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Humans currently perceive glaciers as icons of a pristine high mountain landscape. Glaciers attract millions of visitors every year and add to building Alpine identity, but also provide ecosystem services. Using Austria’s largest glacier as an example, we show that abundant water availability would allow artificial management to conserve the glacier under ongoing climate change, although costs in the order of €108 per year exceed threefold related total visitor tourism revenues. While we present a theoretical experiment that due to economic reasons most likely never will be realized, we quantify (un-)feasibility and discuss potential environmental constraints.

In implementing the European Green Deal to align with the Paris Agreement, the EU has raised its climate ambition and in 2022 is negotiating the distribution of increased mitigation effort among Member States. Such partitioning of targets among subsidiary entities is becoming a major challenge for implementation of climate policies around the globe. We contrast the 2021 European Commission proposal - an allocation based on a singular country attribute - with transparent and reproducible methods based on three ethical principles. We go beyond traditional effort-sharing literature and explore allocations representing an aggregated least regret compromise between different EU country perspectives on a fair allocation. While the 2021 proposal represents a nuanced compromise for many countries, for others a further redistribution could be considered equitable. Whereas we apply our approach within the setting of the EU negotiations, the framework can easily be adapted to inform debates worldwide on sharing mitigation effort among subsidiary entities.

With the increasing share of renewables in electricity generation in Europe, implied economy-wide macroeconomic feedbacks and spill-over effects to other sectors and actors are of rising importance. We quantify the macroeconomic effects of a large-scale expansion of wind and photovoltaics (PV) in Europe, employing a global multi-regional multi-sectoral computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. We place special emphasis on electricity market integration costs, which have so far been neglected not only in most bottom-up technology comparisons, but also in macroeconomic studies. We find that the societal welfare effects of a large-scale expansion of wind and PV tend to be positive; however, when integration costs are taken into account, positive welfare effects are either much smaller or even become negative, depending very much on regional characteristics, such as the prevailing electricity mix, weighted average costs of capital (WACC) or capacity factors. We also show that macroeconomic feedback effects raise generation costs above what is anticipated from a bottom-up perspective, since the high capital intensities of renewable electricity generation technologies drive up economy-wide capital prices. This may imply that they are no longer competitive when installed at large-scales.

Target values for creating carbon budgets for buildings are important for developing climate-neutral building stocks. A lack of clarity currently exists for defining carbon budgets for buildings and what constitutes a unit of assessment—particularly the distinction between production- and consumption-based accounting. These different perspectives on the system and the function that is assessed hinder a clear and commonly agreed definition of ‘carbon budgets’ for building construction and operation. This paper explores the processes for establishing a carbon budget for residential and non-residential buildings. A detailed review of current approaches to budget allocation is presented. The temporal and spatial scales of evaluation are considered as well as the distribution rules for sharing the budget between parties or activities. This analysis highlights the crucial need to define the temporal scale, the roles of buildings as physical artefacts and their economic activities. A framework is proposed to accommodate these different perspectives and spatio-temporal scales towards harmonised and comparable cross-sectoral budget definitions., Buildings & Cities, 1 (S 1), ISSN:2632-6655

