In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, the transport sector remains Germany's biggest challenge: as in previous years, the target set out in the Federal Climate Action Act (German: Bundes-Klimaschutzgesetz) was again massively exceeded in 2024, this time by around 19 million tonnes of CO2 equivalents. Consequently, the sector is a long way from achieving the climate targets of the Paris Agreement.
In their recently published article "Feasibility of sufficiency-policy instruments: an assessment using impact chains for the German mobility sector", researchers from the Wuppertal Institute and the Öko-Institut analyse sufficiency policy instruments in terms of their feasibility. To this end, they compiled and analysed impact chains for 83 policy instruments from the transport sector, ranging from policy stimulus and induced activities, resulting outputs and outcomes to final impacts. The evaluation focussed on supporting factors, existing barriers and risks along the impact chain. This makes even very different policy instruments comparable, also in aggregated analyses, e.g. in terms of policy objectives or instrument types. "The systematic assessment of highly diverse policy instruments, some of which tried and tested in practice, can provide a basis for fact-based, constructive discussions on political feasibility, as the associated effort, supporting and hindering factors can be compared," explains Johannes Thema, Senior Researcher in the Energy Policy Research Unit at the Wuppertal Institute and one of the lead authors of the paper. Carina Zell-Ziegler from the Öko-Institut, the second lead author, adds: "This is not only interesting for scientists, but can also be highly valuable in political practice, for example when decision-makers want to compare different policy options."
The analysis is based on policy measures from the European Sufficiency Policy Database of the junior research group "The Role of Energy Sufficiency in Energy Transition and Society", or EnSu for short. The database comprises more than 350 sufficiency-based policy instruments from all sectors, including sources and – where available – additional information such as examples of implementation and mitigation potentials. The database can be accessed free of charge via the link below.
The article "Feasibility of sufficiency-policy instruments: an assessment using impact chains for the German mobility sector" has been published in open access and can be downloaded free of charge via the link below.
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