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Highlights • Extension of European power sector model to also include the German heat demand sector. • Detailed modelling of combined heat and power (CHP) and power-to-heat technologies. • Findings: Up to additional 260 TWh of electricity demand through power-to-heat. • Additional power is covered by capacity expansions of wind, gas and imports. • Power storage capacity development shifts over from battery to power-to-gas technology. Abstract The heating sector accounts for a major part of Germanys energy consumption and carbon emissions. Both, renewable energy and power-to-heat, could help decarbonizing it. To analyse the impacts of power-to-heat and heat storage on power system development, a dynamic long-term power sector investment and dispatch model for Europe is extended to also include German individual and district heating. Findings show that power-to-heat causes a substantial rise in electricity demand, even if heat energy demand decreases strongly. Power generation from wind and natural gas accordingly increase. Power-to-gas capacity increasingly substitutes battery storage. Combined heat and power does not play a role in future scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Germany is the largest economy in Europe and the leading renewable energy user comparable to none in the entire of the European continents. It is in reference to these developments that this study investigates whether the impacts of renewable energy have consolidated the economic growth prospects of the country. To ensure this, quarterly time series data from 1971Q1 to 2013QIV was used. The study employed the Clemente-Montanes-Reyes detrended structural break test, the Bayer-Hanck combined cointegration test and the ARDL bounds testing approach to cointegration. In addition, the causality analysis was observed using VECM Granger causality framework. The results confirmed the existence of cointegration among the variables. The results show that renewable energy consumption in Germany consolidates the country's economic growth prospects to the extend that a 1% increase in renewable energy consumption boosts German economic growth by 0.2194%. In addition to that, a 1% increase in capital lead to the rise in economic growth by 1.1320%. While a 0.5125% increase in economic growth is due to 1% increase in labor productivity. The causality analysis on the other hand, revealed the existence of feedback effect between renewable energy consumption and economic growth. While the relationship between renewable energy consumption and capital is found to be bidirectional and same inference was found to exist between capital and economic growth. The study proposes solid mechanisms that will help in averting renewable energy market failure locally and internationally among others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper quantitatively evaluates nation stability, defined as the state of a country''s social and economic system as measured by multiple evaluation indicators, and observes its transitions. Data Envelopment Analysis/Malmquist Index (DEA/MI) methodology is applied to the panel data for 97 countries for the period 1981–2004, although the DEA application is totally different from the DEA efficiency/productivity analysis. This analysis includes a “unified” country (Germany) and “split” countries (former Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia). Using the novel panel-data handling proposed in this study, we demonstrate shifts in stability before/after the unification or split. The stability of split countries fell by 50% or more, showing that they were extremely unstable before the split. The use of lower-bound DEA together with ordinary DEA enables a country''s stability to be evaluated in terms of both negative and positive aspects. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this article we demonstrate how challenging greenhouse gas reduction targets of up to 95% until 2050 can be achieved in the German electricity sector. In the analysis, we focus on the main requirements to reach such challenging targets. To account for interdependencies between the electricity market and the rest of the economy, different models were used to account for feedback loops with all other sectors. We include scenarios with different runtimes and retrofit costs for existing nuclear plants to determine the effects of a prolongation of nuclear power plants in Germany. Key findings for the electricity sector include the importance of a European-wide coordinated electricity grid extension and the exploitation of regional comparative cost effects for renewable sites. Due to political restrictions, nuclear energy will not be available in Germany in 2050. However, the nuclear life-time extension has a positive impact on end consumer electricity prices as well as economic growth in the medium term, if retrofit costs do not exceed certain limits. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Hospital occupancy is a key metric in hospital-capacity planning in Germany, even though this metric neglects important drivers of economic efficiency, for example treatment costs and case mix. We suggest an alternative metric, which incorporates economic efficiency explicitly, and illustrate how this metric can be used in the hospital-capacity planning cycle. The practical setting of this study is the hospital capacity planning process in the German federal state of Rheinland-Pfalz. The planning process involves all 92 acute-care hospitals of this federal state. The study is based on standard hospital data, including annual costs, number of cases--disaggregated by medical departments and ICD codes, respectively--length-of-stay, certified beds, and occupancy rates. Using the developed metric, we identified 18 of the 92 hospitals as inefficient and targets for over-proportional capacity cuts. On the upside, we identified 15 efficient hospitals. The developed model and analysis has affected the federal state's most recent medium term planning cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]