The concept of tipping points has received much attention in research on climate change. In the biophysical realm, climate tipping points describe critical thresholds at which large-scale elements of the Earth switch to a qualitatively different state; and ecological tipping points describe thresholds separating distinct dynamic regimes of ecosystems. The tipping point metaphor is also used to indicate transformative change in adaptation and mitigation strategies. However, there remains an underexplored field: climate change induced socio-economic tipping points (SETPs). We define an SETP as: a climate change induced, abrupt change of a socio-economic system, into a new, fundamentally different state. We make a distinction between SETPs in terms of transformational response to climate change and SETPs in terms of socio-economic impacts.SETPs are points where a gradual change in climatic conditions causes an abrupt, fundamental reconfiguration of the socio-economic system. Through a stakeholder consultation, we identified 22 candidate SETP examples with policy relevance for Europe. Three of these were investigated in more detail, with special attention for their tipping point characteristics (stable states at both sides of a critical threshold, abrupt transition between those states, and the mechanism explaining the non-linear and abrupt behaviour).The first example is the collapse of winter sports tourism in low-altitude ski resorts. In the face of climate change, this may occur abrupt, cause a fundamental reconfiguration of the local and regional economy, and is very hard to reverse. In some cases, it could be possible to achieve a fundamental shift towards summer tourism.The second example is the farmland abandonment in Southern Europe. Large parts of Spain have already seen widespread farmland abandonment and associated migration. Increasing heat and drought may worsen the conditions, with considerable social, and to a lesser extent, economic consequences. On the local scale, this manifests itself as a clear SETP: a lively agricultural area suddenly tips to the ‘Spanish Lapland’: deserted farms, villages with ageing population, little economic activity and underdeveloped infrastructure and facilities.The third example is sea-level rise induced reconfiguration of coastal zones. In the face of accelerating sea level rise (SLR), threatened communities may retreat from vulnerable coastal zones. This may be caused by migration (voluntary human mobility), displacement (involuntary movement following a disaster) or relocation (retreat managed by the government). The SETP of retreat from a certain area is usually triggered by a flood event. However, also the adaptation to increasing flood risk may be so transformative, that it can be considered a structural configuration of the system. This is currently seen in The Netherlands, where studies on extreme SLR have triggered a debate in which very transformative strategies are proposed, such as: constructing a dike in front of the entire coast, retreat from areas with economic stagnation and population decline, or elevating all new buildings above sea level.A key insight is that the rate of climate change may exceed the capacity of society to adapt in the traditional way, triggering a shift towards fundamentally different policies and a reconfiguration of the socio-economic system.

Transformation to climate neutrality of the transport sector raises multiple challenges at a time, with potentially conflicting objectives and further external effects. This calls for a balanced policy package of which empirical assessment is needed in order to i) quantify its effectiveness and ii) reveal effects of potential overlaps and interactions associated with individual measures within the package. This paper analyses the economic, environmental and distributional effects of a policy package that supports low-carbon passenger transport in Austria, co-developed with policy experts and stakeholders. The package includes hard measures such as a mandated phase-out of conventional cars and explicit road pricing, as well as soft measures to foster the uptake of public transportation. To assess these packages we make use of a computable general equilibrium model for Austria that incorporates heterogeneous household groups, CO2 emissions and a detailed representation of the transport sector. We show that the decoupling of economic welfare and negative external effects of passenger transport is possible with a balanced policy package. Our analysis also highlights potential urban-rural conflicts, regressive impacts and negative public budget implications of single policy measures, issues that the suggested policy package as a whole can mitigate.

We explore the macroeconomic and distributional impacts of unilateral carbon pricing in Austrian economic sectors, which are not covered by the EU emission trading scheme ETS, under various assumptions of revenue usage. We use a recursive-dynamic computable general equilibrium model with twelve groups of private households, differentiated by income quartile and location of residence. Pricing of non-ETS CO2 emissions without any targeted compensation of households turns out to be progressive (when measured in equivalent variation, or welfare) with households living in the periphery being affected the most. This outcome is explained by the dominating progressive factor income effect, which works against regressive consumer price impacts. Considering the positive contribution to welfare from increased public goods provision, low-income households are even better off than without carbon pricing. We compare the revenue usage options ‘no targeted compensation’ with either unconditional or revenue-neutral ‘eco-bonus per capita payments’ as well as revenue-neutral cuts in either ‘labor tax rates’ or ‘value added tax rates.’ We discuss our results from a Utilitarian, Rawlsian and polarization-averse equity perspective. Applying equal weights to the criteria ‘environmental effectiveness’, ‘cost effectiveness’, ‘public budget’ and ‘welfare’, Rawlsian decision makers would prefer the no targeted compensation option. Otherwise, the revenue usage option of revenue-neutral cuts in labor tax rates balance best investigated multiple criteria.

