Voluntary agreements in various forms are being increasingly regarded as an instrument to substitute or complement regulating and pricing instruments. As, from a theoretical point of view, this instrument has strong proponents and opponents, it is important to make a careful analysis of the...

The energy demand and supply projections of the Swiss government funded by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy and carried out by a consortium of institutes and consulting companies are based on two types of energy models: macroeconomic general equilibrium models and bottom-up models for each...

The paper first outlines the challenges the global energy system is facing. It then summarises the present knowledge of energy efficient solutions in all energy using sectors from primary energy to useful energy and, more importantly, from useful energy to energy services (material efficiency...

Ergänzend zu den im ifo Schnelldienst 3/2006 veröffentlichten Beiträgen gehen Eberhard Jochem, ETH Zürich, und Harald Bradke, Fraunhofer Institut für System- und Innovationsforschung, davon aus, dass Versorgungssicherheit durch Ausnutzung von Effizienzpotentialen zu erreichen sei. Ihrer...

The focus of the paper is on the individual decision of energy consumers, and it's relation to sustainable consumption. Consumer behavior is based on individual decisions, but it depends largely on supply-side measures and an appropriate infrastructure (e.g. the availability of energy-efficient...

The EU appliance energy consumption labeling scheme is a key component of efforts to increase the diffusion of energy-efficient household appliances. In this paper, the determinants of consumer knowledge of the energy label for house-hold appliances and the choice of class-A energy-efficient...

Many countries are currently considering bans on incandescent light bulbs and other policies to enhance the residential diffusion of energy-saving compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs). However the reasons for currently limited diffusion of CFLs are largely unknown. This paper employs a Double Hurdle...

Taxing imports from regions which are not subject to climate policy and subsidizing exports into these regions have recently been proposed to address presumed negative effects of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) on industry competitiveness and carbon leakage. This paper analyzes the...

In this paper we econometrically analyze the impact of several economic, environmental and social determinants for the average per capita demand for water and sewage in about 600 water supply areas in Germany. Besides prices, income and household size, we also consider the effects of population...