Blog

In the fight against cli­mate change, it’s vital that devel­op­ing and emerg­ing nations also aban­don their fos­sil fuels, which are a major source of green­house gas emis­sions. The co-ben­e­fits of renew­able ener­gy poli­cies can become a deci­sive argu­ment for struc­tur­al change.

On March 5, Tagesspiegel Back­ground report­ed on a study of invest­ment and jobs in the Ger­man ener­gy sec­tor. In this con­text, Green MP Julia Ver­lin­den crit­i­cised the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment for its fail­ure to acknowl­edge the con­tri­bu­tion of renew­ables to eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment and job cre­ation. The stance of our gov­ern­ment in this regard is indeed baf­fling. More…

Feb­ru­ary 2018

At the invi­ta­tion of the Amer­i­can Coun­cil on Ger­many (ACG), COBENEFITS project leader Sebas­t­ian Hel­gen­berg­er gave a series of talks in the US on the social ben­e­fits of renew­able ener­gies, shar­ing inter­na­tion­al expe­ri­ences from the COBENEFITS project as well as lessons learned from Germany’s Energiewende. More…

2.3.2017
Bei­jing, China

The expert round­table on the top­ic “Mobi­liz­ing the mul­ti­ple ben­e­fits of renew­able ener­gies in Chi­na: Build­ing new alliances – seiz­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties – rais­ing cli­mate ambi­tions” brought togeth­er emi­nent thinkers to address options to spark polit­i­cal momen­tum for seiz­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ties linked to renew­able ener­gies in Chi­na. It explored how China’s tran­si­tion to the new ener­gy world unrav­els long­time trade-offs between eco­nom­ic, social and envi­ron­men­tal inter­ests and how China’s increas­ing­ly lead­ing role in inter­na­tion­al cli­mate diplo­ma­cy trans­lates back to imme­di­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties for domes­tic devel­op­ment and wel­fare. More…

Domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al cli­mate poli­cies, with renew­able pow­er gen­er­a­tion as one of their cen­tral pil­lars, are increas­ing­ly being explored for their social and eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ties. Among these ben­e­fits are the link­ing of water and ener­gy secu­ri­ty, social own­er­ship, dis­trib­uted rev­enues in the ener­gy sys­tem, and improve­ments in air qual­i­ty and health. Har­ness­ing the mul­ti­ple ben­e­fits of renew­able pow­er gen­er­a­tion requires the care­ful align­ment of pol­i­cy mea­sures, sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy inno­va­tions, and dif­fer­ent stakes in soci­ety to cre­ate an enabling environment.

Since 2014, the IASS Pots­dam and the Insti­tute for Applied Ecol­o­gy in the Chi­nese Acad­e­my of Sci­ences (CAS-IAE) have worked togeth­er to explore the mobil­i­sa­tion of the co-ben­e­fits of cli­mate change mit­i­ga­tion, and renew­able pow­er gen­er­a­tion in particular.

More…