Limiting global warming to prevent dangerous climate change requires drastically reducing global greenhouse gases emissions and a transformation towards a low-carbon society. Existing energy- and climate-economic modeling approaches that are informing policy and decision makers in shaping the future net-zero emissions society are increasingly seen with skepticism regarding their ability to forecast the long-term evolution of highly complex, nonlinear social-ecological systems. We present a structured review of state-of-the-art modeling approaches, focusing on their ability and limitations to develop and assess pathways towards a low-carbon society. We find that existing methodological approaches have some fundamental deficiencies that limit their potential to understand the subtleties of long-term low-carbon transformation processes. We suggest that a useful methodological framework has to move beyond current state of the art techniques and has to simultaneously fulfill the following requirements: (1) representation of an inherent dynamic analysis, describing and investigating explicitly the path between different states of system variables, (2) specification of details in the energy cascade, in particular the central role of functionalities and services that are provided by the interaction of energy flows and corresponding stock variables, (3) reliance on a clear distinction between structures of the sociotechnical energy system and socioeconomic mechanisms to develop it and (4) ability to evaluate pathways along societal criteria. To that end we propose the development of a versatile multi-purpose integrated modeling framework, building on the specific strengths of the various modeling approaches available while at the same time omitting their weaknesses. This paper identifies respective strengths and weaknesses to guide such development.

Tipping points have become a key concept in research on climate change, indicating points of abrupt transition in biophysical systems as well as transformative changes in adaptation and mitigation strategies. However, the potential existence of tipping points in socio-economic systems has remained underexplored, whereas they might be highly policy relevant. This paper describes characteristics of climate change induced socio-economic tipping points (SETPs) to guide future research on SETPS to inform climate policy. We review existing literature to create a tipping point typology and to derive the following SETP definition: a climate change induced, abrupt change of a socio-economic system, into a new, fundamentally different state. Through stakeholder consultation, we identify 22 candidate SETP examples with policy relevance for Europe. Three of these are described in higher detail to identify their tipping point characteristics (stable states, mechanisms and abrupt change): the collapse of winter sports tourism, farmland abandonment and sea-level rise-induced migration. We find that stakeholder perceptions play an important role in describing SETPs. The role of climate drivers is difficult to isolate from other drivers because of complex interplays with socio-economic factors. In some cases, the rate of change rather than the magnitude of change causes a tipping point. The clearest SETPs are found on small system scales. On a national to continental scale, SETPs are less obvious because they are difficult to separate from their associated economic substitution effects and policy response. Some proposed adaptation measures are so transformative that their implementations can be considered an SETP in terms of 'response to climate change'. Future research can focus on identification and impact analysis of tipping points using stylized models, on the exceedance of stakeholder-defined critical thresholds in the RCP/SSP space and on the macro-economic impacts of new system states. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd. This paper has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 776479 for the project CO-designing the Assessment of Climate CHange costs. https://www.coacch.eu/

In order to achieve emission reduction targets in the passenger transport sector, the demand side and especially the mobility behavior of consumers deserve special attention. It is unlikely that such behavior will change without significant political intervention, nor will single policy instruments be sufficient to induce the needed changes. In this study, therefore, we analyze the design of so-called disruptive policy packages required to drastically reduce passenger transport emissions in industrialized countries and illustrate it for the case of Austria. Our research approach consists of three methods: a literature review to develop a policy category system, expert interviews to build effective policy packages and a stakeholder workshop to identify the specific needs of different geographical areas. For the design of successful policy packages, we identify two critical dimensions, disruptiveness (having high-level and rapid effectiveness) and implementability. A well-balanced combination of diverse policy instruments is required to adequately address both dimensions.

To avoid uncontrollable and uncompensated effects of climate change, within the ratification of the Paris Agreement, 197 countries including Austria have committed to limit their emissions of greenhouse gases to hold the warming below 2°C. Achievement of this objective will oblige Austrian society to stay within a carbon budget of 1000 Mt CO2eq until 2050. Due to the long-life span of buildings as well as their high contribution and reduction potentials regarding embodied and operational greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, specific environmental benchmarks are required for new buildings and major renovations. The evaluation of environmental targets presented in this paper follows a methodology combining top-down and bottom-up approaches. First, GHG emissions and reduction targets are calculated for the emission intensity of the Austrian energy mix with the help of top-down decomposition. Second, a hybrid top-down-bottom-up approach is applied as a basis for establishing GHG emission targets on building level. The embodied and operational impacts of Austrian building stock and from construction of new buildings are evaluated. Following on from this and using the Austrian carbon budget, the reduction targets are set at building level based on the hypothesis for 2050. This paper present and exploratory study and can be presented as a basis for definition of GHG targets.

