Energy

A stark warning from Institute researchers on the probability that ‘2°C capital stock’ will be reached in 2017

Will environmental limits, including limits on the climate system, slow or even halt economic growth? If not, how will the nature of economic growth have to shift?

Our shared concern – 20 years after Rio, yet poor progress towards wellbeing

All cultural narratives, worldviews, religious doctrines, political ideologies, and academic paradigms are ‘social constructs.’

Globalization has improved the living standards of hundreds of millions of people – but growing resource scarcity means it risks becoming a victim of its own success.

Many models of economic growth exclude materials from the production function. Growing environmental pressures and resource prices suggest that this may be increasingly inappropriate.

The present paradox, as ecological economist Bill Rees is fond of putting it, is simple yet profoundly troubling: “The ecologically necessary is politically infeasible, but the politically feasible is ecologically irrelevant.”

Evidence of climate change is widely accepted by scientists.

Three major crises are confronting the world. The first is the increasing and uneven burden of humans on the biosphere, and the observation that we have already surpassed the ‘safe operating space’ for humanity with respect to three planetary boundaries: climate change, the nitrogen cycle and biodiversity loss.

How can we distribute growth globally when the developed world needs growth to emerge from debt overhangs and inequality between nations is still quite formidable?

How well do our assumptions about the global challenges of energy, environment and economic development fit the facts?

This research project traces the history of German energy policy from 1945 to the present. It explores the political economy behind Germany’s transition from coal, to oil, to green energy, the crises driving these shifts, and the evolving efforts to balance affordability with security and environmental protection.