Despite regulation efforts, CO2 emissions from European road transport have continued to rise. Increased use of electricity offers a promising decarbonization option, both to fuel electric vehicles and run power-to-x systems producing synthetic fuels. To understand the economic implications of...

Countries differ considerably in terms of the price drivers pay for gasoline. This paper uses data for 132 countries for the period 1995–2008 to investigate the implications of these differences for the consumption of gasoline for road transport. To address the potential for simultaneity bias,...

Using detailed data originating from several hundred households of the German Residential Energy Survey (GRECS), this paper empirically investigates the returns on investment in home-equipped photovoltaics (PV) installations. We find that these returns were particularly high in the years 2009 to...

China has realized that for its own sake and from the international community’s perspective, it cannot afford to continue along the conventional path of encouraging economic growth at the expense of the environment. Accordingly, the country has placed ecological goals at the same level of...

The coming energy transition in residential neighbourhoods is the result of the increasing cost of CO2 emission and the decreasing costs of solar PhotoVoltaics (PV) and alternative techniques of residential heating, namely Combined Heat and Power (CHP) and heat pump. The optimal transition is...

Evidence on income as a crucial driver of renewable energy consumption in Africa is mixed. But hydro-power accounts for over 90% of renewable energy in sub-Sahara Africa alone. Yet, empirical evidence suggests that hydro-power may not be as environmentally sustainable as believed and, as a...

Increasing the use of heat pumps is an important measure for reducing carbon emissions in the heating sector as well as natural gas imports. This report uses an electricity sector model to investigate the effects of an accelerated expansion of the heat pump stock on the German electricity sector...

Lack of cooling and cold-chain access is a critical development challenge that has significant implications for people's livelihoods, productivity, health, food, and nutritional security. While business-as-usual demand projections suggest 19 new cooling appliances will be sold every second by...

The flexibilization of electricity demand and production becomes increasingly important in energy systems with rising shares of fluctuating renewable electricity production. Power-to-heat and cogeneration units, combined with thermal storages, are considered as promising technologies for the...

China, the world's largest energy consumer, has been increasingly relying on pricing policies to improve energy efficiency in recent years. This paper estimates the impact of Differential Electricity Pricing (DEP) policy, which covers the most energy-intensive industries in China. Under the DEP...