The climate targets agreed in Paris 2015 render deep decarbonization of energy- and emission-intensive industries crucial. Policy makers are interested in the macroeconomic consequences of such decarbonization pathways and often rely on integrated modelling studies. However, the underlying modelling assumptions and uncertainties often remain unquestioned or invisible, although they may govern the models' results. For the case of a zero-process emission pathway of the European iron and steel industry, we demonstrate how different assumptions on different “layers” of uncertainty influence results. We show that effects strongly depend on technology choice, prevailing macroeconomic states as well as regional characteristics. The underlying socio-economic development and the climate policy trajectory seem to play a less important role. Particularly, we find that the choice of model, i.e. which macroeconomic theory strand it arises from, influences the sign and magnitude of macroeconomic effects and thus should be well understood in terms of appropriate interpretations by both modelers and policy makers. We emphasize that model assumptions should be transparent, results sought as to be robust across a range of possible contexts, and presented together with the conditions under which they are valid. To that end, co-design and co-production in research would support its relevance and applicability.

To limit global temperature increase below +2°C, societies need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions radically within the next few decades. Amongst other mitigation measures, this requires transforming process-emission intensive industries towards emission neutrality. One way to this end is the renewables-based electrification of industries. We present results of a recent co-production process which brought together stakeholders from industry, policy, administration and science to co-create climate-neutral transition pathways for the steel and electricity sectors in Austria. The results summarized here are the definition of reliable pathways and the identification of associated risks pertaining to pathway implementation, including a macro-economic quantification. We find that risks to implementation (barriers) are at least as important as risks of implementation (negative consequences). From the quantitative analysis we find that, provided that barriers can be reduced, macroeconomic costs of the transition are only moderate and that stakeholders might overestimate risks, when neglecting economy-wide feedbacks.

Climate change is one of the most serious threats to the human habitat. The required structural change to limit anthropogenic forcing is expected to fundamentally change daily social and economic life. The production of iron and steel is a special case of economic activities since it is not only associated with combustion but particularly with process emissions ofgreenhouse gaseswhich have to be dealt with likewise. Traditionalmitigationoptions of the sector like efficiency measures, substitution with less emission-intensive materials, or scrap-based production are bounded and thus insufficient for rapid decarbonization necessary for complying with long-term climate policy targets. Iron and steel products are basic materials at the core of modernsocio-economicsystems, additionally being essential also for other mitigation options likehydro and wind power. Therefore, a system-wide assessment of recenttechnological developmentsenabling almost complete decarbonization of the sector is substantially relevant. Deploying a recursive-dynamic multi-region multi-sector computable general equilibrium approach, we investigate switches from coke-to hydrogen-based iron and steel technologies in a scenario framework where industry decisions (technological choice and timing) and climate policies are misaligned. Overall, we find that the costs of industry transition are moderate, but still ones that may represent a barrier for implementation because the generation deciding on low-carbon technologies and bearing (macro)economic costs might not be the generation benefitting from it. Our macroeconomic assessment further indicates that anticipated bottom-up estimates of required additional domestic renewable electricity tend to be overestimated. Relative price changes in the economy induce electricity substitution effects andtriggerincreased electricity imports.Sectoralcarbonleakageis an imminent risk and calls for aligned course of action of private and public actors.

There is growing recognition that implementation of low-carbon policies in urban passenger transport has near-term health co-benefits through increased physical activity and improved air quality. Nevertheless, co-benefits and related cost reductions are often not taken into account in decision processes, likely because they are not easy to capture. In an interdisciplinary multi-model approach we address this gap, investigating the co-benefits resulting from increased physical activity and improved air quality due to climate mitigation policies for three urban areas. Additionally we take a (macro-)economic perspective, since that is the ultimate interest of policy-makers. Methodologically, we link a transport modelling tool, a transport emission model, an emission dispersion model, a health model and a macroeconomic Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model to analyze three climate change mitigation scenarios. We show that higher levels of physical exercise and reduced exposure to pollutants due to mitigation measures substantially decrease morbidity and mortality. Expenditures are mainly born by the public sector but are mostly offset by the emerging co-benefits. Our macroeconomic results indicate a strong positive welfare effect, yet with slightly negative GDP and employment effects. We conclude that considering economic co-benefits of climate change mitigation policies in urban mobility can be put forward as a forceful argument for policy makers to take action.

