Light-duty vehicles are a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Toward that end, most industrialized countries established fuel economy regulations or vehicle CO2-emission standards. This essay provides an overview of the adequacy of these instruments as means of climate policy. First, we...

Population and economic growth will lead to additional energy demand in the coming decades. Consumption increase in the period to 2030 has to and will be met mainly by fossil fuels. There is enough oil and gas for the rest of the century. The challenge is to avoid the imminent growth of CO2...

Under today's conditions, global energy demand would double until 2050 and CO2 emissions could be expected to increase even more (by 137%). This would be related to an increasing dependence of OECD member countries on energy imports, and also to a further aggravation of the global greenhouse...

The Energiewende in Germany aims at increasing the share of fluctuating renewable energy drastically. With this, new challenges for the electricity system arise. Different types of storage and other flexibility options are available to cope with these challenges. This paper discusses different...

In order to ensure the long-term efficiency and security of electricity supply, improving the market and system integration of renewable energy sources (RES) is of increasing importance. First, the question is how to integrate RES into the regular allocation and remuneration mechanism of the...

In Germany, the electricity system is evolving to be dominated by feed-ins from volatile renewable sources. The challenge implied is to buffer these fluctuations with the aim to stabilise the system-a task we are used to see carried out in the past by conventional power plants almost...

The German "Energiewende" constitutes a paradigm shift. While posing challenges to politics, the economy and society, it also offers new opportunities. Nuclear power and fossil fuels will be replaced with renewable energy and energy efficiency will be substantially increased. This article first...

The past years have seen several tax reform proposals being put forward in Germany. The most prominent ones count the Business Tax Reform 2008 (BTR 2008), the Dual Income Tax (DIT) proposal advanced by the German Council of Economic Advisors and Kirchhof's flat tax. We analyze, compare and...

Different pricing policy measures exist to improve the environmental accounting of motorised transport modes as well as to finance road infrastructure investment. A CO2 related tax or road pricing are two examples of such measures. This article describes a computable general equilibrium model...