Top Ten Publications 2017

The Wuppertal Institute has compiled a selection of the ten most important scientific publications of the year 2017. The peer-reviewed articles provide an insight into the current international recognised research activities and the transdisciplinary research approach of the institute. You can either download the articles or send a copy request to the author.

Modeling and Transdisciplinary Methods

The team of authors examined the social impacts of energy infrastructure developments like power plants with an innovative methodological approach. This was applied in a case study which analysed the livelihood impacts of the large-scale concentrated solar power plant NOORo I in Ouarzazate, Morocco. The results underline the importance to include the social, cultural and political impacts as well as physical and material effects into the method of Social Impact Assessments (SIA).

In his scientific paper, Sascha Samadi deals with costs of electricity generation technologies, aiming to determine which types of costs are relevant from a societal point of view. The findings emphasise the importance of taking not only plant-level costs, but also system and external costs into account.
In a further publication, the authors argue that a number of energy scenario studies do not take behavioural changes towards energy-sufficient lifestyles into account, although such changes could have considerable potential to contribute to public policy goals and may even be indispensable for achieving some of these goals.

Another article deals with rebound effects, which occur when resources had been saved but then again are used for other consumption purposes, in consumer behaviour. The authors explore and develop methods in the field of living lab, which can reduce the rebound effects.

Climate, Energy and Resource Transition

In the article "UNFCCC before and after Paris – what's necessary for an effective climate regime?", the authors discuss the current climate policy and examine the potential of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the international climate agreement of Paris. The authors deal with the question which policy processes are necessary to implement an effective climate regime.
A further publication deals with the question under which conditions and with which processes energy-intensive processing industries are able to achieve a complete decarbonisation.

In the paper "The institutional dimension of resource efficiency in a multi-level governance system – Implications for policy mix design", the authors undertake a closer look on the relation of institutions and policy mixes within the multi-level scope of the European Union in the policy field of resource efficiency and map out different configurations.

A team of authors highlight in their article the incumbent's conservation strategies in the German energy regime as an impediment to re-municipalisation. The analysis is guided by a multi-level perspective and shows that municipal utilities are important key actors for the German energy transition as they function as local energy distributors.

Sectoral Changes: Mobility and Nutrition

Oliver Lah examines the consequences of political volatility on climate change mitigation policies on the example of transport policy. The study aims to explore some well-established political science theories on the particular example of climate change mitigation in the transport sector in order to identify some of the factors that could help explain the variations in success of policies and strategies in this sector.

In their article "What Leads to Lunch – How Social Practices Impact (Non-)Sustainable Food Consumption/Eating Habits", the team of authors present results of a qualitative assessment of eating-out behaviour. The work aims to find out which external factors are responsible for the eating practice and which resource consumption it implies.

Further information can be found under the following link.