Significance The recent sharp drop in the cost of photovoltaic (PV) electricity generation accompanied by globally rapidly increasing investment in PV plants calls for new planning and management tools for large-scale distributed solar networks. We found that pairs of electricity generation capacity G and storage S , such that S is minimal to provide a given dispatchable electricity capacity for a given G , exhibit a smooth relationship of mutual substitutability between G and S . These G − S isolines support the solution of several tasks. This includes optimizing the size of G and S for dispatchable electricity, optimizing connections between solar parks across time zones for minimizing intermittency, and management of storage in situations of far below average insolation.

Due to the rapid decrease of the costs of photovoltaics, large schemes for solar electricity generation have recently been suggested. The new method of isolines or contour lines between generation capacity and storage for a specific load allows a thorough review of these schemes. Such a review is necessary given that the costs of photovoltaics have been and are decreasing much more rapidly than the costs of storage. We apply this method to the “Solar Grand Plan” proposed by Zweibel, Fthenakis and Mason. The Grand Plan connects only a small number of time zones and is restricted to the northern hemisphere. Schemes recently suggested, e.g., for the Asian–Australian region would connect both hemispheres. In such spatially extended schemes the substitutability between generation capacity and storage can be extended to also include transmission lines. We review the Grand Plan against the background of several spatially extended Pan-American schemes and show how major drawbacks of the Grand Plan with respect to overcapacity can be overcome based on hourly scaling of NASA Solar Sizer insolation data and optimization of the required generation capacity and storage. We then outline transmission lines for Pan-American networks, transmission costs, projected solar electricity costs, and line utilization rates. In addition to enabling significant cost savings through reduced overcapacity, Pan-American schemes enable revenue flows and improved availability of electricity that are favorable for economic development.

Climate policy under partial global compliance raises concerns regarding carbon leakage. While border carbon adjustment (BCA) measures are a potential remedy, they have also been criticised on various grounds. This paper therefore investigates whether a policy fostering the switch to carbon-free technologies can substitute for BCAs. A reason for the effectiveness of a targeted technology policy is that major leakage prone sectors (such as iron and steel), have two main sources of carbon emissions, combustion of fossil fuels and industrial processes. While combustion emissions can be reduced relatively easy by increasing energy efficiency, reducing process emissions requires a switch to low-carbon production processes, e.g. in steel production by deploying electrolysis based on large-scale solar electricity. We show by means of a multi-regional computable general equilibrium analysis that such a switch in steel production technology can eliminate a significant fraction of carbon leakage and also increase sectoral output and welfare. Since the necessary technologies are not available at large scale yet (however, are likely to be by 2020), a transitional BCA scheme may be a crucial supportive instrument to foster such technology switches. Yet, in the long run BCA should be phased out to preserve the incentive for carbon-free innovation.

EU climate and energy policy defines ambitious objectives for the Member States, requiring a fundamental change in energy systems. In an interdisciplinary approach, starting with welfare-generating energy services instead of energy flows, we analyse restructuring options for the Austrian energy system. We extend the concept of stabilization wedges by Pacala and Socolow and integrate technological and behavioural options into a structural energy model, complemented by an economic evaluation in an input-output analysis. We apply the energy service based approach to a transformation of the Austrian energy system that meets the EU 2020 emission targets. We estimate that this would require on average additional investment of about 6 billion € p.a. over a twelve year period. This investment allows to tap savings in operating costs (predominantly energy costs) of up to 4.3 billion € at the end of the period, when using a conservative assumption of non-rising energy prices.

Urban sprawl is caused by the interlinkage of spatial planning and transport characteristics. However, there are only a few approaches that quantify the cross-impacts of policy options in these two spheres. The purpose of this paper is thus a combined regional analysis of spatial planning instruments and transport policy, with a special emphasis on urban–rural diversities. We link a multi-region computable general equilibrium model that incorporates elements of the new economic geography with a transport forecast model. The general equilibrium model illustrates residential choice between urban and peripheral regions, while the transport model depicts the transport implications thereof. Our results suggest that transport policy is obviously effective in addressing transport externalities, while it would have to be set at a politically infeasible stringency to have an effect on residential patterns. As for spatial planning instruments (i.e., expanding housing supply in central regions or limiting it in peripheral regions), we find a strong potential to influence residential choice and hence urban sprawl. Along this line, spatial planning instruments do have a small but still significant impact on reducing transport volume and number of trips. This impact can be enhanced by a policy promoting public transport

