The positive impacts of an increasing share of renewable energy (RE) on the mitigation of climate change as well as on the decrease of the dependence of energy imports are indisputable. However, such are currently still the additional costs of heat and electricity generation from most renewable...

The causality between energy consumption and real income in developed countries has been a very vital research topic in recent years. Raising concerns about climate change and global warming increase the pressure on policy makers to take action against energy depletion. Unfortunately these...

COP17 in Durban revealed once again the general willingness to commit to the 2°-target and the difficulty to reach an international Post-Kyoto agreement until 2015. There is strong evidence from model-based analysis that economic costs of reaching the 2°-target will be below global GDP growth...

Renewable energy deployment is growing rapidly on a global scale. China, Germany, Japan and the US are among the countries with highest capacity of renewables installed. In Germany, for example, the large growth in renewable power generation (RPG) capacities in the past has been mainly due to...

The use of renewable energy (RE) sources plays a significant role in increasing the security of energy supply and mitigating climate change. Whereas this role is undisputed, there is an ongoing discussion about the employment impacts of promoting RE deployment. In the past years several studies...

The use of renewable energy (RE) sour ces plays a significant role in increa sing the security of energy supply and mitigating climate change. Whereas this role is und isputed, there is an ongoing discussion about the employment impacts of promoting RE deployment. So far no common methodological...

In recent years Germany - like other countries  - has followed strategies to expand the share of renewable energy (RE) in the electricit y and heating market. Looking at realized investments and the dynamics of market penetrat ion of RE technologies the country is in the position of a...

The aim of this paper is to assess the impacts of German energy policies on the competitiveness of national energy intensive industries. The basic idea behind our analysis is that energy policies in Germany create a certain electricity market structure resulting in a certain electricity price,...

Ageing societies influence the development of industrialised countries. A changing age composition of the population not only affects pension and social security systems but also infrastructure, housing market, available workforce and consumption pattern. Though the process proceeds only slowly,...