With greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions decreasing by more than 18% in the 1990s, Germany appears to be among the few industrialised countries which are on track to meet the targets they committed themselves to under the Kyoto Protocol. This achievement may appear less remarkable if one takes into...

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...

Discussions about the future options of the energy systems of industrialised countries are held almost exclusively in terms of alternative resources of energy supply and related technologies. This paper tries to broaden the view of the technological options by focusing on the technical and...

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...