In recent years, climate policy under the United Nations system has been characterized by bottom-up, national approaches to climate mitigation. This raises concerns about the overall effectiveness of these mitigation policies, for example due to carbon leakage. In response to these concerns, authors have repeatedly suggested that policy makers consider a consumption-based climate policy approach. We analyze the potential merits of a switch to a consumption-based policy approach using the criteria of justice and economic efficiency. We argue that emissions must be understood as being contributed by both, consumers and producers, but that this fact does not by itself settle the question whether consumption or production ought to serve as the climate policy base. Rather, the perspective of justice necessitates an analysis of the distributive consequences of switching from a production- to a consumption-based policy. We find that both (global) cost-effectiveness and justice can be improved if the unilateral climate policies of industrialized countries are based on emissions from consumption. There are preconditions, however, the switch in the policy base must be accompanied by clean technology transfer, and if implemented by border carbon adjustments, import tax revenues need to be channeled to developing and emerging economies. We further show that in such a setting, export rebates are of minor importance for efficiency and justice.

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to large-scale solar energy generation is the intermittent nature of solar energy and the associated costly storage. This paper presents a method to optimize combinations of selected worldwide regions in different time zones with the surprising capability of providing sufficient electricity generation to overcome intermittency or reduce it to such an extent that substantially less storage and generation capacity are needed. The recent sharp drop in the cost of photovoltaic (PV) generation capability accompanied by worldwide increased investment in PV plants suggests a new economic base for cooperative efforts to sequentially combine day time insolation. The approach presented here optimizes two aspects, first, the selection of sites across large geographic areas, and second, the size and relative proportion of generation and storage capacity at each site. Our approach converts 20 years of daily insolation data by NASA Solar Sizer to hourly scale. The hourly data are used to assess and compare supranational distributed solar networks in different parts of the globe that have recently been proposed, and to subsequently optimize their generation capacity and storage. We show that linking regions in different time zones and on the two hemispheres can fully eliminate intermittency without the need for fuel and renewable energy other than solar.

Climate policy arrangements of partial regional coverage, as they seem to emerge from the UNFCCC process, might lead to carbon leakage and hence a broad literature has developed to quantify leakage. Most of these analyses, however, are confined to consider emissions from fuel combustion only. Yet, some of the most relevant simultaneously energy intensive and internationally trade exposed sectors are also subject to substantial emissions from industrial processes. Carbon dioxide emissions can be released in industrial processes which physically or chemically transform materials. In the steel and cement sectors, for example, these process emissions amount to about half of sector carbon dioxide emissions in many countries. We incorporate industrial process emissions based on UNFCCC data into a multi-sectoral multi-regional computable general equilibrium model and analyze the implications of a unilateral EU 20% carbon dioxide emission reduction policy on leakage and the effectiveness of border carbon adjustment in reducing leakage. By comparing the results to a model without process emissions, we find that leakage of climate policy so far has been underestimated. Leakage turns out to be higher when process emissions are correctly accounted for (38% instead of 29% for combustion emissions only). Conversely, border carbon adjustment measures are found to be roughly twice as effective to reduce leakage rates, when process emissions are correctly accounted for — as carbon adjustment rates are more directly targeted to the relevant sectors. Yet, border carbon adjustment measures should not be seen as a panacea as they might impede necessary technological carbon-free innovation, unless they are phased out over time.

Having agreed upon a binding emissions reduction path by 2020, the EU plays a leading role in international climate policy. The EU currently pursues a dual approach through an Emissions Trading Sch...

