The option of adapting to climate change is becoming more important in climate change policy. Hence, responding to climate change now involves both mitigation to address the cause and adaptation as a response to already ongoing or expected changes. These changes are also of relevance for the...

Recent efforts to promote a transition to a low carbon economy have been influenced by suggestions that a low carbon transition offers challenges and might yield economic benefits comparable to those of the previous industrial revolutions. This paper examines these arguments and the challenges...

Achieving the objectives of the German governments 2010 Energy Concept and the accelerated phase-out of nuclear energy will require significant investment in restructuring energy supply. In particular, this includes investment in installations for the use of renewable energy sources in the power...

Required economic "provisions in advance" due to additional investment costs for the transformation of the energy supply in Germany [the "Energiewende"] are in general defined as differentials to today's prices of fossil fuels and wholesale prices of electricity. However, these prices may not...

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...

The notion "risk governance" refers to an integrated concept on how to deal with complex, ambiguous and uncertain impacts in particular. The notion of governance pertains to the many ways in which all relevant actors, individuals and institutions, public and private, deal with interventions that...

Coal-fired power stations are responsible for around a third of Germany's carbon emissions. Failure to reduce the persistently high level of coal-fired power generation threatens Germany's climate targets for 2020 and 2050 and undermines a sustainable energy transition. Calculations by DIW...

Achieving the objectives of the German government's 2010 Energy Concept and the accelerated phase-out of nuclear energy will require significant investment in restructuring energy supply. In particular, these include investments in facilities for the use of renewable energies in the power and...

Nuclear energy policy should have been a major area of cooperation for France and Germany, playing a lead role in the energy policy of the EU. Yet they have retained different options, especially regarding nuclear energy while the EU energy policy remained very indicative. These two...

Social planners in most western countries will be facing two long-lasting challenges in the next years: energy transition and fiscal consolidation. One problem is that governments might consider that implementing an energy transition could get in the way of achieving a fiscal consolidation. If...