply, consisting of upstream natural gas producers, traders in each consuming European...

As a result of the Russian attack on Ukraine, natural gas prices skyrocketed in 2022 and Germany in particular felt the impact of its strong dependency on Russia. Prices have since relaxed, the European natural gas industry has overcome the uncertainty due to the energy crisis in 2022, and the...

For many years now, nitrate concentrations have exceeded the trigger value of 50 milligrams per liter at nearly one-fifth of the groundwater sampling sites in Germany. Apart from impairing the ecosystem by, for example, causing eutrophication of water bodies, nitrate-polluted drinking water also...

The European Green Deal, initiated by the EU Commission, is a package of measures aimed at decarbonization and sustainable economic development with the goal of making the European Union climate neutral by 2050. To achieve this goal, the emission reductions target must be increased from 40...

This paper discusses the potential role of fossil natural gas (and other gases) in the process of the energy transformation in Europe on its way to complete decarbonization. Mainstream conventional wisdom has it that natural gas, perhaps in combination with other gases, should maintain an...