If dangerous and irreversible climatic events are to be avoided, global averagetemperature should not increase by more than 2 C above pre-industrial levels(European Parliament and the Council 2009). Meinshausen et al. (2009) show thatin order to achieve such a global target, a mitigation pathway has to limit globalemissions to about 70% below 1990 levels by 2050. There is thus a clear need forimmediate binding commitments on greenhouse gas emission reductions in the post-Kyoto period. While the Copenhagen accord (affirmed by COP 16 in Cancun)recognized the need for deep cuts in emissions, within the UNFCCC framework(UNFCCC 2009, 2010), it has so proved impossible to obtain agreement on bindingcommitments with respect to quantification of reduction levels.The lack of global consensus did not deter the EU from acting alone. In an effort toestablish binding commitments to emission reduction, the EU introduced a ‘‘climateand energy package’’ at the end of 2008 (European Commission 2008). The newlegislation obliges Austria and other EU member states to implement several policychanges. Thus:• The ‘‘EU climate and energy package’’ agreed upon in December 2008 by theCouncil and the EU parliament stipulates the implementation of comprehensiveenergy and climate goals for 2020. At the overall EU level, greenhouse gasemissions are to be reduced by 20% below the 1990 level, the share ofrenewables in final energy demand is to be raised to 20%, and energy efficiencyis to increase by 20% (this latter point may be viewed as redundant once theother two goals are reached). The specific goals for Austria stipulate an increase

Investments in renewable energy were at US$211 billion in 2010 and developing economies overtook developed ones for the first time in terms of new financial investments in renewable energy. Photovoltaics for generation of electricity from sunlight has the highest growth rate among the competing forms of renewable energy and has now begun to achieve grid parity in some regions. If these trends of investments continue, solar energy will play a major economic role. We analyze these developments and assess the ensuing amounts of investment and employment for a range of sizes of the sector of solar energy. We find that by 2050 electricity from photovoltaics could cover up to 90% of total global energy demand, with a then global capital investment in our main scenario in photovoltaic manufacturing capacity at 500 billion US$2010 by around 2030 and 1,500 billion by 2050. Employment in photovoltaic manufacturing is predicted to rise to 6 million by 2050. Sensitivity analysis with respect to the core parameters of assumptions is supplied.

summary Economic Impact of Bioenergy Development Some evidence from Europe and the US In many countries there is considerable interest in the implications of bioenergy development for value added (income) and employment. This can be examined by using ex ante and ex post analysis. Existing multi-sector studies for Austria generally point to a positive ex ante net effect for value added and employment – at least for major bioenergy crops and technologies. However, estimates can vary widely depending on assumptions about economic linkages and causality. Estimated effects are smaller when account is taken of the effect of higher energy costs on economic activity and the diversion of public funds from other uses. Impacts are likely to be stronger in rural areas than at the national level, because of the location of much of primary bioenergy activity in those areas. Ex post assessment for US ethanol refineries points to an employment multiplier close to the anticipated value of four derived from ex ante analysis. However, the ex post estimate has a high standard error. This implies that there is substantial uncertainty about the true employment impact of ethanol biorefineries in rural areas. One reason for the apparent variability may be differing effects of bioenergy development on rural wages and land prices. Dans de nombreux pays, les incidences du developpement des bioenergies en termes de valeur ajoutee (revenu) et d’emploi suscitent un interet considerable. Elles peuvent etre considerees a l’aide d’analyses a priori et a posteriori. Les etudes multi-secteurs portant sur l’Autriche indiquent generalement que les effets nets a priori sur la valeur ajoutee et l’emploi sont positifs – tout du moins pour les principales technologies et cultures a l’origine de bioenergies. Les estimations presentent cependant de grandes variations selon les hypotheses en matiere de liens economiques et de causalite. Les effets estimes sont moindres lorsqu’on tient compte de l’effet de la hausse des couts energetiques sur l’activiteeconomique et de la reduction des fonds publics pour d’autres usages. Les incidences devraient etre plus fortes dans les zones rurales qu’au niveau national car de nombreuses activites primaires bioenergetiques sont situees dans ces zones. Selon une evaluation a posteriori portant sur des raffineries d’ethanol aux Etats-Unis, le multiplicateur de l’emploi serait proche de la valeur anticipee de quatre, indiquee par l’analyse a priori. L’estimation a posteriori a cependant un ecart-type eleve, ce qui signifie que les incertitudes sur l’incidence reelle des bio-raffineries d’ethanol dans les zones rurales sont non negligeables. Cette variabilite apparente pourrait provenir, entre autre, des differences concernant l’effet du developpement des bioenergies sur les salaires ruraux et le prix du foncier. In vielen Landern besteht groses Interesse an den Auswirkungen der Entwicklung im Bereich Bioenergie im Hinblick auf Wertschopfung (Einkommen) und Beschaftigung. Dies kann mit ex ante- und ex post-Analysen untersucht werden. Die vorliegenden multisektoralen Untersuchungen fur Osterreich deuten in der Regel auf ein positives ex ante-Nettoergebnis fur Wertschopfung und Beschaftigung hin, zumindest bei den bedeutendsten Feldfruchten und Technologien im Bereich Bioenergie. Die Schatzergebnisse konnen jedoch in Abhangigkeit von den Annahmen bezuglich der wirtschaftlichen Zusammenhange und Ursachlichkeit stark variieren. Die geschatzten Wirkungen sind kleiner, wenn die Auswirkung hoherer Energiekosten fur die Gesamtheit der wirtschaftlichen Aktivitaten sowie die Abzweigung offentlicher Gelder von anderen Verwendungszwecken berucksichtigt werden. Die Auswirkungen machen sich wahrscheinlich in landlichen Regionen starker bemerkbar als auf nationaler Ebene, da die Aktivitaten rund um Bioenergie primar in diesen Regionen zu finden sind. Die ex post-Bewertung fur US-amerikanische Ethanolraffinerien deutet auf einen Multiplikator fur den Bereich Beschaftigung hin, der dem erwarteten und in der ex ante-Analyse ermittelten Wert vier sehr nahe kommt. Die ex post-Schatzung ist jedoch mit einem hohen Standardfehler behaftet. Dies lasst auf eine grose Unsicherheit bezuglich der wahren Auswirkungen von Ethanol-Bioraffinerien fur den Bereich Beschaftigung in landlichen Regionen schliesen. Diese beobachtete Streuung konnte unter anderem durch die unterschiedlichen Auswirkungen der Entwicklung im Bereich Bioenergie auf Einkommen im landlichen Raum und Bodenpreise bedingt sein.

