The economic crisis has had a negative effect on the state of the public budgets. Consolidation measures and the slow recovery of the economy will continue to influence the budget until 2014. However, an increase in public spending on innovation and education is possible in principle, despite...

The European Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) is a key instrument in European climate policy and covers emitters from the energy and manufacturing sector. The ETS pilot phase (2005-2007) was characterised by an oversupply of emission allowances mainly due to the "generous" allocation of...

The environmental effectiveness of an emission trading system depends on the one hand on the stringency of the cap and on the other hand on the scheme's ability to provide stable regulatory conditions and incentives for investment in emission saving technologies. However, in case of highly...

The EU Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) that covers emitters from industry and the energy sector representing 40 percent of the EU's total greenhouse gas emissions is the biggest implementation worldwide of a cap-and-trade scheme. The EU ETS has been the core instrument of European climate...

The EU Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) that covers emitters from industry and energy supply representing 40 percent of the EU's greenhouse gas emissions is the biggest implementation of a cap-and-trade scheme worldwide. In this paper, we analyse sectoral allocation caps focusing on three...

EU climate and energy policy defines ambitious objectives for the EU member countries requiring a fundamental change of energy systems. This paper suggests basing the analysis of restructuring options on energy services instead of energy flows. In order to provide the energy services in a...

The mitigation of (anthropogenic) climate change requires an extensive decarbonisation of production and consumption activities and thus a major transformation of societal processes and energy systems. In order to monitor and evaluate the transformation path en route to the long-term climate and...

A transformation of prevailing energy systems requires adequate measurement systems. In this paper we propose an energy-service based indicator set and a composite index for monitoring sustainable energy development in the residential sector and electricity and heat supply in Austria. The system...