German wind power development is a technological success story but has involved very high subsidies. Germany was a latecomer in wind power but specific political conditions in the late 1980s and early 1990s allowed the implementation of the feed in tariff regime which has characterised Germany...

Indian economic growth is likely to lead to a huge increase of energy use in buildings but so far, policies to address this issue are lacking. Standard building energy use concerning glazing, air conditioning and lighting in different climatic zones across India leads to energy use per m2 which...

As part of the international climate negotiations there is a lot of discussion about methodologies for quantifying emission reductions of greenhouse gas reduction projects (baseline discussion) and about granting emission reduction credits only to projects that are additional (Investment...

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) was originally seen as an instrument with a bilateral character where an entity from an industrialised country invests in a project in a developing country (DC). Also, multilateral funds were envisaged that would bundle investments to spread project risks....

The countries wishing to join the EU have a high potential for low cost greenhouse gas emission reduction. As they cannot join the "bubble" agreement for the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, project-based Joint Implementation (JI) could be a powerful strategy to integrate accession...

The Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol could create a great chance for developing countries to profit from projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve the economic and environmental situation in the host country. The project cycle for the CDM differs from a usual...

Transaction costs will reduce the attractiveness of the Kyoto Mechanisms compared to domestic abatement options. Especially the project-based mechanisms CDM and JI are likely to entail considerable costs of baseline development, verification and certification. The AIJ pilot phase and the PCF...

International climate negotiations have specified that projects under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) should not lead to a "diversion" of official development assistance (ODA). It is however unchallenged that ODA can be used in capacity building for the CDM. Diversion can be interpreted in...

China has had an enormous growth of energy and electricity consumption during the last decades. This has been fuelled primarily by using domestic coal resources. Until 1997, annual construction of power stations averaged around 15 GW which was not sufficient to alleviate the demand surplus....