Germany aims to phase out coal to achieve its 2030 climate target, for which a UK-style carbon price floor is considered. But this measure comes with risks related to the uncertainty about what price level is sufficient, and the waterbed effect arising from unilateral policy under the EU-ETS....

The first pillar of the old paradigm of carbon pricing is the assumption that an emissions trading scheme is the most cost-efficient way to achieve a certain emission reduction target. However, it has become obvious that the old paradigm is unable to solve a number of challenges, e.g. market...

The role of biomass as a primary energy resource is highly debated. Next generation biofuels are suggested to be associated with low specific greenhouse gas emissions. But land consumption, demand for scarce water, competition with food production and harmful indirect land-use effects put a...

Following the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima Daiichi, in summer 2011 the German parliament decided to phase-out nuclear power by 2022. When this decision was taken, a number of model-based analyses investigated the influence this decision would have on electricity prices and CO2 emissions. They...

An economy with clean and dirty intermediate inputs may fall into a trap characterized by low environmental quality and low life expectancy, while the others converge to opposite steady states. We propose new strategies towards sustainable growth. They include: (i) taxes (subsidies) imposed on...