While representing an important element in the development of a sustainable transport system, car sharing, at least in its traditional form, is not useful for standard commuter trips during which vehicles remain largely idle throughout the day. In fact, such idling has been considered a crucial limitation in extending the potential of car sharing to date. We report the results of a national two-year field study on a commuter-adjusted version of car sharing. Here, a rail company offers (electric) cars to commuters in order to allow them access from their home to the nearest train station. At the same time, the rail company organizes the day use of the car by businesses such as postal services or mobile health care. We find the following evaluating costs, market potential, and environmental merits. The two previously separate users now share one car, with thus more efficient use of the capital stock “car” which allows covering of the additional overhead costs. The potential market is likely to be of sufficient interest for a national rail company operating in a country with a settlement structure such as that which exists in Austria. The environmental effect depends on the share of electric vehicles and the generation mix of electricity.

Biomass action plans in many European countries seek to expand biomass heat and fuel supply, mainly to be supplied by peripheral, agricultural regions. We develop a two-plus-ten-region energy-focused computable general equilibrium (CGE) model that acknowledges land competition in analysing the sub-state local-regional economic implications of such a strategy, embedded within a global context. Our model is based on a full cost analysis of selected biomass technologies covering a range of agricultural and forestry crops, as well as thermal insulation. The local-regional macroeconomic effects differ significantly across technologies and are governed by factors such as net labour intensity in crop production. The high land intensity of agricultural biomass products crowds out conventional agriculture, and thus lowers employment and drives up land prices and the consumer price index. The regional economic results show that net employment effects are positive for all forestry based biomass energy, and also show for which agriculture based biomass systems this is true, even when accounting for land competition. When regional consumer price development governs regional wages or when the agricultural sector is in strong enough competition to the international market, positive employment and welfare impacts vanish fully for agriculture based bio-energy.

Social questions of distribution and equity are of major importance for the political acceptance of car road pricing. The argument that kilometre-based private vehicle charging disadvantages the poor is often the core reason for opposing its introduction. An article in this journal [Steininger, K.W., Friedl, B., Gebetsroither, B., 2007. Sustainability impacts of car road pricing: a computable general equilibrium analysis for Austria. Ecological Economics 63, pp. 59–69] proved the opposite for one European country, i.e. that the rich bear most of the burden. In the present paper we use the very same model structure and apply it in a simulation to the data of another country. While macroeconomic and environmental conclusions are similar, we find a different distributional impact of car road pricing in our case. This issue is also of relevance in the analysis of the distributional implications concerning (recently significant) gasoline price increases.